Be Careful What you Wish For

A young man falls in love with a girl. He wants her attention. He wants her affection. He wants her to think about him when he is not around. In the horror film Obsession, his wish comes true. The girl becomes obsessed with him. What begins as fantasy slowly turns into terror. The film presents itself as a story about obsession, but beneath the surface it explores a much older and more uncomfortable question. Do human beings actually know what they want?

At first glance, the answer seems obvious. Of course we know what we want. We want money, success, love, recognition, power and happiness. Yet a closer look reveals something strange. People often obtain the very things they spent years pursuing and still feel dissatisfied. The promotion arrives. The excitement fades. The relationship begins. The restlessness remains. The dream house is purchased. The imagination immediately starts searching for a bigger one. It is almost as if the object of desire was never the real object of desire.

The real danger is not that our wishes may never come true. The real danger is that they might.

Ancient philosophers understood this puzzle. According to Plato, human beings spend their lives confusing shadows for reality. According to the Buddha, desire traps us in a cycle of suffering. Modern psychology tells a similar story through a different vocabulary. We are remarkably poor at predicting what will make us happy. The future exists only in imagination. We fill the gaps with fantasies. We do not desire reality. We desire our mental simulation of reality.

This is why fulfilled wishes so often disappoint us. A young man says he wants a girlfriend. What he often wants is validation. An entrepreneur says she wants wealth. What she often wants is freedom. A celebrity says he wants fame. What he often wants is significance. We mistake the vehicle for the destination. Then we are surprised when arriving at the vehicle fails to deliver the promised destination. Reality faithfully grants the request while completely ignoring the hidden intention behind it.

Perhaps nowhere is this confusion more visible than in love. People say they want to be loved, but what they often want is certainty. Love, however, is the opposite of certainty. It is voluntary, fragile and unpredictable. A person who can never leave us cannot truly choose us. The wish for perfect love often turns out to be a wish for perfect control. The tragedy is that control destroys the very thing it seeks to protect. Possession can imitate love for a while, just as obsession can imitate devotion. Yet one seeks the freedom of another person while the other seeks ownership. The difference appears small in fantasy and enormous in reality.

Perhaps this explains why stories about wishes appear in every civilization. King Midas wanted gold. Faust wanted knowledge. Countless heroes wished for immortality, power or love. Their wishes were granted. Their lives became more complicated. These stories are not warnings against ambition. Human progress depends upon ambition. They are warnings against self-ignorance. The danger lies not in wanting too much. The danger lies in failing to understand what we truly want.

The horror in Obsession emerges from this ancient mistake. The young man's wish is granted. Yet the fulfilment reveals a truth he never anticipated. The fantasy in his mind and the reality before his eyes are not the same thing. Perhaps that is the lesson hidden inside every wish. The universe is not a philosopher. It does not interpret. It does not infer. It does not read intentions. It simply delivers what was asked. The real danger, then, is not that our wishes may never come true. The real danger is that they might.