You Are Allowed to Want Things

Somewhere along the way most of us learned to present our wants as needs, with evidence attached, the way you'd make a case in a meeting.

I want to go back to study — because the industry is changing. I want a weekend to myself — because I've been carrying a lot. I want to leave — because he did this, and this, and this.

Notice the structure. The want only becomes speakable once you've built the argument. As though wanting something were not, on its own, a reason.

Here's the permission, if you need it in writing: you are allowed to want things simply because you want them. You are also allowed to change your mind about them, and to want two contradictory things at once, and to be unsure.

You don't have to win the argument. There isn't an argument.

— Ané