SAUCIER — Most wanted

Another sign of aging is when the “oldies” station plays a song that was a hit in your mid-40s.

The Spice Girls were singing “Tell me what you want, what you really, really want.”

I realized I couldn’t immediately respond with what I “really, really want.”

I remembered George Bernard Shaw’s insight: “There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.”

Not to have some deep desire, some life-propelling longing, is to have lost it.

Or worse yet, to have it in your life and not realize that this is what you need to fill some soul-sized void.

But for most of us, Shaw’s second tragedy of having our desire fulfilled is far more common.

In a market-driven, material world, we are raised on desires. We move from our desires for need-to-have toys, to need-to-have looks, to need-to-have cars, houses and jobs.

There is nothing wrong with this. We are material beings who truly need these things, though maybe not to the degree that some wish for them.

The tragedy is that so often, once we have gained what we have longed for, we simply replace that now-fulfilled desire with a new one. There is always something more.

It reminds me of small children opening a pile of Christmas presents. Excited, they literally rip open the first package, and then flash a big smile at the surprise they have uncovered.

But then, before you can get a second picture, they are ravaging the wrapping of another gift.

Perhaps part of our own tragedy with getting what we desire is the lack of a real presence to the moment, an attentiveness to the fact that something that we longed for has been achieved.

Without this attentiveness, there can be no true gratitude — a posture that helps us recognize the many gifts that life has lavished on us, and that most of what we physically need is within our grasp.

So maybe, if we find that we have gained our heart’s desire, perhaps our desire was too superficial to meet our deepest needs.

At this stage of life, I find myself uncomfortably comfortable. I have family, shelter, food and enough money to get by. I don’t really need more of any of those.

But what I do need, and what my heart desires, is to learn to love better, serve more, and forgive often.

So, tell me, what do you “really, really want”?