Desire

As these months have passed by and the initial uncertainty and fear about how this would play out has dissipated, things around our home have settled into a relatively pleasant routine of cuddles, dance parties, and evening runs around the “trails” we’ve cut into our overgrown backyard. Daily video calls with each set of grandparents, while not really as good as our once regular visits, are better than nothing. Just as on retreat how there’s fewer choice of activity and meals, during this most recent stage of quarantine we’ve been living fairly simply with our basic needs met and routine in place. With the options for most external activities off the table we’ve adapted to the alternative — ordering groceries online, going without various products, forgoing activities like trips to the park, and FaceTime instead of a real visit to my parents.

But two weeks ago my husband and I started thinking about how we might expand our social circle to include my parents. Just planting that seed invited in so many new questions and worries. How would we keep everyone safe? Was it safe? Would our four year old be ok with a long car ride that culminated in a socially distanced, no-contact visit? Were we just being antsy and impatient, and would this hypothetical visit end up exacerbating things?

We came up with so many different scenarios — maybe we’d meet up for a socially distanced picnic, maybe we’d camp in their backyard, maybe this idea is ridiculous and we shouldn’t do it! Throughout the week we talked in circles and felt generally bummed about this whole stay at home order. Keep in mind, that before all of this we were feeling relatively even keeled and without much emotional turmoil.

We’d walked down the road of desire and wound up full of wanting, longing, worry, fear, and uncertainty. We’d been feeling none of those emotions prior to starting down this path two weeks ago! Recognizing how much suffering we’d brought upon ourselves, and respecting the state’s stay at home order, we decided to wait just a little longer before expanding our circle. As soon as I got off the phone with my parents, who agreed and totally understood, I felt as light as a feather. All of the tension and discomfort of desire drained out of my body. The physical contraction I’d been feeling eased and tensions within our household dissipated. Just by planting the seed of desire I’d unconsciously brought to life so much drama and internal struggle. That evening I actually laughed with my husband as we recounted how we’d convinced ourselves to be unhappy for a week.

When we’re stripped of many of our regular choices, activities, and options for distraction, the hamster wheel of the human condition is often laid bare. I remember once on retreat I noticed a posting on a bulletin board that mentioned a teacher I liked was coming to town after the retreat. With not much else to think about, my mind latched on with force, and within a couple of hours I had planned what I’d wear and how I’d invite her to dinner. This incessant planning continued for at least a full day until I began to notice what it was doing to me. I was so fixated on this imagined future that I was missing what was truly happening in the moment — my body was tense with desire and the anxiety of things not turning out as I was imagining them. It was actually pretty uncomfortable to live in that fantasy, just as it had grown so uncomfortable in the fantasy of seeing my parents.

If it’s so uncomfortable, then what is it about desire that makes it so, so, desirable?

I think for me it’s often a reaction to a deeper sense of unsatisfactoriness, a resistance to what is already here. At times the fuel for my desire arises from a sense of boredom, feeling as though this moment isn’t quite good enough, that this moment would be perfect if only it were a little different. Other times the fuel for my desire is ego-based — I’d really be something if only I had X.

Both of these point to a very subtle internal resistance to what is here. Because if I’m willing to pause and really look at what’s beneath the boredom or ego boosting it’s fear, a sense of unworthiness, confusion, and uncertainty; all feelings that are rather uncomfortable to face. It seems like dropping into a fantasy of desire would be far more comfortable than actually feeling those seemingly unpleasant emotions. Right?

Well, maybe for a while it can be nice to get wrapped up in a fantasy of what could be. But as I’ve seen over and over again, that sort of wanting just leaves me, well, wanting.

So what are we to do? How does one live without desire, especially when on some level it seems like there is a need for desire to propel us forward in life? Despite how this post has gone so far, I’m not actually knocking desire or goals or even future thinking and planning. Rather, my issues with desire are all wrapped up in the unquenchable thirst they get started in me, in the shift from a simple ‘want’ to an imagined ‘need’. When the mental story goes from one of, ‘Yes, a visit to my parents could be great!,’ to, ‘How can we make this work? Because without it I don’t think we’re going to make it another day of this stay at home order!’

When my current condition is determined by a future fantasy I know I’ve made an unskillful choice.

I get into trouble when my mental projections of desire are based in a resistance to how things are right now. If I can’t accept and get comfortable with this moment, no amount of wishing it away, wishing it could be different, wishing for something else is going to make me feel better. As I become comfortable with whatever is here, be it unpleasant, undesirable, or even desire itself, it’s easier for me to hold my desires lightly. I can now let them rest on the palm of my hand instead of gripping them tightly in my fist. Desire’s unpleasant effects go away when my comfort and my general ‘ok-ness’ as a person are not predicated on fulfilling them. Now I’m able to respond compassionately to my heart’s wishes and needs instead of reacting blindly to my fears.

Our culture is driven by desire. Companies spend millions of dollars on marketing schemes to plant the seed in your mind that you’ll be happier with their product. In many ways it feels like desire is an unavoidable part of life. And while it’s true that desire and objects of desire will always be there — just as they were on retreat for me and now during our stay at home order — it’s also true that we have a say in how we respond to these desires. When we can respond to desire with awareness and a trust that what and how we are is already enough, no amount of marketing money will have an effect on us. When we can release our grip on the object of our desire, suddenly, desire can no longer grip us.