185. Endless Desire

You have a desire you cannot completely satisfy. You might be able to partly fulfill it, either now or in the future, but it will continue to exist because it is endless. You want more and more of the thing and you’ll never be fully satisfied with only some of it.

But there will come a day when you can no longer even partly fulfill your desire. Then you’ll be forced to admit you’ve done as much as you can, and this is as far as you’ll go. The desire will stick around even after you realize this, and you’ll have to accept its lack of further satisfaction for the rest of your life.

This is part of the tragedy of being human. The temporary nature of our existence means we are unable to achieve all of the things we want to achieve. There will always be something more we must leave undone. There will always be something we want that we will never have. We can rejoice in the things we do have, the desires we’ve fulfilled, and the successes we’ve achieved, but this only distracts us from the pain of loss, and does nothing to lessen it.

As long as you remain attached to your desire, the impossibility of its total satisfaction will continue to produce suffering for you. Fighting the desire or trying to ignore it will not work, for this just reinforces its importance and solidifies your attachment to it. The desire itself cannot be purged. It will always exist because you greatly value the thing you desire.

It is your relationship with your desire that you must change to end your suffering. You must examine your suffering itself, and see how it is rooted in your attachment to the desire. When you can see this connection fully and clearly, you will understand that attachment produces the very real pain that you feel, and you will no longer be willing to tolerate the attachment. You will recognize that your desire is not you, and you will finally allow yourself to break free from it and the suffering it produces.