It’s hard for Alla and I to surprise each other with gifts. (It’s really hard to hide something in a 1 bedroom unit.) So what we usually do is agree to go out on the same day but do the shopping separately, meet at the end of the day and exchange gifts. 🎁
I’m the type that remembers stuff that she looks at, what she says she wishes she’d have. Alla, hmm, not so much.
So this year, we word vomited and listed stuff that we want so we could just pick from that list. The surprise there is you don’t know what you’ll get from that list.
Anyway, as we were word vomiting, Alla kept stopping me telling me, “Say something that you want, not what you need. I want to give you something that you want. Something unreasonable.”
You see, coming from a background where there wasn’t much room for anything extra (sometimes there wasn’t even room for things we need but that’s another story), I trained myself to not really want anything for the sake of wanting it.
Plus, I trained myself to be smart with people giving me gifts, they ask me what I want, I tell them stuff I need that I can’t afford to get for myself. It’s just been that way.
So when Alla kept egging me to scrap my list and put something that I really want not because I need it, I was stumped. I don’t know what I want.
It made me think - have I been this way in all aspects of my life?
Did my choices, whether it’s a career, a splurge, a trip, decisions all based on need or on want?
Do I know how to differentiate the two? What do I need? What do I really want?
What do YOU want?
