We hear about the “will to live”, as in people who survive major illness or calamity. We hear about the desire to live, which amounts to the same thing. Both, though, speak in large measure to a desire not to die.
Actually wanting to live, actually being curious about life, and being open to all the treasures that are possible for all of us, is a different beast.
If you actually want to live, then that is 95% of the solution to any problem you may have. Getting things done is never difficult; it is merely logistics. It is getting to where you are free of conflict, open to success, open to experience, that is hard.
We all know that it is what you do every day that adds up. We all know that delayed gratification is essential to nearly all long term success. People who want to live see this clearly: none of it is recondite, none hidden.
To be impatient is to be in some measure self destructive, is it not?
I say this as a result of reaching–after many, many years of struggle–some reasonably definitive conclusions with respect to my own psychology. The end of psychoanalysis is not reaching conclusions about what happened THEN, but rather what continues to happen NOW. What change/adaptation occurred, and can you feel it with sufficient clarity to separate it from the rest of your stream of consciousness? Can you feel your limitations in such a way that you can imagine living without them? That is the end; at least, the end short of a full cure.
We were all born for forward motion. We were all born to enjoy life. The question is always what is impeding us, not what the point of motion is. Moving is its own reward. Learning is its own reward. Growth is its own reward. It is what we were born to do.
Hopefully this is reasonably clear. The preceding paragraph, of course, consists in what I believe to be useful assertions. Very, very often, what we assert to be true becomes true as a result of the following motion. It is then true, is it not? Ontology does not interest me: decision making does.