The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of everyman, even of those who hang themselves. The second aspect of this condition, banished from the Garden and prevented from return, is a determination on the part of now sinful man to get back to the Garden in his own way. Here is the other side of the story.
Man is now a rebel.
God anticipates the consequence of that in v. 22 and closes the garden, to frustrate man in his effort to reclaim the life that had been taken from him as punishment for his sin. And the rest of the Bible will tell the tale of man's effort to get back into the garden by his own wits, his own strength, his own devices. Whether it is the tower of Babel, or the idolatrous worship of the ANE, or the urbane, sophisticated philosophies of the classical world, or merely the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure or money or power, man seeks to regain what he has lost but to regain it without the surrender of himself to God, without repentance, without walking the way of faith in Christ. And in our day it remains exactly the same story. Anything and everything to regain what has been lost, to find a way back into the garden except the blood of Christ and bowing down to God.