The Economy Of Desire
My mother told me that women marry men believing that they'll change, and men marry women believing that they never will. My father told me that no one really takes care of anything unless it belongs to them. These are two incongruous ideas that have little to do with one another but probably a lot to do with their 30+ years of marriage. Their marriage demonstrated to me that you take care of what belongs to you regardless of whether it changes or not, whether you think it should, and if you think you'd be happier if it did.
Technically (legally) speaking, I have never belonged to anyone besides my parents. It's a truth that remains even when it changes, like some Victorian riddle. Sometimes I think I'd like to. And at some points when I thought I had, once I started feeling that way, some sharp urge to tear out of there would raise my hackles and off I went. It didn't make sense but whatever it made, it did so very insistently. I'd find myself stuck in an unwitting loop of happily ever over-and-over — elated to finally have what I thought I wanted until slowly, unnervingly I realized that there are so many more things to want, something different and far from this.
The reason anyone stays or leaves is simply that they want to stay or they want to leave. Everyone tells you it's because of love but I've stayed when the love was gone and I've left and been left when love was still there, so I'm gonna call bullshit on that one.
It's terrifying to realize how you may never stop wanting things. How you can go through your entire life, eternally thwarted by your own fickle wants, getting them, not getting them, wondering if you're wanting the right things, if you deserve them. Your desire doesn't obey you, it obeys the laws of energy — never created nor destroyed — just changing outfits. How exciting. How exhausting.
True happiness may be the end of wanting, but a life without desire seems unimaginable, doesn't it? What are we doing if not wanting things and pursuing them? Desire comes in neverending and constantly self-renewing supply, with the omnipotence to spur you endlessly on or hold you stock still in place. America does not run on Dunkins, it runs on desire.
Happiness is not a goal to pursue, I've learned, rather it's a state of mind — a philosophy or concept that can and should be applied to almost everything in your life. That in order to achieve satisfaction, gratitude must outweigh desire. If you want what you have, then you're your own self-fulfilling profitability. I paid a meditation app $20 a month until it released that nugget of enlightenment, at which point I decided the money was better spent on dinner with people who make me laugh instead. Laughter is also a very effective lubricant for happiness.
There are many, many people out there who can make you happy if you budget them into your desire. If that sort of thing is important to you. Finding someone who makes you happy is so easy that people do it again and again, sometimes when they aren't even trying, sometimes even when they believe they never will. It may not be forever, but that's fine considering that, when we say "forever" we forget that no such sentiment can be preserved beyond its limit. Forever doesn't work that way. It has only ever been a bag of glittering sand, futilely spilling out of my pockets.
It's the same futility of (wishing I could take back) all the times I said 'I love you' mostly for the dire wish to hear it returned to me. Hurling it into a dark, unsteady cavern just to hear the hollow, comforting echo of my own words. It's not that I didn't mean it. But even a true thing feels wrong sometimes when flung into such airless confines. It's a persistent itch located in a very inconvenient place that I myself cannot scratch and must then seek accommodation from another. And if they don't quite reach it or give it a half-hearted tickle, it just serves to further antagonize the whole thing.
Sometimes I like to imagine what it would feel like to want more than what I believe is possible to have. To hold it in my hand, wrap my fingers around it and squeeze. Sometimes it dissolves to smoke, and sometimes it is cool, shiny, and assured metal pressed into my palm — something to keep in my pocket, its weight tugging me towards something resembling a purpose. None of it may actually be true, but honestly, truth has never really been the keenest motivator, as far as I've seen.
It's overwhelming to think about all the things you could want, before even considering how that desire may outlive you. The world does not end when we stop wanting things or when we want far more than we can possibly enjoy. The world refuses to end even throughout our wholesale greed and neglect. When it gets to the point when it cannot accommodate our desire any longer, "after you," the world will say with a sweeping bow.