Big Game Hunting – Tales from on Safari

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I saw a T-shirt somewhere. It was just a plain brown T-shirt with a simple line of text on it. It said, "Protect me from what I want." I love that shirt.

It seems like the greatest and most powerful truths generally only require a few words to express. If you need two pages of dissertation or half a page of formulas to express something, that doesn't make it wrong but it virtually guarantees that it is not profound. It certifies that the truth you are expressing is not one of the basic and potent ones that govern all of our lives.

At least, that's what I think.

Our desires come from somewhere. Some of them are things that we really do need, or at least could use – things that might fulfill us. Others are things that we want for the wrong reasons, for some symptom that they produce rather than for the virus itself. Still others are just things that we want because somewhere, someone told us we should want them and, wanting to fit in and make that someone happy, we agreed that that was, in fact, exactly what we wanted. And then we proceeded to tell ourselves that it was what we wanted for so long that after a while we forgot that we didn't really want it at all. And maybe in the doing, forgot what it was that we really wanted in the first place.

So many ways to go astray. Being human is messy.

It is, of course, unfortunate when someone wastes their life pursuing something that they don't really want or aren't suited to, but what happens when they actually get what they're after?

As the T-shirt implies, that, dusty nomads, is when things really get interesting.

There is perhaps nothing as unsettling as getting what you wanted because, once the cake is cut, the balloons have fallen to the floor and the well wishers have headed for their cars, it's just you and that which you have sought left in the room. Primitive man knew better than to chase a wolf into a cave unless he was pretty sure he could kill it.

Primitive man knew better than to chase a wolf into a cave unless he was pretty sure he could kill it.

Take for instance a man I know. A man who's life is about the pursuit of corporate leadership. A man who's resume cites the career objective of being a CEO. A man whose resume contains a disturbing history of short-lived, mysteriously terminated, senior management positions that trail across the country like bodies in the trunks of abandoned cars left on lonely country roads. He is a man who cannot rest unless he is in senior management.

Nor can he rest when he is there. Take this man, this disturbing man, and place him in the role he so fervently seeks and witness what he becomes. He flickers like a candle flame in a strong breeze, all his motions a-twitch and a-quiver, existing in a constant state of nervous expectation. Ever terrified of sudden humiliation or discovery he moves like a man under a strobe light even while sitting still. Just looking at him makes people uncomfortable. The manufacturers of Ritalin salivate at the sight of him.

He can't be comfortable because he's chased a lion into a cave, and if you can't kill a lion then you do not want to corner one. To watch this happen is a vaguely unsettling spectacle – like peering into a terminal illness ward at the hospital. A reminder of how far wrong things can go.