Historically, it has been difficult for me to distinguish ahead of time what I want from what I merely think I want. This blindness has gotten me into trouble, some barely worth calling trouble at all (feeling I’ve wasted my time reading I book I didn’t like)—and some quite worthy of the word “trouble” (pseudo-proposing marriage to the wrong woman).
There are two components to this difficulty: ignorance about the purported objects of my desire and ignorance about what delights, soothes, or satisfies me. Both ignorances are in some measure unavoidable, as I, like all of us, am a creature of time with limited perspective and finite attentional resources. Yet it seems to me, despite all the introspection that happens here, that I am more lacking in the latter. (With some exceptions: I do know, for instance, that I always enjoy a walk.)
I think this is because, having been raised a Jesus person big on self-denial, I’ve always distrusted the ancient maxim “know thyself.” Why get to know someone I’m trying to deny?
Curiously at odd with the above, however, the first word I ever received from God, sometime my sophomore or junior year of high school, was this: “Do what you want.” It was a corrective.
Despite that corrective, my suspicion of “know thyself” has remained. I now call that disobedience. How can I do what I want if I don’t examine what I want? How can I “follow the impulses of [my] heart and the desires of [my] eyes” if I don’t know what those impulses and desires are—or, as is probably more often the case, I let my superego interpolate supposed desires for real ones, leading me down blind alleys short and long.
Of course, if I follow the impulses of my heart and the desires of my eyes, “God will bring me to judgment for all these things.” Yet if those things are themselves good, and if submitting to dictums like “do not handle, do not taste, do not touch” is worldly, and if Jesus earnestly desired to eat with His friends, and if God Himself is at work in me at the level of my desires, then what reason have I to fear His judgment? (As an aside, whether I’ve done well or not, I in fact welcome His judgment, because His judgment is truth.)
Hence, from now on, before I decide I want something, I will, in addition to researching the something, research myself—and I will act accordingly, hopefully with the Spirit as my guide. Yes, within God-set boundaries—but not within manmade ones.