Wants, Expectations and Desires

Post 5: Wants, Desires & Expectations

            Nobody wants to be disappointed. Nobody wants to be tortured by unrealized desires. Desire and expectations can often leave us crushed. My mother’s advice was always, “Don’t get your hopes up.”

            Many religions will tell you that desire is bad. They’ll say desire is a trap that sucks us downward. Human existence is often seen as a seething whirlpool of desires, drives and impulses which give rise to vices and discontent. Some religions would maintain that the suppression of desires is the path to happiness. If you don’t want anything, you can’t be disappointed. Catholicism, for instance, says it’s a sin to covet. The message is ‘Get rid of your desires and you’ll be rewarded.

            Buddhism accepts the inevitability of desires as part of human nature. They can’t be ignored or wished away by prayer. They’ll always be with us and we have to learn to live with them. Hinayana Buddhism sets up various forms of meditation and disciplines, established to help gain control over the mind and body, thus freeing a person from the enslavement of Earthly desires but not ridding us of them totally. The Maricopa Indians say that “Everyone who is successful must have dreamed of something”. Our desires are a fundamental and necessary aspect of our existence. Wisdom encourages us to use them as a force that will enhance our own lives. Our passions drive us onward. Every goal and every quest is rooted in a desire to improve and evolve. This is what makes us alive. Shakespeare said that in apprehension, we are like angels. Our desires define us.

            It’s very true that both Native American and Buddhist beliefs advocate spiritual serenity and fulfillment in the moment. There’s no doubt of that. They both feel that inner peace and love are the universes greatest gift. However, neither of them denies the existence of emotion or the unlikelihood of any system of belief erasing our capacity to dream and desire. The key is that we accept our drives, lusts and desires, not as sins but as part of us which should be harnessed, not ignored. It should be a motivator. As the Omaha Indians say, “The Lazy man is apt to be envious”. 

  Would we be who we are without our driving passions? What would be left of us if every desire was exorcized from us? We are the sum of the many legs of our journey and that journey is defined by our needs and wants. Without desire, possibly we could escape the disappointments of life but we would be empty and irrelevant, like a dried up stream. We need desire to want to go on living and accomplishing. The key is for us to control these desires and not let them control us. The goal should be, as the Sioux say, to “Be satisfied with getting your needs met instead of your wants”.