Desire

By James Kissinger

From John Eldredge – Desire:

By the grace of God, we cannot quite pull it off. In the quiet moments of the day we sense a nagging within, a discontentment, a hunger for something else. But because we have not solved the riddle of our existence, we assume that something is wrong-not with life, but with us. Everyone else seems to be getting on with things. What’s wrong with me? We feel guilty about our chronic disappointment. Why can’t I just learn to be happier in my job, in my marriage, in my church, in my group of friends? You see, even while we are doing other things, “getting on with life,” we still have an eye out for the life we secretly want. When someone seems to have gotten it together, we wonder, how did he do it? Maybe if we read the same book, spent time with him, went to his church, things would come together for us as well. You see, we can never entirely give up our quest. Gerald May reminds us,

When the desire is too much to bear, we often bury it beneath frenzied thoughts and activities or escape it by dulling our immediate consciousness of living. It is possible to run away from the desire for years, even decades, at a time, but we cannot eradicate it entirely. It keeps touching us in little glimpses and hints in our dreams, our hopes, our unguarded moments. (The Awakened Heart)

He says that even though we sleep, our desire does not. “It is who we are.” We are desire. It is the essence of the human soul, the secret of our existence. Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it. Desire fuels our search for the life we prize. The same old thing is not enough. It never will be.”  (Desire, John Eldredge, pp. 10-11)

The above passage speaks to me. I’ve spent a lifetime experiencing differing levels of discontentment. Not altogether unhappy with what I have, and not necessarily wanting more than what a friend or coworker has, but just having a nagging yearning inside for something more, something better, something different. I’ve come to accept it as a part of who I am, and I don’t really know if it’s right or wrong. I just know it’s there and it’s not going away.

I believe John Eldredge is dead on when speaking of desire and the discontentment it brings, saying, “Absolutely nothing of human greatness is ever accomplished without it.”  As a country, desire for freedom, desire for opportunity led us to chart a different course that had never been traveled. Capitalism, and all the advances it has spawned, has at its base desire. These same desires for more, if untempered with morality, have the ability to drive men, companies and nations to excesses and ultimately, ruin. Enron, Tyco, WorldCom … the list goes on and on. So, at its base, I’d have to say that desire is amoral. How we chose to channel our desires into action is everything.

For me, desires spawn dreams. Dreams bring life. I hope my desire for something more, something better, something different, never dies.  JLK.

Photo credit:  eschipul