IAMT #20: Get Your Wish
"Beef"(2023), and the monkey's paw of achievement
Get Your Wish (Quiet Comet Cover)
Porter Robinson’s sophomore album “Nurture” has so many songs that served as a pivotal backtrack during a period of my life in 2021. Lately, I’ve outgrown the ability to fully sympathize with some of the themes, but back then, they spoke to me in a profound way I haven’t experienced similarly since.
The single for the album is “Get Your Wish”. It’s not really what you expect from an album that touts hope and commiseration from a place of darkness. This one is about a unique, quieter type of suffering.
When feeling incomplete and unsatisfied with my life, I’d promise myself, “if I just had this one thing, if I can get this, I can be happy.”
When the glory tries to tempt you
It may seem like what you need
But if glory makes you happy
Why are you so broken up?
So tell me how it felt when you walked on water
Did you get your wish?
My interpretation is that Porter Robinson is singing from the perspective of a naive past self talking to his current self. He’s reached an enormous amount of success with music. A lifelong dream attained, but he still feels a void. He’s wealthy. He’s famous. He’s progressed his passions. The lyric asking himself “did you get your wish” is unanswered, but we can roughly assume the answer would be, “it wasn’t enough”.
I’ve always been driven by tangible milestones. In school, I’d persevere until the next exam, next final, next semester, next diploma, and so forth.
In relationships with people, I force myself into frustrating situations, with the promise of it’ll be okay once it’s over/we’re closer/etc.
For hobbies, if I could master a specific skill, spend a set duration spent on it, or get external acknowledgement, it would make it all worth it.
Sometimes the reasons are more vain, such as trying to feel a sense of superiority or to impress someone. Sometimes it would be pushing myself out of spite.
It’s a bad habit I have that is a major contributor to the crumbling motivation I have after an accomplishment or failure. Whatever reason I’d fabricate to get my ass across the finish line is usually artificial in nature; the reprieve I get is ethereal. George Bernard Shaw said,
“There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.”
I think the quote in particular is describing the nature of humans to yearn for continual progress; achievement in itself is not enough. If your goalpost is static, the joys of improvement wear off relatively quickly. Sometimes it can be more gratifying to have something you’re working towards, than having the thing itself.
Doing things we don’t want to is a part of living, but for the things I DO want to do, squeezing that extra few drops of effort out of myself using an arbitrary end goal, felt like it led to inefficiency for me long term and mild burnout. In the worst cases, I’ve experienced, where I feel like I’ve sacrificed a lot for not enough gratification, it’s led to bouts of depression and existential crisis.
I watched Beef for the first time in summer of 2023, and it remains one of my favorite miniseries. It was at a time when I felt like I had everything I could want on paper, but still felt a dissatisfaction. Spoilers ahead.
The plot accelerates with the desires of the two main characters. Danny wants general financial stability, to bring his parents to America, and build them their dream house. Amy wants to attain a substantial level of wealth such that she never has to compromise her personal life for her career again. These objectives completely define what drives them.
Something interesting happens in episode 7 where, after a time skip, we see that both Amy and Danny have achieved their initial goals. They’re no longer struggling in the way they were previously, and are seen enjoying the fruits of their labor. But Danny finds a way to contact Amy again to ask her,
“I just want to know if I’ve got to get to where you are”
in reference to Amy’s newfound success.
Danny still isn’t happy despite having hit the milestone of earning enough money to build his parent’s dream home, and wants to know if Amy’s even greater level of wealth has brought her happiness.
She says,
“Everything fades. Nothing lasts. We’re just a snake eating its own tail.”
Music has easily been my primary hobby beyond everything else in 2025. In terms of hours, where my thoughts lie, fun I’ve had, it’s been music, and it’s probably not even close. When I started out last year, I’d use the method of developing an artificial desire or urgency to get myself motivated. After hitting a goal, I’d wonder what the point was at all and take a step away for a few weeks.
As cliché as it sounds, I’ve been progressing more trying to just find a general enjoyment in the hobby - no milestones and no major expectations from myself, although I try to remind myself to remain curious as a way to fight complacency and stagnation.
It feels very unserious to say all of this to lead into the new years - I still made some resolutions, but I kept them intentionally vague, with the overarching theme of being proactive in whatever I’m doing.
This new tenant in which I try to live my life is still experimental, but learning to stay present feels like the first genuinely sustainable thing I’ve tried. I’m finding solace in trying not to have a wish.
Thanks for reading.
EN: Unsure how this one reads tbh - would love some feedback. It’s been slow for my media consumption and general contemplation time, so my writing feels stifled. I’ll get back into a groove eventually.
Say it louder for the people in the back 👏
I totally felt this. When I was going through my goals bingo board post, I talked about setting new goals, reprioritizing some old ones and casting aside others. Even when I managed to finish a lot on paper, internally, it felt like I missed the target where it mattered the most.
This year, I've also redefined a lot of my goals not having an endpoint but to try and put a system in place. Late last year as my passion revitalized and I once again began looking at where I could self improve I consistently came across the same quote by James Clear that says, "You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems."
So a lot of my time lately has been refocused on where I can build certain habits and how I can reduce friction on those kinda habits.
I also was intentionally vague with my goals for the reason that it's commonly believed that telling people your goals can trigger a dopamine release like you've already completed it. And it can reduce the motivation to actually commit.
Once I've committed to my goals for some time, I do plan on telling a couple of others. But so that they can keep me accountable.
My feedback: I like your short but sweet writing style here. Maybe your writing feeling stifled is a sign that you've found something really worth writing about but difficult to put into words. It can feel overwhelming to try to escape the culture of achievement and progress and endless striving that defines great swathes of the media we consume, the relationships we make, the career we work, and the institutions we participate in. This culture also molds our language such that it can feel awkward or even wrong to try to step away and critically examine it from the outside. I think the fact you are trying to step away and express what that's like is laudable and something we can all learn from. Great post.