ALICE'S RESTAURANT

In his song "Alice's Restaurant," Arlo Guthrie sings, "You can have anything you want at Alice's Restaurant."  We always took Alice's Restaurant to mean the world, which likely Arlo meant too, ultimately. 

He also meant that indeed we can get anything here in the world, but we can also get a lot of what we don't want.

We see that we got plenty of both, when we look back on our lives, but more of what we wanted, most of us, than what we didn't want. 

What we found, however, many of us, was that once we had what we wanted, it wasn't worth having.  Wanting it was more satisfying than getting it. 

And this was for one simple reason.  None of what we wanted and got and didn't want but got anyway, was us.  Like the song goes, "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant--exceptin' Alice."