There was an old psychoanalyst in the Berkshires — Paul Lippman, PhD, — who took a lot of risks.
He would say outrageous things to patients, sometimes smoke with them or hike outdoors with them on a whim or ask them for advice. And his patients loved him. He was a great story-teller, as well as a great listener.
One time we were out to dinner. He was in his late 80’s at this point, and still seeing 40 patients a week. I asked him if, after his many-times-ten-thousand hours of listening to people and helping them through life, had he one favorite or central bit of advice, one piece of life wisdom that he found more valid for more people than any other. I was asking in a light, jocular mood, and probably I expected, once the words were out of my mouth, that he would brush me off with some version of, “Are you nuts? Everyone is unique. You can’t reduce the vast multiplicity of my lifetime of expertise to some throwaway slogan or single lesson. Go fish.”
He very much surprised me by saying, yes, there was one best piece of advice, one most important thing across all the varieties of human pathology and suffering and achievement and relationship.
So naturally, I asked what it was.
He fixed me with a mischievous grin and said, “Turn ‘I have to’ into ‘I want to.’”
Ah. The moment he spoke I saw the wide relevance of this slogan (which I have since heard in various forms from many others). So often we are all faced with what looks like compulsion, either inner or outer or a combination of both, as if there were no sovereignty anywhere in sight. The sense of “I have to” can permeate our days.
My parents raised me this way, so I have to abuse people, alcohol, myself. My upbringing was such that I had to go for that career. My business partner treated me so badly that now I have to get even. You made me angry; that’s why I’m screaming. At this season, I always get so sad. I’m running late so I have to hurry. I have to do the dishes, then I have to finish the laundry, then I have to do this bit of work for the project, then I have to take that call, see that sunrise, do that meditation, meet that friend. Have to, should, must…
Along with every compulsion, though, there is always a gap open to freedom and choicefulness. Either I can turn the whole things into my choice and my desire, or I can turn some part of it into my choice and my desire.
When I was six or seven, we were stuck waiting for an international flight in the old Kennedy Airport. The announcement came that the flight was delayed, and we were going to spend the next five or six hours — all through most of the night — in the airport, waiting. I was suddently filled with fear, and told my mother, “I don’t want to be here!” I was near tears with a sense of the yawning night ahead, the announcements, the lack of any clear plan or even a bed. My mother said, “Oh, sweetie, it’s an adventure! It’s a picnic! Let’s lie down on our coats and use our hats for pillows.” Everything turned around. The whole scene changed, as if washed through with magic. It went from fearsome disaster to playful delight in a split second. I often wondered, growing up, “How did Mom do that?”
The Soviet era dissident Sharansky was imprisoned. Later, he was asked how he stayed sane under the harsh treatment. He said, “Look, you pretty well had to do what they told you, but I would make it my own. So if they said, ‘Approach the interrogation table’ I would do it — they would beat you if you didn’t obey — but I would walk toward the table on a zigzag. That drove them crazy.”
Sovereignty can look innumerable ways, take innumerable forms, but it is always under the sign of “I want to,” — I choose. We really can replace, “I didn’t ask to be born,” with, “I want to be on Earth.” Facing the apparent compulsion of the outer world, and our own fixed forms of thought, feeling and behavior, we can still improvise. We can choose joy.
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