On desire: Story of Mr I and Mrs Want
There are two very active individuals occupying a lot of space in your mind. Those two people are called Mr I and Mrs Want. They both live in your head. Both are naughty, running around your head all day, screaming and shouting. Sometimes when you are away they might destroy a piece of furniture or a painting. No wonder you can’t focus on anything.
If you ever had the privilege to observe you mind as it goes about the day, you may find it polluted with many inner voices that are obsessed with desires. An urge to be in a different place than present. Wanting a a new car, a piece of art, a small house in the country. To be more like somebody else, desiring to be have a better job, to be liked, to be accepted. Craving for a better body, some new clothes. Needing to change your actions of the past. The list goes on.
It is very often that inside this very bubble, you create your own definition of happiness that is linked with fulfilling all those desires. Mr I will be satisfied when he finds someone who cares for you, he will be happy when you move to warmer country, when you lose 5kgs of weight.
In order to understand Mr and Mrs and the emotions they bring to the surface, it is worth spending some time with Mr I and Mrs Want.
At the very beginning of this journey, we must agree what happiness is not. Happiness is not a one time feeling of joy and ecstasy associated with fulfilling a desire. That is a gratification. Gratification is an instant high, almost like one you feel immediately after taking a drug. And as with drugs, the habit of chasing and winning over a desire becomes addictive and later tolling on your mind (and body). You constantly want to be somewhere else, doing something else, never living the present moment.
When the desires accumulate throughout your adult life, you adopt a state of mind where your ‘actual life’ starts only in a few years time, when the ‘big desires’ are met. And right now you are ‘not there yet’.
Have an afternoon tea with Mr I and Mrs Want to examine their inner workings. Let us pick one desire and try to understand it. That lovely new sofa in the furniture shop across the road. At first there is a visual perception. “Look at this beauty!”, you say to yourself as you pass by the store. You might go inside and sit on the sofa, touch it, feel it, smell it. “What a lovely smell of the leather!”, you say to yourself. That visual image creates a positive sensation in your mind. A visual image starts to form and there is need to give that special feeling continuity. You keep thinking about the sofa after you walk out of the store. You think about it all day. This is when Mr I and the Mrs Want creep in to the rescue. They convince you that having this object in your living room will mean that you will have this positive sensation everyday. Very cheekily they associate that object and the feeling for it with “you”. The process is done very quietly of course, in the background, with the lights almost fully dimmed.
You mind feeds Mr and Mrs and finds validating reasons to own that sofa. “I haven’t bought myself anything recently… A sofa would be great if I ever invite my brother to stay with me… Maybe this really was a one time offer….”
You rush back to the shop five minutes before it closes and buy it. You feel great! Mr I and Mrs Want have just been served a juicy steak to celebrate.
However a week later, something weird happens. The sofa feels ordinary. Worse, you start to feel that it doesn’t really fit in that well in the living room. It is a bit large. The leather is too dark. The euphoric sensation is long gone. But Mr and Mrs are not retiring just yet, they have plenty of other desire to work with you on tomorrow.
Now that we understand desire, we can start to explore if its worth to remove or suppress it? And if yes, than how on earth can this be done?
Removing or forcibly suppressing desire is generally a bad idea. Life becomes muted if you are trying to cutting off all the emotions as well as the sensors. Life is to be lived, and emotions (all emotions) are there be soaked up.
“If you destroy desire, you may destroy life itself. If you pervert desire, shape it, control it, dominate it, suppress it, you may be destroying something extraordinarily beautiful.” - Jiddy Krishnamurti
If those pesky desires cannot be destroyed, what do we do with them? The answer is simple. In a very polite manner, ask Mr I and Mrs Want not to shout so loud. Give them and their guests a seat at the back of the room. Train them not scream and certainly not to run around the room as they have done before. Try to understand what is all the fuss about. It will take many years before they can accept silence.
And perhaps the empty, quite and tranquil room is what we call happiness.