5 Reasons We Can’t Have It All
You can have it all! It’s a feminist mantra that has been repeated so often that it has become a cliche. Of course, women aren’t the only ones that want to “have it all.” Men have been chasing that same will-o’-the-wisp since time immemorial. After all, who wouldn’t want to have all his heart’s desires? Who wouldn’t want to rise to dizzying heights in his career, get married to someone he or she loves, be mommy or daddy of the year to 2.1 rugrats, be in peak physical health, and have a great house, lots of friends, and an abundant supply of money? Unfortunately this is one beautiful dream that very few, if any, people will ever get to live. There are many good reasons for that.
1) Goals grow over time: Human beings are goal-setting animals and our goals only grow over time. Someone who gets promoted to regional manager will immediately start to covet the company VP slot. The person who wins a championship in just about anything immediately begins to think about what he’ll need to do to repeat. The musician who has a hit record wants to sell even more copies of his next album. This is why a college student with no car and a $15 Salvation Army couch in his studio-apartment living room can be completely satisfied with his material possessions at 18 even though he may feel poor at 50 if his car is a decade old, his small house is run down, and he can’t afford a new washer. You’re either growing and improving as a human being or you’re starting to rot inside, and this makes it very difficult to ever be completely satisfied with any aspect of your life.
2) What we want changes over time: Human desires are not static. What you want today may be exactly what you don’t want next year. We’re not talking about moving the goalposts here; we’re talking about playing a new game. How many people go to college for four years to get a degree in a subject that they never spend a day working in for the rest of their lives? Plenty. It’s also very easy to start working your way up to the top of a profession and realize that you don’t like it very much. The same goes for getting the spouse you want and realizing two years in that he or she is really not whom you want to spend the rest of your life with. What good is superficially appearing to “have it all” if you don’t want what you have?
3) There are only so many hours in a day: It doesn’t matter how good you become at decision making, prioritizing, multitasking, and time management; everyone still has the same number of hours in a day. This means you can’t go to your son’s baseball game and get a promotion by landing a new account in Tokyo at the same time. You can’t be in the gym working out at the same time you’re practicing on the piano. You can’t spend the same money on a training seminar and a car payment. Most of us love the concept of win/win choices, but in life, we often have to make win/lose choices. One priority has to win more of your time, resources, and attention while the other priority has to lose.
4) We’re unrealistic to begin with: Think about some of history’s greatest movers and shakers. Martin Luther King cheated on his wife. Tesla never had a wife because he believed great inventors shouldn’t be distracted with wives and families. Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group that included his friend Brutus. The greatest baseball player in history, Babe Ruth, was traded from the Yankees after helping to make the team legendary. Napoleon died in exile. Ronald Reagan spent the last decade of his life in a fog because of Alzheimer’s. And on and on it goes. If the legends whose names will echo throughout history didn’t “have it all,” why should the rest of us think we’ll be able to live our ideal lives?
Et tu, Brutus?
5) We can’t match up in every area against people with unbalanced lives: The standard for “success” in life is ultimately set by other people. This might not be a problem for people who want to “have it all” if everyone else wanted to have balanced lives. Unfortunately for them, the highest achievers in any area tend to spend an inordinate amount of time working on their performance. The stay-at-home-mom has more time to spend on mothering her children than the woman running her own business. The man who only has 40 hours a week to spend on his career is never going to be able to compete on an even playing field with the people who put in seventy-hour weeks. Most balanced people can never measure up to their own expectations because they’re comparing themselves to high achievers who’ve obsessively pursued the ideal in one particular area. In other words, nobody can achieve like Bill Gates, Lance Armstrong, and Oprah Winfrey all at the same time.
See more life advice from John Hawkins at PJ Lifestyle:
And more career suggestions from our other contributors:
The best observation on this question was made thirty-odd years ago by Steven Wright: “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?”
That aside, thanks for simple truth succinctly expressed, Mr. Hawkins.
If you didn’t have a place to put everything, you WOULDN’T HAVE EVERYTHING.
Logic 101.
Unless, of course, no place to put everything exists.
Logic 201.
Aha! You must be a philosophy major, because that is not logic at all.
There just so happens to be a unique mathematical process for logic; Got one for philosophy?
Like your observations, examples- and a must read for the young people going out into the world. Your article would give the youngsters a realistic view of the world they will be functioning in.
“How many people go to college for four years to get a degree in a subject that they never spend a day working in for the rest of their lives? Plenty.”
Maybe that’s why college degrees are becoming almost worthless these days. If you don’t have the skills needed by a corporation or a business, especially in a very tight job market (like this one), you may be waiting a long time to get a decent job. I’m wondering how many sociology majors are working at Starbuck’s and how many History majors are doing clerical work right now (if they can find it). In many cases, college is your last opportunity to study something you’ll never have an opportunity to study ever again. And if you’re OK with just that, great. But if you think you’ll actually make a living at most of the majors offered in colleges, think again. At one time, merely going to college was a passport to a better future. Today, a college degree had better be in something marketable if you plan on using it for a real job. If not, then you can always read Virginia Wolf on the unemployment line.
Exactly this. Plus, people getting college degrees are still somehow failing to learn the most basic skills that they actually need in the workplace. It never ceases to amaze me how poorly most people in my age bracket write, or how ill-equipped they are to articulate their thoughts in any kind of professional setting. What do people do with that four (five, six…) years of their life? What does college actually teach you?
You can study anything you want without having to go to college. Just visit your local public library. Get a library card if you don’t have one. Then take out books in whatever subject interests you. If we had a society where you could be “certified” in a field of knowledge through home study, college would be much less attractive than it is today. There are other ways to gain knowledge than to sit in a classroom. One can be knowledgable on almost any subject that interests you enough to devote the time to study. And gaining knowledge this way is almost free.
Amen. I got my history degree in the 90s. I ended up in social work. If I could have told my 18 year old self just one thing, it would have been to get a real degree involving real marketplace skills, not just follow “what made me happy.”
Gee, where have we heard that sage advice (“You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might get what you need”) before?
Oh, yeah — Mick Jagger. (A long, long time ago.)
Got your soundtrack.
1. It’s Alright Ma. “He not busy being born is busy dying.” – Bob Dylan
2. You Can’t Always Get What You Want. – Rolling Stones, Jagger/Richards
3. Time Won’t Let Me. – The Outsiders, King/Kelly
4. It’s Lonely at the Top. – Randy Newman
5. You Can’t Rollerskate in a Buffalo Herd. – Roger Miller
“No one in the world ever gets what they want and that is beautiful
Everybody dies frustrated and sad and that is beautiful”
-They Might Be Giants, “Don’t Let’s Start”
Your subtitle said:
You can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.
The Stones had a better take on this:
You can’t always get what you but, if you try sometimes, you’ll find you get what you need.
How many people expect everything to be handed to them, with little to no effort on their part? How much of the entitlement mentality can be ascribed to the self-esteem movement?
“How many people expect everything to be handed to them, with little to no effort on their part? How much of the entitlement mentality can be ascribed to the self-esteem movement?”
You just described the current occupant of the of the White House.
And ALL of his supporters.
A different tack this time:
Who’s roads and bridges are you using to get these articles to PJM, Mr. Hawkins?
(Is this okay now? I’ll try to keep my comments on a level with the article. Will that be okay?)
Who says you can’t have it all? You can get into a head on crash with a blind drunk illegal driving down the wrong side of the road. You can have your head bashed in by black yutes playing the knockout game. Is this a great country or what?!
Wow, that’s really cynical.
Maybe you cant have it all but Obama will redistribute whatever you do have to himself and his friends. That is what he “needs” to get 4 more years – The least deserving president in history.
But…but, I want everything! Gotta have it! Gonna get it! Give it to me, ’cause I deserve it. I deserve everything because I am…that’s right, I am, therefore I am. Just ask the GREAT I AM himself, master and commander B. H. Obama and his friends.
Tell me about it! Got borned the year FDR won Term #I, Great Depression, WWII Rationing and Shortages of everything, (Don’t ya know there’s a war on?) Postwar scramble to catch up on deferred demand. College days without Student Loans. Military service at slave wages. Maybe I had become innured to wanting and not getting.
This may be what sets my generation apart from the Boomers, the Xers, the ME-ME gang, their variants and offspring. Instant knowlege of availability of the new, generous availability of the credit to acquire it, and unfortunately, a truncated lifetime of the product due to depreciation, obsolence and fashion.
It is true that a mans reach should excede his grasp. Without something to want for, where are dreams to go?
I guess one must grow old before experiencing the transcendental pleasure of being free of appetite… How great it feels to want NOTHING!!
Freedom…it’s wonderful….
Its really very difficult
Impossible to explain
But the only way to win in life
Is not to play the game
Dunno whence those lines come; but, offhand, I agree with the conclusion!
THE DOG AND THE BONE
Once a stray dog while searching for food came to a butcher’s shop. There he found a bone with some meat on it. So, he lifted it and ran to a safe place to enjoy it at ease.
He chewed the bone for a very long time and this made him quite thirsty. So, he went to a river to quench his thirst. He took the bone along, as he was worried that some other dog might take it away.
As the dog stood on a bridge across the river, he looked around to see if he could safely put the bone down while he quenched his thirst.
By chance, he saw his reflection in the water from the bridge. He could not understand that it was his reflection. Rather, he thought it to be another dog with a bone in its mouth.
Being greedy by nature, he wanted that bone too. So, he barked at the other dog, hoping to scare it into giving him that bone. But alas! The bone that he held in his mouth fell into the river.
The End..
“After all, who wouldn’t want to have all his heart’s desires?”
A high-schoolteacher wrote in my yearbook, “All our dreams, if they ever did come true, would drive us crazy….” Not to worry, since that tends not to happen, & those of us who believe in a greater than ourselves understand that desires/dreams ought to be subject to filtering.
“Who wouldn’t want to rise to dizzying heights in his career [sounds good, but I haven't found it yet], get married to someone he or she loves [a dicey proposition], be mommy or daddy of the year to 2.1 rugrats [why?!], be in peak physical health [much easier when I was much younger], and have a great house [this is a fine house, but I don't own it], lots of friends [most of mine nowadays are on Facebook, & the majority are rediscoveries from my public-school days--though I'm surrounded by persistent family members] and an abundant supply of money?”
Oh, that money supply–if it were enough, it’d take care of *most* of the other stuff!
One more quibble with JH: my goals may actually have diminished over time as I try to consider “realistic” possibilities. He’s right about the hours in a day, though–& the overriding problem, as I see it, is that there don’t seem to be enough days in our lives. Decline makes things harder–& mortality will ruin your career/retirement!
one lesson i wish had been drilled into my head since birth – there are ALWAYS trade offs.
second lesson, be happy with what you have, not mad about what you don’t.
teaching Sunday school, would have treats. if the number was not right, there would be one or two extra. would have a game to decide who got the last one. the winner might have 3 starbursts and losers 2. tried to teach that they came in with none and should be happy with what they received, not miserable at what they did not have. trying to teach 10 year olds lessons it took the teacher more than 30 years to learn.
Fro an early age I realised I could not achieve everything I wanted. Why, all have talents and limitations. Some people are born into a stable financial background and get left a life times money to spend and other work for it. Achieve what you can in the limited tie on the earth is a goal of mine, although I do not expect to become the best at everything I do and certainly not the best looking on the planet. Of course people in the western world have better life chances and generally achieve more in material goods and life chances.