Willing as You Will

It’s relatively rare to genuinely enjoy things people typically consider boring – like math, exercise, social work.

For most people this is ‘work’, or being ‘productive’. For some, it’s play.

‘Pleasure’ is usually associated with ‘unproductivity’, if not ‘guilt’ – booze but not broccoli, TV but not MS Excel.

Those who enjoy ‘productive’ things like studying, coding, investing seem to take to it naturally.

If you’re not born with it, can you bring yourself to enjoy something that’s ‘good’ for you? Enjoying something is good in itself, but this is about ‘goodness’ apart from the enjoyment.

Is it genuine? Or is it something you ‘train’ yourself to do, forcing yourself to like something because you think it’s good for you?

It’s an old question, not an easy one, going back to the free will argument.

“A man can do as he wills, but not will as he wills.”

Arthur Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer seems to imply that a man can do what he desires, but he is not free to choose what he desires.

Simply put – a man can do what he wants, but not choose what he wants.

If Schopenhauer’s right, then there’s nothing you can do to change the desires you already have.

If you do happen to try something new and like it, such as hockey, it’s because that desire was already embedded in you somewhere – you didn’t ‘choose’ to like it, nor could you choose to dislike it.

So tough luck in case you’re trying to develop a liking for something and take it up – you might be able to make it a habit, but you won’t be able to make yourself enjoy it.

If Schopenhauer’s wrong, then it is possible to ‘will’ yourself to like something.

Willing doesn’t mean telling yourself how good exercising or studying is for you and trying to convince yourself you want to do it.

You come across all sorts of tricks for this, from rewarding yourself with treats or scoring yourself with points or announcing your intentions to people to create social pressure on yourself.

That’s just a cross between disciplining and brainwashing. It might be necessary sometimes, whether it’s good or bad, but it’s not what choosing your desires, or ‘willing as you will’ is about.

Choosing your desires is about genuinely liking something for itself – no points, no rewards, nothing, although it probably begins with a separate motive in mind.

Maybe you wanted to grow up to become like a particular famous lawyer or investor, and for that reason ‘chose’ to like law or trading.

If you’ve really managed to ‘choose’ to like it, you’ll actually enjoy studying your subject without that end goal always in your mind.

There wouldn’t be any difference between a genuinely ‘chosen’ desire and a desire you didn’t choose.

In other words, if you think about the good things you like to do, you can’t tell if you ‘chose’ them or not.

It probably only applies to good things – there aren’t too many reasons someone would ‘want’ to like junk food, while there might be many reasons to want to like exercising.

Genuine Likes

If it is possible to choose your desires, is it really something you’d want to do? To program yourself like a robot with desired attributes?

Even now, you can question whether you genuinely like something you do or you’ve just ‘chosen’ to.

Although, if you are deriving pleasure from it, perhaps it doesn’t even matter, and you probably can’t differentiate between the two.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. You can’t choose all your desires, but you can choose some of them.

You just happen to really like or dislike some things, with little you can do about it. Others you take up, and perhaps, over time, end up liking them.

Ruining Fun

The easiest way to ruin something fun is to do it just because it’s good for you.

It’s when you put the ‘goodness’ before the fun.

Tell someone running is a good way to lose weight and they need to run, and it’s harder for them to like it than if you just suggested going for a run.

That’s what happens when you try to choose a desire without actually liking it – trying to make yourself want something only because you think it’s good for you.

You’re wanting not the thing itself, but what it’ll get you – not wanting to run, but wanting to lose weight – and accepting to run because it gets you there.

To be able to choose what you want, you still have to want it for itself rather than what it gets you.