Desire

“What is it you truly desire?” This is a question that some should be very familiar with if they’ve ever spent some time watching the popular tv show Lucifer before. In it, Lucifer grows bored and unhappy with his life in Hell, so he resigns to his throne and abandons his “kingdom” for a new life in Los Angeles. Not accurate at all with how the story really goes, but it’s still an entertaining show that I actually enjoyed for quite some time; until, for unknown reasons, I grew bored of it.

Lucifer uses this phrase whenever he wants to uncover someone’s true intentions. The victim enters some kind of trance and is unable to answer anything other than the truth. Just like Lucifer’s victims, we get caught up in our desires. Without the external motivation of a fallen angel, of course. Which makes me wonder, are these desires supposed to be fulfilled or utterly rejected? In the show, Lucifer can provide what our hearts desire, but in real life, that all depends on us.

According to the always reliable Google, desire is a strong feeling of wanting to have something or wishing for something to happen. If a desire is us wanting something badly, why are there cases where we would rather forget about their existence? This question could easily be answered by scratching the moral surface of the subject, but that perception is a complete mistake. Still, acting solely on desire could effectively bring out the worst part of ourselves. But again, that statement only appeals to the morality of the desire. Desire operates on its own alternate reality, often without regard for the means to achieve its goals.

The most important thing to understand about desire is that it is no friend of circumstance. What I said earlier about us being entirely responsible for getting what we desire is not entirely true. There are always external factors that could provoke an adverse reaction, making many things harder to attain. Some may say impossible. The truth is, we’re never entirely in control of the outcomes of things, except in cases where we can take immediate action, like moving an arm—though sadly, not everyone has that ability. However, that doesn’t mean we should never try. On the contrary, trying only increases our chances of success. You could be perfectly aligned with the target, but landing the shot has more to do with pulling the trigger than wanting to do it.

Which leads me to my next point. The idea of wanting something usually sounds better in our heads. There are many times when it happens. We walked through that long, steep path of sacrifices, climbed that never-ending rope of challenges, swam through the deepest, anxiety-infested oceans, and crossed the most arid, soul-crushing deserts to finally stand before that door. Only to find out, after all this time, you brought the key for a different door. When the time comes to finally obtain that which we’ve been patiently waiting for, there’s more than an infinite amount of reasons why we would rather not grab onto it and let it go. Not only isn’t desire a friend of circumstance, it isn’t a friend of ours. “You’re still not ready”, “There will be a better time”, “I want to do this other thing first”, “I don’t think that’s good for me”; that and many other things we constantly repeat to desire. But desire never fails to be there right after you wake up, or while you’re on your way to work, while deeply immersed in conversation. It’s just… a part of you.

We live by desire. Our lives are the result of a never-ending chain of desires—not just the ones we pursue, but also those we let go, allowing the wind to carry them away. Even in their absence, their impact lingers, subtle but undeniable. Whether we release or cling to our desires, one truth remains: every discarded longing gives rise to new ones, every fulfilled desire arrives hand in hand with another, the weekly supply of novel desires never ceases to arrive, and forgotten cravings will find a way to resurface in our minds. At the end of the day, that’s what we all are—a machine in perpetual motion.

Thank you once again for joining me on this journey. Until the next one.👋🏾