Being raised Catholic, I learned pretty quickly the pitfalls of desire. There’s a pretty clear statement to this effect in a well-known and oft-repeated Biblical psalm:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want
Old Testament teachings are not the only ones that warn us against wanting. In Eastern religion and philosophy, for example, Hinduism teaches us that we are entitled to our labor itself, not the fruits of the labor, implying that to use fruits as motivation in any undertaking might be missing the mark. Buddhists associate wanting, desire, or a general feeling of dissatisfaction with current circumstances, with dukkha (usually briefly translated as “suffering”).
While I’m not a religious scholar (the above examples came off the top of my head), I’m sure that there are other moral schools of thought that regard this all-too-common human condition as something to strive to transcend.
Even if you’re not religious, this idea, this thought, that to want is a flaw, a source of trouble, a sin, may permeate your worldview even if you’re not totally aware of it. I know it does mine, and has pretty much since I was old enough to think.
But we all want things. We may be pretty simple in this regard, just wanting nothing more than to pay our bills on time, or to make sure our dog gets adequate exercise, or to get a massage more than once a year. Or we may be a bit more high-maintenance, having our sights on a Tesla or large amounts of residual income.
Some of these wants may be at the forefront of our minds a good bit of the time. We may find ourselves thinking about them more often than just every now and then. In fact, we may find ourselves preoccupied with our distinctive wants, whatever they may be, even to the point of designing our lives around them.
Is this wrong?
While I’m not qualified to spell out what’s right and what’s wrong, I do take an interest in this phenomenon of wanting, and how some wants are perceived to be okay, and others, not so much. To want to have a healthy body, for example, must be okay. At least, at first glance.
The problem comes, we’re told, when these wants come from a place of insecurity, or anger, or overcompensation. If I want a healthy body because I believe I don’t deserve to be loved until I get it, this could be seen as a problematic want.
In theory, we should recognize wants that come from a healthy place just as easily as wants that come from a problematic place. Unfortunately, this all too often isn’t the case. Life is more complicated than that. And it’s not all black and white. Sometimes, a want is rooted in elements of both.
For example, Sam wants a richer social life. When he was younger, he was never the most popular kid in school and usually had a feeling that he didn’t quite “fit in”.
Could a case be made that Sam’s desire is problematic, because he is retaliating against the social inadequacies of his past? Sure. But an equally valid argument could be that to have a rich social life is a perfectly healthy desire.
So, our “wants” are all too often some parts healthy, and some parts problematic. Sure, there are “wants” that are completely healthy – like, to eat kale for the sake of eating kale – and wants that are completely problematic (I’m sure you can think up one or two of these on your own). But the vast majority of human desires are messy bundles of societal, personal, political, familial, and psychological pressures, influences, and moldings.
I’m certainly not going to begin to go into any of these. But just knowing this, that our deepest desires are exceedingly more complicated than any of us may suspect, makes the whole notion of labeling a “want” healthy or problematic, beneficial or non-beneficial, authentic or inauthentic, completely presumptuous and unfair.
Why deny ourselves the right to pursue our own “wants”? Why listen to an authority figure or book or scripture or social pressure that wags its finger and tells us to beware? Okay, so much of what we want may be not one hundred per cent pure and good and holy. So what?
I love the idea of “liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. Those words rightfully bring to mind the constitution of the United States of America, and our wise forefathers, who understood that a true democracy was founded upon this ideal. But there’s an important condition with this idea, one that’s not so readily talked about. And that is, that this pursuit can’t be undertaken without knowing what it is one wants. And this is not as easy as it sounds. Of course, we all say we “want” things. But how affected are we by what we’ve been taught is okay (or not) about those wants? How much do we really own up to them? How much are we willing to protect them—even if they may not be what religion or society tells us is acceptable?
Perhaps to want is the next great courageous act.
