Be careful what you hunger for; it’s very often not what you need

By David McElroy · April 7, 2021

There was a very brief period when I passionately wished I could have her back. It’s been so long that I have trouble remembering when it was. Maybe a dozen years ago? I’m not sure.

I no longer think about her very often — although I’ve written about her before — but I dreamed about her Tuesday night. I have no idea why. As I thought about the dream right after I woke up this morning, my first thought was, “Be careful what you wish for, David.”

In the dream, I still lived in the townhome where I lived for about 20 years in another Birmingham suburb. We had just married and she had moved in with me — but it felt more like a nightmare than a dream.

The narrative was less about her than it was about what she was doing to the space in which I lived. It felt very symbolic of something dark and dangerous going on in my mind and heart.

She had moved so much stuff into my old place that it was absolutely stuffed. I had gotten rid of some of my own things, but she had moved so much in that the place felt claustrophobic. I could barely walk. The floors and walls and furniture were all covered with things that weren’t mine — and which felt alien to me.

I felt as though she was ruining everything I had and that she was turning my space into something which didn’t feel like a home anymore. And she ignored everything I had to say. She just didn’t care. As I thought about all that in those minutes after I woke up, I found myself thinking — not for the first time — that I was very lucky that I didn’t get what I thought I wanted years ago.

How do we really know what we want? How do we know what we need?

At various points in my life, I’ve been certain that I wanted this or that. Sometimes it was a particular woman for a relationship. Sometimes it was a career success. At times, it was even a burning desire for certain material things.

But I no longer want most of those things. Not at all.

In some cases, I’ve gotten what I wanted and discovered it wasn’t what I needed. At times, I’ve failed entirely at winning something, but I eventually discovered I would have been unhappy with that thing anyway.

That woman and I would have been unhappy together. Even though I was convinced that I wanted her for that brief period, I understand now that I wanted her because I was afraid nobody else was going to want me. I had lost the woman I had really wanted — and I had run back to the one who had wanted me before.

Eventually, she was wise enough to realize that she would always be my second choice. My back-up plan. So she walked away — which was best for both of us.

When I was younger, I wanted a media empire. I wanted to run a chain of newspapers and other media outlets. Even if I ignore the fact that the newspaper business is essentially dead, I would have been unhappy in that role — building and leading a company. I wanted the fruits of such a position. I wanted the glory and the power and the fame. But I didn’t enjoy the actual work of empire-building.

There are all sort of things I once wanted which I no longer want today. With most of them, I can be very grateful that I never got what I so desperately asked for at the time.

And that leaves me with one obvious question. What about the things that I want today? Am I just as wrong today about what I want? What I need? Maybe I’ll eventually look back at the wants which obsess me today and I’ll think, “I am so lucky that God didn’t give those to me.”

I honestly don’t know.

I like to think I’m finally mature enough to know what’s good for me — what I really want, what I really need — but wouldn’t I have thought the same things 10 years ago? A couple of decades ago? When I was younger and more arrogant?

The only thing useful I can say to myself is that my list of wants and needs is smaller than ever. I don’t care about the fame and power and glory that I once craved. Money is a nice tool — and I wouldn’t mind having more of it — but those sorts of things are useless in bringing joy and peace to my life.

There are a lot of things that would be nice to have, but I can’t say that most of them will matter one way or the other. If they come, great. If not, it doesn’t matter.

The only thing I really need is love.

That sounds like some sort of hippie song lyric from the 1960s — maybe from the Summer of Love — but it’s somehow true, in ways that my younger self wouldn’t have understood.

I need love and all the things which come with it, but if you rightly understand what that is, it’s everything.

I need mutual love and mutual understanding with a wife. I need a family to love and to receive love from. I need a loving community where I really belong. And I need to somehow live my life in a way that allows me to express love and gratitude and joy — and all the things which are bundled up within that.

I still think — at least on some days — that I know the specific things or people which can help me achieve this sort of life. On other days, I want to set all that aside and just seek whatever is mutually best for everybody, not even ask for what I can see in my hopeful dreams.

I do have a fantasy of what my life could look like. The picture is very clear and emotional for me. I’m sure it’s right for me.

But I’ve been sure of other things, too, and they’ve faded away. I’d like to be wise enough to say, “I can’t be sure of what’s best for me and for the people around me, so I have to trust in something larger than myself to bring me to the place I need to be.”

My own plans in the past have been so certain and so definite. In each case so far, though, God has looked at my plans and hopes and dreams — and he’s laughed at my lack of wisdom.

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If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

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