in praise of desire

FALL IN LOVE WITH THE WORLD

Peasants Carousing and Dancing Outside an Inn (Adriaen van Ostade, 1660)

“Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained.”

― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

It took me a long time and most of the books I’ve read to learn what I know about desire and attachment and meaning in life. But the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was sitting silently for the seventh hour, meditating in a Buddhist monastery, high up in the mountains of tropical Thailand.

I realized, through the screaming pain in my knees, that I am striving to have more attachments, not fewer. I would rather be attached to the things I love and suffer for it, than feel the nothingness promised by Nirvana which, to me, seems indistinguishable from death. I would rather accept responsibility as an actor that can work to change things, instead of sitting on the sidelines, too stoic to be bothered if the broken world burns.

I realized that I love the world too much to side-step desire.

~~~

Desire is a beautiful emotion. One must look with the freshness of a child’s vision to see the poeticism that we even want things. We want to go places. We want to love people. We want to be happy. We want healthy bodies and humble friends. We want the future to be better than the past. On good days, we believe it can be.

Desire should be cultivated as a powerful motivator. To be fully human is to let yourself be moved by desire. To be pulled forward by the enraptured image of your idealized future.

The vigorous man talks often of his desires and dreams and plans. He keeps a large list of lofty goals, most of which he has no clue how he'll accomplish, but they are a reminder of human ingenuity and hope, much like his growing library is a reminder of his own ignorance. He is too busy thinking of what actions he can take to worry about avoiding disappointment.

Of course, desire in excess becomes dangerous. It is savory and sweet and a little seductive, since it lacks the difficulty of trying. You must be careful which desires you cultivate and not entertain too many, lest they spill into the realm of fantasy. Perhaps only as many as you could reasonably work toward. Our vigorous man can be full of desire, because the wishes of his soul make daily demands on the works of his hands.

In short, desire must be mediated by agency.

~~~

Instead of courting a healthy amount of desire, people seem to pretend they don't want anything. They decide to detach from the world and become fixated on fantasy instead of being driven by desire.

Fantasy is dispensed as a fine mist. Ethereal, aromatic, and intoxicating, all too easy to get drunk on, alone for yet another Saturday night, mesmerized by the blue glow of a little screen or lost in a delectable daydream. Fantasy is alluring because it asks nothing of us. Whereas desire demands action. When one chooses to cultivate desire, they must accept responsibility to be an actor in the world. To apply effort to steer fate and create chance. Work to make things happen.

It makes sense why fantasy has risen to the forefront, given the precarious prevalence of our pocket-sized touchscreen pacifiers and the modern message that, with careful caution and constant calculation, you can avoid ever being hurt. That it's possible to create a life liberated from danger and disappointment and failure. That such a life is even desirable.

People see that threat is everywhere (true!) but think the proper response is to retreat. To protect themselves from a dangerous world, they decide to simply not allow themselves to experience it. The rampant revival of Buddhist and Stoic philosophy seem to support this sad conclusion¹.

The beautiful fact that we want things is treated as some kind of malady or curse or, worse, turned into a dumb joke.

There's a general reluctance to take risks in everyday life. Risk minimization has become our primary priority. Underneath it all, there's a subtle unwillingness to accept the terms of life, as if waiting or wanting means better terms will be offered. As if the sidelines are safer. This is tragic. Tragic because it makes us miserable and puts us on a trajectory to miss out on everything meaningful the human experience has to offer. No one even wants kids anymore because it’s “too risky”. By definition and by every shred of evidence, the most meaningful thing someone can do².

If you can easily restrain desire, and risk seems too risky, perhaps it is too weak. Perhaps it has not been given enough oxygen to grow and flourish. Perhaps you haven't fully opened to the beauty of the world and the breadth of the human spirit. Perhaps you're afraid of admitting there are things that you really do want for yourself. That would make you genuinely happy to have. That you would be disappointed at 80 to learn you never did. I know I am.

Desire itself is a risk. Wanting something is inherently more risky than wanting nothing. Stating what I want is absolutely terrifying because I might not get it. It's easier to pretend I don't want anything. Fantasy is risk-free.

Seeing a dark-haired, bright-eyed girl in a cozy clattering coffee shop, reading some obscure 19th-century French literature, it's far easier to envision Christmas mornings and morning kitchen-table coffee and coffee steaming through the bright, cold air as we watch the sun rise, than go up and talk to her. There's no risk of rejection. Or forgetting to breathe.

If you want something and it comes with the risk of failure, good. You're alive! Life is singular and brief and its beauty is partly dictated by your willingness to go on adventures to attain the things you want. What we need is not absolute safety, but to set our sights on something meaningful and scary, something achingly beautiful, and try our best to get there. What we need, really, is to create lives that threaten us with their terrifying potential of screwing them up. Because that's living. That's being alive. It's scary, yes, but the romance is worth the risk.

The most dangerous thing in the world is to be alive.

~~~

In the monastery, I realized I do not want to be ironically detached from my life³. I do not want to try to love any good thing in this world less. I do not want to close my heart in a feeble attempt at self-protection. I want to be moved by the world. I want more presence, more vitality, more warm-blooded aliveness. Feeling things fully. Telling people I love them, over and over and over again.

Everyone talks about avoiding toxic attachment styles but no one mentions that the worst style is to not be attached at all.

To court desire is to be in love with the world. Its creations, its material nature, its existence. One cannot properly love life without being attached to it.

And I stand for falling in love. With people, sure. That’s easy. But also with meadows and rivers and sequoia trees and candlelight and clay coffee cups and dog-eared notebooks and the click of my favorite pen. And especially with effort.

With all my love,

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If you want to get closer to me and my work, and exchange emails more often, the best way is by becoming a patron of this publication:

Thank you to everyone who has shown their support by buying me a coffee. A little means a lot. Sitting in cozy cafes with a coffee has been the backbone of my writing.

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👋 what i’ve been up to:

• I've spent the last two weeks working on an organic vegetable farm in BC, with twenty other volunteers from around the world. The days are simple but full. Mornings are spent harvesting, afternoons are passed reading and writing and walking by the river, and evenings we eat supper and laugh and learn to curse in foreign languages.

• I’ll have lived in a tent for 15 weeks in 2024, almost 1/3 of the year. But, the more time I spend outside, the more I realize how little I need.

✍️ quote i’m pondering:

“Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.”

— A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

📸 photos i took:

October in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia.

1. If you’ve found a home in Stoic or Buddhist philosophy, that’s beautiful and true. I simply mean to point out that their widespread popularity seems to be downstream of an attempt to side-step desire.

2. Meaning is experienced in direct proportion to the amount of responsibility we shoulder. The ultimate responsibility bestows the ultimate meaning. And no responsibility I can conceive of is greater than that of a helpless human life. Of a child. Only followed by the commitment to a lifetime of faithfulness to a partner.

Any sane parent you meet, regardless of their millions or mundanity, professional success or public fame, will say having children was the most meaningful thing they did in their life. And most often, their best memories are exclusively with their children.

We’ve been duped into thinking children would destroy the planet when really they will be its salvation. That is something the Hero's Journey tells us.

3. Catherine Shannon has an excellent essay on this topic.