I’ve discovered a new law which seems to govern most of human desire and explains a great deal about many social interactions. It’s kinda ironic too! I call it Shane’s law of Empty Plenty and it goes like this
Past a threshold of desire the probability of obtaining something that you want appears to be inversely proportional to your desire for it. The greater the desire the less chance there is of successfully realising it.
Or in other words “it often seems that you can have an unlimited amount of what you don’t really want”. I’m sure some readers will think this is nonsense but I believe it just may be true. The semantics are more subtle than it first appears. Many of us are familiar with something difficult suddenly becoming easier when we stop caring so much about it. Be it study, work, relationships etc. It’s not that the thing itself has become any less complex but we’ve given our minds the chance to see with clarity as opposed to being clouded by desire. We work ourselves into a state over many different things and become incapable of objectivity. Other careers become exciting and fantastically lucrative, everything would be OK if you could persuade Mr/Miss X that they love you etc…. It’s quite possible that there are more realistic alternatives that may be just as good but they are mostly overlooked as they don’t seem so attractive. It often seems that there are a limitless amount of these not-quite-so-perfect opportunities around us but we don’t act on them. Unfortunately it’s only hindsight and often bitter experience that helps us to refocus.