The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

The Supreme Desire
Our path must always be toward greater awareness of our nature. We
must see within ourselves the grass-is-always-greener syndrome at
work and how it continually impels us to certain actions. We need to be
able to distinguish between what is positive and productive in our
covetous tendencies and what is negative and counterproductive. On
the positive side, feeling restless and discontented can motivate us to

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search for something better and to not settle for what we have. It
enlarges our imagination as we consider other possibilities instead of
the circumstances we face. As we get older, we tend to become more
complacent, and renewing the restlessness of our earlier years can
keep us youthful and our minds active.
This restlessness, however, must be under conscious control. Often
our discontent is merely chronic; our desire for change is vague and a
reflection of our boredom. This leads to a waste of precious time. We
are unhappy with the way our career is going and so we make a big
change, which requires learning new skills and acquiring new contacts.
We enjoy the newness of it all. But several years later we again feel the
stirring of discontent. This new path isn’t right either. We would have
been better off thinking about this more deeply, homing in on those
aspects of our previous career that did not click and trying for a more
gentle change, choosing a line of work related to the previous one but
requiring an adaptation of our skills.
With relationships, we can spend our life searching for the perfect
man or woman and end up largely alone. There is nobody perfect.
Instead, it is better to come to terms with the flaws of the other person
and accept them or even find some charm in their weaknesses.
Calming down our covetous desires, we can then learn the arts of
compromise and how to make a relationship work, which never come
easily or naturally.
Instead of constantly chasing after the latest trends and modeling
our desires on what others find exciting, we should spend our time
getting to know our own tastes and desires better, so that we can
distinguish what is something we truly need or want from that which
has been manufactured by advertisers or viral effects.
Life is short and we have only so much energy. Led by our covetous
desires, we can waste so much time in futile searches and changes. In
general, do not constantly wait and hope for something better, but
rather make the most of what you have.
Consider it this way: You are embedded in an environment that
consists of the people you know and the places you frequent. This is
your reality. Your mind is being continually drawn far away from this
reality, because of human nature. You dream of traveling to exotic
places, but if you go there, you merely drag with you your own
discontented frame of mind. You search for entertainment that will

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bring you new fantasies to feed upon. You read books filled with ideas
that have no relation to your daily life, that are full of empty
speculations about things that only half exist. And none of this turmoil
and ceaseless desire for what is most distant ever leads to anything
fulfilling—it only stirs up more chimeras to pursue. In the end you
cannot escape from yourself.
On the other hand, reality beckons you. To absorb your mind in
what is nearest, instead of most distant, brings a much different
feeling. With the people in your circle, you can always connect on a
deeper level. There is much you will never know about the people you
deal with, and this can be a source of endless fascination. You can
connect more deeply to your environment. The place where you live
has a deep history that you can immerse yourself in. Knowing your
environment better will present many opportunities for power. As for
yourself, you have mysterious corners you can never fully understand.
In trying to know yourself better, you can take charge of your own
nature instead of being a slave to it. And your work has endless
possibilities for improvement and innovation, endless challenges for
the imagination. These are the things that are closest to you and
compose your real, not virtual world.
In the end what you really must covet is a deeper relationship to
reality, which will bring you calmness, focus, and practical powers to
alter what it is possible to alter.
It is advisable to let everyone of your acquaintance—whether man or
woman—feel now and then that you could very well dispense with their
company. This will consolidate friendship. Nay, with most people there will
be no harm in occasionally mixing a grain of disdain with your treatment of
them; that will make them value your friendship all the more. . . . But if we
really think very highly of a person, we should conceal it from him like a
crime. This is not a very gratifying thing to do, but it is right. Why, a dog
will not bear being treated too kindly, let alone a man!
—Arthur Schopenhauer

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