Want Vs. Should

    “Loving can cost a lot but not loving always costs more and those who fear to love often find that want of love is an emptiness that robs the joy from life.”  Growing up as a young child the most cherishing and warming feeling one gets is the care and love from their parents.  In my own experience I can recall many situations where I had to have ‘that’ or didn’t want to do ‘that.’  We tend to look past the fact that its quite true that things happen for reasons and we aren’t always going to get what we want.  But in that case its always hard to walk away from a situation and we decide to take matters into our own hands and don’t stop until we are satisfied.

    In the Novel, East, West, written by Salman Rushdie, the main character is put into a predicament where he believes these ‘ruby slippers’ he saw at this auction would make everything he is having problems with better.  These shoes are the exact shoes Dorothy wore in the Wizard of Oz and He believes that when they are in his possession he can tap them together three times and be granted his wish of having Gale fall in love with him again.  The biggest situation he is facing is the issues with money and the blood thirsty auctioneers he is going against.  There are people from all over that have come to the auction to quite possibly want exactly what he wants and it is beginning to worry him.  And then, for some reason he begins to think to himself, is this really what he wants, he looks around and sees other people giving everything they have such as there family, houses, etc. just to have one more ‘toy.’  We can call these people materialistic.  He realizes that maybe it isn’t Gale that he really needs.  He decides to stop bidding at the auction and sees that from that point on his life should be lived for himself and not trying to buy his way to love per say.

     After the battle between right and wrong He is enlightened by his own presence that fact that he is who he is and if Gale chose to cheat on him then why should he try so badly to ‘buy’ her back.  He does not want to be looked at as just another one of the greedy, materialistic people in this world.  Yes, he knows that the slippers might actually bring back what he once lost and in fact it might make him happy, but in actuality he will always know that he bought his way back into love and he despises of that.  After all the conflicts, drama, ups and downs He made up his mind not only giving up on the auction but also gave up on Gale altogether and decided from that day forward to live his life for him and not want what he can’t have.  Sometimes you have to let go of what you once loved to truly see what there is in the future that awaits us.