Desire Minimizes What We Have Already Achieved
The desire is directly linked to the achievements, either from the possession or the realization of them. Hence, we have to be careful, since many desires can become very blinding and cause us to abandon or despise what we already have. Arturo Graf, an Italian writer and poet, used to say that in order to feel safe, animated and calm throughout life, one has to wish little and expect even less.
Both the refusal to fulfill all of our wishes and to come to fulfill all have their negative part. It may seem that the second option is not bad, but letting ourselves be carried away by what we want can drag us into a dead end, a kind of vicious circle in which we will never be satisfied.
Now, should desires obey reason? It does not have to, but what is clear is that they can become naive and excessive desires that blind us our riches, and focus us on those of others. Not wanting but what one can have is necessary to live this part of our existence in a reasonable way.
Desire forces us to want what we don’t have
Why is it so extremely easy to wish, while it is so difficult to love? The answer may be that impotence speaks in desire and in wanting strength.
Before ardently desiring a thing, we must carefully ascertain the happiness it brings to the possessor. It was said in Ancient Greece that the more wishes are sown, the less happiness is reaped. It seems as if, when the desires diminish, our forces increase.
Horacio, one of the leading lyrical and satirical poets in the Latin language, addresses desire from a limiting and enriching perspective. To solve the problem, he concluded that he who gets what is enough should not want more.
Waiting for what we want is human and necessary, but enduring what happens is the key to happiness. We believe that only by achieving what we want will we be happy, but many times when we achieve it, our emptiness begins. According to George Bernard Shaw, there are two tragedies in life: one is not achieving what the heart yearns for; the other is to achieve it. Along the same lines we find Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, who states that it is not better for men to have what they want to happen.
If we do not want to see our desires frustrated, we must desire what depends on us
Now, not all desires are bad by nature. Some of them can also make us better. Having blind faith in what we want opens a door to self-realization and self-knowledge, the highest peak of human needs. A soul is measured by the breadth of its desires, just as a cathedral is judged in advance by the height of its towers.
Some thinkers even believe that there is only one driving force: desire. That is why it is so important to highlight the positive part of people’s need to achieve their goals. Without this powerful force, we would not have witnessed the great advances of humanity. Deep down, these are due to irrational desires and an inordinate desire to achieve achievements, riches and improvements.
The wishes of our life form a chain, the links of which are the hopes for achieving them. Perhaps what fascinates us most about our longings is that they are the only thing that allows us to overcome our fears. And it is that the problem of wanting is not in doing it in itself, but in the way in which these needs are expressed. Wanting something unattainable in an excessive way will lead us to be very unhappy.
However, feeling a great passion to achieve a realistic goal is one of the most beneficial aspects that we can have in our life. As in almost all aspects of existence, the key is to wish in moderation and in a reasonable way.
