From the author: It's nice to make wishes come true:) It's nice to feel like almost a magician:) Why guess other people's desires? Balakhonskaya G.V. Audio version of the article here https://www.b17.ru/media /50761/ Is it necessary to guess other people's wishes? And if necessary, then why? I think almost each of us has such an experience - when we tried to guess the desires of another person or expected them to guess ours. Let's try to imagine a situation where we really want to guess another person's desire. To please him. Give him a gift or just make him happy. Is this how it happens? For some reason, it is important and we want to please this particular person. It could be someone close. For example, a child, a girl. Dad loves his daughter very much. And he gives her with all his heart... a toy railroad! The girl also loves dad very much. And she is glad for his attention and daddy’s time devoted to her - because they play railroad, of course, together! :) After all, Dad didn’t have a railroad when he was a child, but he really wanted his parents to buy it for him. But they didn’t buy it. But the desire remained! And now a grown-up boy, already an adult uncle - well, he won’t buy a railway for himself... But he can “guess” his daughter’s desire - that she really wants a railway! After all, at her age he wanted it! And here he is does what his parents denied him in his childhood - buys his daughter a beautiful railway. And enjoys it to the fullest. He is realizing his childhood dream. Of course, thinking that he bought a gift for his daughter. Because he guessed her wish! :) Or here’s another thing. In my family, for example, they told how Uncle Gena bought Aunt Nila waders for her birthday. Uncle Gena was an avid fisherman...)) The story was always told with laughter, because it was very obvious that Uncle Gena attributed his own desires to his wife. I don’t know how Aunt Nila felt when she received waders for her birthday.. .))Very likely disappointment. Or maybe irritation. And this story was remembered for a long time. This psychological mechanism, when we supposedly read the thoughts of another and know what he likes and what he doesn’t like, is called projection. Because it seems to us that the other person should like and want what we like and want. We project our desires, tastes and ideas on another person, just like a movie projector in a cinema hall projects a movie onto the screen. And we often sincerely believe that we know the tastes and needs of another. Although with our minds, for the most part, we understand that the other person is different, but accept it completely ( not in words, but in deeds) it can be difficult for us. Or here’s another example: An adult daughter brings back from a trip as a gift to her mother, who has been sewing for herself with pleasure all her life, a piece of fabric that her daughter really liked. She liked it so much that she would sew something for herself from such material. Daughter with love she picked up this fabric, she really liked it. And so, full of joyful anticipation, the daughter takes the fabric out of the suitcase and gives it to her mother with the words: “Look what I brought you!” And then... the mother twists her nose and says in a dissatisfied voice: “You wouldn’t buy this for yourself.” You can imagine your daughter’s feelings. Resentment is the easiest of them... But I tried, I wanted to do something nice, I put my soul into it. So let's return to the question - why do we need to guess the desires of other people? Do good and feel like a good person? What do we want to get for ourselves by realizing other people's desires? Possible options: - gratitude - experience a sense of belonging - satisfaction from having done a good deed - increase your self-esteem - ..... My dear readers, you can add more options. But I think all of them will be about the fact that By fulfilling the desires of others, we get something for ourselves. But only if we fulfill the desires of other people, and not our ideas about their desires, do we get something for ourselves. Because by replacing other people’s desires with our ideas about them, instead of the joy of another person we receive his bad or:)