by Ben Spatz
"What do you want?"
I think this might be the Big Question. I guess everybody looks at the Big Question in a different way, or maybe the Big Question is different for everybody, but for me this is it.
It means, given the entire world that I don't have control over, and then my little percieved agency over my own body and actions... What shall I do? What shall I do in this moment, today, this week, this year, and for the rest of my life? This is the only question we really get to answer, the only question we have total influence over. It's also the hardest question, because we have no absolute guidelines to follow. That's existentialism: The one thing nobody can tell you is what you want to do.
Of course, in some sense you are always doing what you want to do. If you are the totality of your brain and body, then obviously you are going to do whatever you do because you are deciding to do it. To allow the possibility of not doing what you "want" to do requires the separation of one's total mind-body existence from a separate, smaller, more real "true" self. Only then can the true inner self desire something other than what the body is doing.
In _Good Will Hunting_, the question is "What do you want to do?" This is posed to a young man with many talents. The answer turns out to be, "Leave my job, leave my friends, drive across the country and find the girl I love." In _The Neverending Story_ (I mean the book), the command on the back of Auryn reads: "Tue was du willst." Or "Do what you will." But this "will" doesn't mean "Whatever you will do," or "Whatever you feel like doing." It's closer in meaning to the "will" of "Superman flies when he wills himself to fly." That has a very different feeling from "Superman flies when he wants to fly."
In both cases, there is the question of Will separated from the normal functioning of a person. Bastian in _The Neverending Story_ thinks at first that the command on Auryn means "I can do whatever I want." But then Grogroman tells him: "No. It means you must do what you truly desire. And that is the hardest thing of all."
There is a philosophical fuzziness here if we're talking about the past or the present, because then we have to separate a person's "true desire" from their actual actions. But if we're just talking about the future, that problem goes away. When I try to decide what I will (to) do in the future, I don't have to separate my true self from the rest of me. I am considering my options overall. I think this is a more helpful application of the Big Question.