People Want What They Can't Have

In The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare, the characters all seem to end up wanting the people that they cannot have. In the beginning, the main character Clary, meets a boy named Jace. After a while, they start to sort of go out. I say sort of because they only kiss once on Clary’s birthday. Clary’s friend Simon sees them and becomes really jealous. While Simon did have a crush on Clary, you would not have expected him to react that intensely. Then, Simon and Jace start to have this competition over Clary. While they both liked her before, it seems as if they suddenly are both in love with her after there was something to fight over.

I think that sometimes, people enjoy the chase, and the winning of the desired object, better than the object itself. As the two are fighting over Clary, it turns into a vicious cycle. They fight, one person gets the upper hand, they gloat, they lose interest, the other boy jumps in, it happens all over again. After you actually acquire the object, it becomes almost less interesting. Sometimes all people really want is to beat the other person, prove that they are better than them. It gives people a sense of power and security to triumph over someone else.

If you fight over a person just to win and rub it in the other fighter’s face, then, chances are, you do not really care all that much about the person, as you do the win. Boys and girls always fight over each other, but most of the time they don’t care that much about the person they are fighting over, just beating the other. If you really loved someone, you wouldn’t mind it as much as to who got them, as you would if they were happy.

People need obstacles and challenges in their lives. If everything was just handed to you on a silver platter, then life would not be hard and you would never actually learn anything. If you don’t work hard, then accomplishing your goals would not be very rewarding. I think that that is part of the reason people want things that are harder to get. But while people need challenges, I don’t think that they should fight over other people.