We live from a bottomless basket of endless wants that drive us everywhere, including crazy! Hoping to find comfort and life direction in your wants is like trying to find shade under a swarm of stinging flies -- while it may be cooler, you also have to keep running. Your pleasure is your pain.
Real pleasure is not the opposite of pain, it is the absence of it. Think about it. What you really want is to be free of your wants. This higher want becomes an answerable need the more we realize that we do not have to sit by and submit to anything not of our own choosing. No one chooses to be pulled apart unless his or her idea of happiness is going to pieces.
All of us have known those times when we find all of our wants pulling in one direction, and so we may win what we want. Only now, these very wants become our haunts. Too late, we realize that we didn't really win what we thought we had, and now we must learn to live with yet one more "prize" that is more a punishment than it is our pleasure.
Here is the key to the ever-pleasant life. Our wants seem to hold the promise of a brighter, more pleasant future, when the truth is that it is their very nature that is disturbing the present moment. Everything is pleasant now. You wouldn't throw a pebble into a pond to quiet its surface. Left alone, the pond reflects the heavens above it. The more we learn to leave ourselves alone, the clearer it becomes that we are happier that way. No one likes a nag, so it's no small wonder we don't like ourselves.
Don't be afraid to tell a persistent want that you are taking over the wheel. Let it holler. As all of these inner passengers start to realize that you intend to drive from now on, they will start to exit the bus. At this point you may notice a weird feeling that seems something like loneliness. Believe me, this is just one of the last wants who doesn't like to be ignored. Stay right there in the driver's seat. Even though it may not feel like it at the moment, you have nothing to lose. This is the truth. Don't worry if you aren't sure where you want to go. Stick with your new inner position, and one day you will be happy to see that even worry was just another of the want haunts. Little by little, you will discover that you never really needed to know where to go. Now it's pleasant for you wherever you are because pleasure has become your nature instead of your goal.