Why Do I Want?

The wants of our hearts can reveal something about the core of our existence. Things that reside in those echelons of our spirit showcase us in all starkness. Sometimes, they show us our frivolity, our barbarism, and our avarice. However, in these same alcoves can be found kindness, compassion, and generosity. The need to want has been so deeply ingrained in Western culture that it seems inextricable from our way of life. How can we exist without desire? How can we cast off the parts of ourselves that show who we are? To introspect upon our material aspirations provides us an unparalleled mirror. When that is shattered, what remains in the broken glass?

Recently, I've had a birthday pass on which I could not think of anything I would want, at least within reasonable limits. I somewhat need a car, but I can hardly ask for that, and so the birthday came and went with a flurry of gift cards, with which I have now bought… an eight dollar set of hair bands. I received, but did not ask, and somehow that left me feeling melancholic, for it seemed that I was in the loop of a reciprocation for a good deed I did not commit.

Why did I feel guilty about not wanting? It seemed to me then as it still seems to me now: that I am missing a part of myself. That mirror from which I was once able to judge myself doesn't appear broken, for there are still things I desire with so-called "quiet desperation", but the glass could be warped. I can no longer look at it and see who I am. I must go elsewhere for answers. My wants have shifted partially from the physical realm to the experiential one, far more difficult to judge. I do not see people with things I want, I see people doing things I want to do.

But what do these things say about me? When I was firmly in the plane of material trophies, I could say what a new phone, a new jacket, a new watch would say about me. Generally, my past was marked by a sense of status which I felt I lacked. A new phone put me into the category of people by whom I was surrounded, growing up in Andover. A new jacket turned heads in college, especially if the branding was bold. The watch would earn appreciative glances from those I sought to impress in the white collar world.

I cannot deny the aesthetic appeal of things that lingers in my mind. I just did an essay on how our aesthetics often form our morals, so it would almost make me amoral if I denied that physical things have desirable beauty. Even today, I can look at a nice watch and feel drawn by its mechanical precision. I can look at a shirt and feel captivated by the style.

But even in these things my mind wanders quickly to subconscious desire. Do I want the nice watch and the shirt, or do I want the lifestyle associated with wearing them? Do I see myself in that jacket, or do I see a reflection of the model on the website? These days, I can see more of the latter in both cases, and even then they are overtaken by my greater want: to experience.

To experience what? Now, that question bothers me, because I just do not have a set answer. There are melodramatic, grandiose claims I could make which might incite a roll of the eyes, but of firm answers there are few. I want to fully experience the human spectrum. The depths of love, of despair, all of it. I want there to be no moment left unenriched by the quality of my heart. No more of this mindless, soulless wandering through the empty rooms of the internet. I do not wish to see short-form content reflected in my glasses as my vacant eyes scroll through endless videos. I want to feel intoxicated by life; I want to experience the fiber of life's heartstrings play its music for me.

Speaking of music, I want music itself to flow from me. I want to learn, within my power, how to play and create music - to replicate that which was already done with new passion, and perhaps to also bring more music to the world than there was before, rudimentary though it may be. I want to sing to be heard, and for the echo of a piano's keys to be woven into my hands.

And further in the creative path, I want to write things that move people. I want to bring new worlds, new characters, and new stories to light that last long after I leave the earth. In poetry, in novels, in essays and short stories, I want to exercise my creative will until the river runs dry. I mean to say: I want to write until my mind simply cannot formulate any new stories. I want to honor those giants upon whose shoulders all of my work stands, and I want to teach and craft generations of storytellers in the oldest human endeavor.

The pursuit of knowledge has been coded into my desires, and again within my power, I would like to learn as much as I can about the science behind our world. I want to read books about our universe and ourselves. There must be a verse in my life dedicated to the pursuit or education of science, and there must also be a refrain about the imperfect science of our persons, which I am trying to practice with each essay and each book I write.

I want to experience things with people. I want those long nights in a drizzling city, taking refuge in the warmth of a bar in the presence of the breadth of humanity. I feel the need to see things in far off places, as far as current travel allows, to explore places with true history, where people have walked the streets for thousands of years before me, and where buildings are timeless.

To depart from the stylistic prose and return to the introspection, are these wants any more or less shallow than material things? I feel that I'm toeing the line between profane posturing and genuine humility. I do not mean to say that material desires are any less valid than experiential ones, nor that they are mutually exclusive. I'm trying to dissect the rationality behind the guilt, and even some of the anxiety, that I feel from my personal shift in philosophy. For example, could it be that underneath all of these desires, both material and experiential, the innate want for money holds its court? After all, be it an expensive piece of jewelry or a trip to Europe, it requires cash. Has consumerism fooled me into trading one borderline vice for another? If I believe in the supreme desire for money, then my quest for philosophical depth has been twisted into the root of capitalist issues, the aforementioned avarice.

Yet it could be something else entirely. To go back to the creative desires I established, could they simply be another form of validation I seek? Despite my disdain for the short-form content I've now crucified in two separate essays, I've still been watching it in the helpless stages of addiction and have noticed that I am receiving more and more content for pianists playing on public instruments. That desire, to be able to bring music to a public space, may simply be the desire for validation and attention masquerading as a heartfelt yearning for music itself. Would I still want it as badly if I knew there was no reward like that at the end of the road? Could it even be possible for that to be the case? I often find thoughts like this one to be a Pandora's Box; once I open myself up to the idea that there may be a subconscious ulterior motive to my actions or psychology, I can no longer close myself off to that avenue.

And as for my desire to experience things with people, including romance, including love and friendship, fellowship and camaraderie and all of that, could that not be the old enemy of status once again rearing its head? Do I want to love, or merely love to be loved, or to feel as though I am loved? With one hand I feel like I'm reaching into the shadow to feel another human being, and with the other I'm probing any hand which grasps my own and letting go if its strength does not match that which I give.

Oh, and at the bottom of it all, my desires could simply be manifestations of a burned out mind attempting to rationalize its charring. In some ways, I am simply seeking new paths for meaning. I am just looking for new ways to reduce the ultimate complexity of nonmeaning. To take the Eastern tact, I sought a lack of desire, but found myself just shifting my weight in the sand. I had not considered that the lack of desire would come naturally from a progression to enlightenment, and that to seek it in the first place contradicts its very definition. I understand that this essay can read like something written by a man in a mid-life crisis - or in my case (hopefully), a quarter-life crisis. Even now, as I go back and read certain paragraphs, the helpless over-indulgence into my poetic roots hearkens to a time when my writing was still finding its form and shape. Such regression on candid display does not speak warmly to the author who published it, but I'd like that to be the nature of this study. I began this post by talking about how our wants can reveal the core of our being. Well, so too can the act of gazing upon those wants and making them bare to the world. It would seem to me, after writing this piece, that this great mirror I spoke of earlier remains whole, and it may not even be warped. I think I am simply looking at it from a new perspective.

I feel I should end this essay with a disclaimer: I understand that I went down a bit of a rabbit hole with the level of subconscious questioning. Truth be told, much of it was unnecessary. To delve so deeply into the intricacies of desire-pathways in the search of purpose can lead to a complete lack thereof. As such, I can neither see nor recommend any better path than to live as though my desires are pure and fulfill them with the strongest spirit I can muster, and as long as I am not causing harm through my wants, I'll leave the meta-questions for another time in my life. As for casting off the very need to want I spoke of earlier, that answer lies not in the goal, but in the journey towards the goal. At some point, I think we all must ask ourselves the hard questions I am only beginning to poke at here, and the way we answer them can either lead us to nirvana or the endless consumption. I do not think I am quite ready to answer that ultimate question just yet.