Why do you want WHAT YOU WANT?

COULD THE ANSWER REALLY BE AS SIMPLE (AND AS DEPRESSING) AS 'BECAUSE SOMEONE ELSE WANTS IT'? LUKE BURGIS, AUTHOR OF WANTING: THE POWER OF MIMETIC DESIRE AND HOW TO WANT WHAT YOU NEED, THINKS SO.

-  ALEXA FORBES

When I was at school, if you got seven A's in matric, your future immediately became very narrow: doctor, engineer, actuary, lawyer - pick one. And they all did. Happily, for the rest of us the choice was much wider. But when the girl who got the highest marks in the country in my year was interviewed on TV and the question came up about what career she would pursue, she said, I'm going to be a hairdresser.' I wanted to cheer she was the first person I had ever seen deviate from the accepted doctor, engineer, actuary, lawyer route. Last I heard, she was a successful film director in Berlin... but she absolutely went ahead and became a hairdresser first. I don't think I've ever been more impressed by anyone in my life, and I'm sure Luke Burgis would feel the same.

His fascinating book Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire, and How to Want What You Need is based on work produced by René Girard, a French professor of literature and history in the United States in the 1950s. It's tricky to get Girard's theory across in a sentence or two, but it's more or less this: as people, we instinctively know what we need, but we don't instinctively know what we want. So we imitate what other people seem to want.

It's partly why social media has brought about such a general malaise in society, because constantly seeing what other people have puts us in a permanent state of unrequited want. It explains why we always feel vaguely dissatisfied by what we have or where we find ourselves. Because our desires are determined by what other people deem desirable, we can never feel properly satisfied or content.