system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it possible to believe you want something but not actually want it?

This question has relevance to a past event in my life (that I do not feel comfortable sharing) so I would like to hear possible answers to it.
gpt
This can get into deeper issues, but some folks are inclined to say, "yes." Here's an example:

Russ Shafer-Landau gives an example of a young man who convinces himself that he wants to be a lawyer, in large part because both his father and grandfather were lawyers, and he is expected to continue the tradition. After enduring the absolute drudgery that is law school, however, the young man comes to realize he was deceiving himself. As Shafer-Landau presents the case, and as seems both natural and plausible, the young man never actually wanted to be a lawyer. It’s not that the young man had a desire to be a lawyer, and then later had a different, conflicting desire; instead, at no point did he desire to be a lawyer, and he was deceiving himself when he thought otherwise. To explain why the man went to law school, then, we can cite the belief that he formed when he failed to properly introspectively determine his desires, but we go wrong if we try to cite some desire of the man to be a lawyer.