As a child I was always told that I should be happy with what I have and I heard the adults around me complain that everyone always wants more and more and more. Even back then, I asked myself the question:
So should I not want anything? Should I not strive to be better? And just because I want more, does that mean that I am not happy with what I already have?
Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.
— Oprah Winfrey
There is no doubt that desire makes us aware of what we don’t have. That’s the whole point. Desire isn’t an inherently bad thing, but if we focus too much on what we don’t have, it is easy to forget about the things that we do have.
Striving for something, getting it and then somehow still wanting more seems thoughtless and ungrateful; almost disrespectful to our own efforts. But what would happen if that wasn’t the case? If we’d want something and then get it and not want more, where would we go after? What would we do?
Everyone has probably experienced a moment where they achieved something they had been working towards for a long time. There may have been a quick rush of extasy if you were lucky, but soon, there is more of a feeling of emptiness.
Because if you don’t want anything, you don’t have a direction. You don’t know where to go and what to do.
Ultimately, it is the desire, not the desired, that we love.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Desire for more gives our life purpose. Even if we have the most perfect life imaginable, it would be empty without desire. Like sitting in a nicely decorated room all day. You’d be fine, but probably bored at some point.
There has to be something that gets us moving, a reason to get up in the morning. Without that, what’s the point?
It certainly helps to realise, that “I want more” and “What I have is enough” are not contradictions at all.
Just because something is enough to be content, that doesn’t mean there isn’t more to gain. It’s not that you want something because you couldn’t live without it, but more because you genuinely feel it would make you happier in the long term.
I read a phenomenal post called “The duality of desire” on Medium (which inspired this post) and the author janelle says:
Remember that the life you are building should never require you to hate the life that is carrying you there.
You can focus on the future, but we all need to come back to the present from time to time and appreciate how far we’ve gotten already. Otherwise, we forget to live.
The other day, I had a conversation with a friend of mine. He mentioned the saying that you shouldn’t go to the grocery store when you’re hungry and he said that it was applicable to other cravings as well. Because in order to want something in a healthy way, you first need to learn how to be fine without it.
