People are inconsistent. They have inconsistent philosophies and desires. One moment I want ice cream, the next I'm convinced it's the last thing I want. Sometimes those moments occur at the same time. Sometimes it seems impossible to assess what you really want. Especially for long term things.
I want to get married. I want to be single. I want to have a boyfriend. I want lots of boyfriends. I want a girlfriend. I want more time to myself. I want all of these things, and yet they're almost all conflicting. (Especially with this silly cultural notion of monogamy, but I'll write about that some other time.)
Yet, it doesn't seem all that surprising that desires can be inconsistent. These desires are high level. They involve many different things and affect me in far more than one way. Back to the ice cream, I certainly want to experience its delicious taste and texture, but I don't want that sickening, sugary feeling in my stomach, I don't want to spoil my appetite for more nutritional treats, and heaven forbid it go straight to my hips! I guess that's why we can be so indecisive. Sometimes we are truly indifferent or apathetic, but usually it's the complex task of weighing the pros and cons.
By the way, pros and cons lists illustrate a weird phenomenon to me. It's obviously not as simple as "write down all the pros and cons you can think of for each thing and whichever has the most pros and fewest cons is the best choice." What about the importance of each of those pro/cons? Should I do weighted pro/con lists? Maybe the simple is enough because you'll naturally come up with more pros for what you really want to do, and more cons for what you don't. But I don't think that actually happens. The way a pros and cons list works for me is just by forcing me to make a decision. Then the way I react to that decision is how I really know what I want to do. So I might as well just flip a coin.
But anyway, I got frustrated at a friend once for saying two things that were blatantly inconsistent. Whenever I point out somebody's inconsistencies the usual response is to deny the contradiction and attempt to reconcile the two thoughts. (I admit, this is often my reaction). But this friend responded "So what? It may be inconsistent, but that's how I feel." At the time it only aggravated me more, but now I'm starting to see where he was coming from.
