Is Desire A Punishable Offense?

Today is a pixel day. Yesterday was pen and paper. Today, it’s pixels.

Where would I be without my desire? Have you ever thought about that? I’ve been thinking a lot about the way I feel lately (in the last 7 or 8 years) and I realize there’s a correlation between how much I want and how happy I am. The more I want, the less happy I am.

There is a distinction in “want” I want to make. In this case I mean more of a feeling of want, desirous, compelled, usually related to appetites, emotional appetites (I want to call it appetitties which might actually be more reflective of the feeling). I mean my want for sex, comfort, pleasure. My want to be emotionally stable, not upset, not ridiculed or even pointed at. My want to be alone and undisturbed. This is not my want of a more peaceful world or my want for a walk in the woods or a game of catch with my son. This is the desirous want that can consume me if I “want” it to, that’s the “want” I’m talking about.

What I realize is that I feel completely incapable of living without my “wants”. Who would I be without the things I want. And the greatest of those wants is my want of women. I have defined myself by my want of women. Great swaths and huge patches of my life are colored with my want of women.

There are two things: The first is the recognition that the more I “want” the less happy I am. And the second, who am I if I a not the man who desires women?

Where will I get my joy? Yes. That is what I call joy.

A more accurate statement would be: The only thing that really makes me feel good, or alive, is my desire for women and my whole life is colored in that desire internally and externally. My feeling about this is if I don’t have this, this desire of women, I have nothing; actually, I have worse, I have me and the silent pit of despair that is my internal world. Women are the light and I am the dark. This is somewhat of a generalization and exaggeration. I mean I can still laugh and find joy in my life even with this pit of despair! But overall the silent pit of despair is a real thing for me.

I no longer believe in my mind that women are the light and I am the dark, but it’s taken me a long time and I still feel as if it’s true and act as if it’s true, not always and not as much, but still more than anything else.

How can this be good for me? How can this be good for the people I care about? It can’t.

So what to do, then, about this desire, this want, that has so defined me and my life. A man says we must  un-box and dissect and study each piece of this desire to know it and therefor overcome it. A woman says we must invite it whole, accept it whole and become it fully and then we will know it. I don’t know which one, or both or how much of either. But what I do know is there is little consideration for these important questions and I think that’s bad.

I believe there is some kind of conspiracy or knowledge that perpetuates certain directed action within our social and cultural worlds. This conspiracy or knowledge believes it’s important to keep people divided and aware of their differences and seeks to fill people with anxiety that causes paralysis by encouraging a constant environment of fear, need and crises. An environment where you must constantly act a role for or against something but you must act this role within a structure while not being aware of the structure or your participation in creating the very thing that you are acting for or against.

There is no time to consider your human self outside of culture or society or your roles, separate from your work, your responsibilities, your family, your fear, your wants. There is no time to wonder at the awe of life and earth and your ability to perceive it all. There is no time to get lost and found and lost again. There is no time to be in love. I believe this is by design.

I believe that there is a group that benefits from people not being in love. And whether or not it’s a conspiracy actually doesn’t matter. What matters are only questions: Is there a better way? Do you want a better way? Is there a way that doesn’t make our reactions to fear and desire the primary drivers of our lives? What could we create as humans if we felt love and acceptance more than fear and division? And what is inhibiting this? Is anything inhibiting it? Yes. I think so.

I think it starts, very basically, very simply, by not allowing ourselves to be separated. It starts by not buying that we are so different from each other. I have been a proponent of these differences between us, specifically between men and women, and I have been wrong. There is no difference between any of us that is greater than our common humanity. As humans we are one family and therefor fighting about differences to the point of killing each other or being immersed in a culture and society that encourages division, separation, fear and hate is an abject failure of leadership, society and culture. Not a failure of humanity.

We do not have to be set in our ways. We do not have to chose a path because it exists. We do not have to follow and we do not have to lead. We can change our culture, we can change our society, we can change our leadership, we can change our priorities. We can do anything if we’re together as a human family. Just as we can do nothing but destroy ourselves if we are not.

Don’t believe what anyone tells you. Find your commonality and share it with someone. You can give in but don’t give up.