The Nature of Desire

Desire is equivalent to pain. It is to yearn for something we do not have. However, it’s also never fulfilled. For the moment we achieve or get the thing we want; the desire shifts and moves to a different thing. It’s very similar to a cat and a laser pointer, once the feline catches the dot, he looks and realizes that the object of desire is now somewhere else causing the cat to chase it to the point of total physical and mental exhaustion.

This goes on and on until the cat realizes the illusory nature of the red dot, which in our case, is the very sense of desire in and of itself. Now, this doesn’t mean we can’t, or shouldn’t ever experience desire. It means that if a desire is causing us too much pain, misery, or heartache, then we can take control of the laser pointer ourselves, and focus the light on something we want, but may have forgotten we already have.

This life hack is very similar to the scene in the Matrix where Neo is told the truth, that there is no spoon. The boy tells him “it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself.” So in this case, we can bend our consciousness in such a way where we shine our beam of desire onto something we’ve already achieved. No matter how great or small, if you can appreciate it, it’s worth being grateful for, it’s worth it to continue to want to have the thing, achievement, or experience.

In doing this, we can ease the despair and pain that accompany desire with gratitude and contentment. Some people do these gratitude exercises as a daily meditation to keep centered. A conglomeration of various works, from self-help authors to gurus, books, and fictional movies served as the inspiration for this post. Time can also play a major role in this because desire generally tends to rely upon a future event, and so we feel pain because we're stuck in the present. Click to read more thoughts on time.