Beyond Desire

Here’s something for the philosophically brave-hearted: Perhaps you’ve noticed that desire is somewhat fickle, even deceptive. When we want something, especially if the desire is strong, we can get caught up in the false assumption that getting our desire will change anything essential. In truth, it doesn’t—at least not for long. No doubt you’ve experienced this. Everything seems to depend on getting a particular job or house or relationship—nothing else will do!—yet in those cases where the magic wish is granted, we soon find ourselves in the new status quo, and in a way that can feel almost disappointing, we’re still who we are, our life is still our life, new desires and challenges spring up, and nothing essential has changed. Desire in this sense is a kind of trickster that keeps us ever chasing the next empty promise of a happiness defined by outer conditions. This is why the Buddhists tell us that what we truly desire is the end of desiring, and that desire (attachment to this or that outcome) is the root of suffering. Now, here’s a direction you can explore if you’re game: The next time you find yourself wanting something, look ahead on the timeline and see if you can recognize that if that thing comes to pass, if it comes into your life, you will still be yourself, and that nothing essential will have changed. The new house before long will become just the place where you live, the new car will fade into the background of the car you drive, the new relationship will become normal and in this sense, no big deal. If you can get that far with this practice, you’ll be standing at the door of detachment and should experience a palpable sense of liberation and spaciousness where the desire had been producing a feeling of urgency and constriction. The only true happiness comes from what the Stoics called “self-possession.” It arises spontaneously when the soul is “well-ordered”—when we awaken from the dream that anything in the world has the agency to make us happy, and discover the joy of our own being-here that was with us all along in the living present, awaiting our homecoming.