What Shapes Your Desire?

Douglas Clark
-Head writer, The Inspiration Engine

“If you greatly desire something, have the guts to stake everything on obtaining it.”

-Brendan Francis

What is want? I’m not talking about the basic wants humans all need, like water, food, shelter, and companionship. I’m asking about the want for something not needed, but truly desired. Desire can be a funny thing. It can give you direction by helping you to discard the superfluous, keep you focused, determined and motivated. But desire can also hinder your life by making you close minded to new things, ridged in your attitude and perspective, and in the worst cases, lead to obsession. Once desire becomes an obsession, there’s a whole new world of problems to deal with.

There are things I have wanted for a long time. I’ve desired them. Specifically, being a published author for one, finding true love (as cliché as it sounds), a life of leisure, and a youthfulness throughout my days. Now I’d say on a certain level, all of those things are possible, at least to one degree or another. But why do I want them? Why are my wants and desires in line with some people and wildly out of synch with others? Our life experiences and relationships help mold and create an ideal that helps to drive our life’s activities. 

I’ve often wondered about when I was 10, if we didn’t move from New Jersey to Pennsylvania, how different my life would be. It was a profound life event for me, obviously at 10 years old something like that would affect just about anyone. But how much of that contributed to who I am now? I can tell you that for the first two years after we moved, I became reclusive, much more introspective and hid inside my own imagination. I found solace in Science Fiction and Fantasy. TV, movies and stories dealing with space, time travel, other worlds, dimensions, and the like spoke to me in a way sports, hobbies, or other things could not. Eventually the want to create those things on my own took hold and there you have it. This was the nucleus of my desire to begin writing. My life altering event of moving helped spur my creative life as a dreamer and writer.

So where do you go after you’ve identified where and why you have a want? I would say judging just how powerful that want is must happen. If you truly want something, I would say a feeling of almost uncontrollable action should take place. Not so much that you are possessed, but that you feel the value of committing to that want. When you know the superfluous and extraneous minutiae of life can be done away with and you still feel fulfilled driving toward you desire, that is when that want becomes a passion. And there’s nothing wrong with passion, as long as it’s tempered with reason, otherwise you fall into the trap of obsession.  

Do you know what your wants are? Are you controlled by them? Even worse, are you so beaten down that you’ve forgotten what it is you truly want? I believe self-examination is important from time to time to make sure I am not wasting my life away. There have been times when I came to the realization that I Was completely off course. What a wonderful yet sobering feeling. Remember, as long as you are alive, there’s still time to change course. Give it a try.

Thanks for reading.

Questions and comments are welcome.

DouglasHClark.com