Most of your motives are negotiable, existing in a context of competing alternative motives, but there are some which are absolute, which cannot be compromised on and hence have an existential life-and-death quality, are thus primary motives and so are part o the very context of more ordinary motives. This is well understood and not just intuitively but as a theme for reflection and narrative. It may be that in earlier times all motives had that absolute quality, as appears with infants, and that the negotiable kind are an achievement of maturity and also of decadence, and so the absolute kind which are not chosen but happen to you are much romanticised. Does this point to something about consciousness, even if only on its mode of connection to mind? The consciousness-mind problem is even more salient than the mind-body problem.