I’ve been fantasising again about running away and living a life of adventure. I should probably be clearer there, I daily fantasise about running away and living a life of adventure. It’s a tricky one coming from a life of seemingly constant travel to one in which I’m now in one place for three months shy of a year. It’s not that I’ve never stayed this long in one place. On two separate occasions I went a year, but they were in slightly more exotic places, Ibiza and Athens. There are times I wonder why I left either of them but I know why. It’ll probably also be why I leave here too. The problem though is that when I’m constantly on the move I start to find myself craving some stability and a home. It’s like I want the opposite extreme of whichever extreme I’m currently living. I share this not because I like to share, although I clearly do, but because I know I’m not alone in this kind of thing. We do this, we all do this. Maybe not to such extremes or perhaps a different type of extreme, but we all desire what we don’t have.
The question then is what hole are we trying to fill when we decide to fulfil our desires. I say this not just in the sense of running off and finding a boat to an exotic land, but I, we, buy things too. We desire and consume stuff, just lots of random stuff, and this must be for a reason other than because either we need it or we’re zombies who’ve been bitten by capitalism’s contagion. Sorry about the alliteration, I’m fallible. The point is though that there must be something we’re searching for other than the obvious; the adventure or the new t-shirt. Have they found a way of hacking into our inner selves and discovering that we have empty spaces which need filling. Or has life and the world we live in created these holes that we’re constantly trying to find answers for.
Desire is not a new thing. People in huts a thousand years ago desired something more so they sailed the seas and invaded countries. There may have been necessity and survival in a way very different to our own but there was still desire too. People have always craved jewels, there were wars fought over nutmeg, people killed for love. There is something natural about desire then, it’s about improving our own circumstances and making our lives better. It’s that drive that makes things better through ideas and inventions. Yet we are told by Eastern Philosophy to be objective and tame the desires within.
Ultimately these desires lead to suffering. I don’t doubt the Christian Bible will say something similar, as will the Koran. So is one right and the other wrong? Life is never so simple. We can use our desires to improve our worlds we live in, to help us strive, but if we can’t do anything about it then we will only suffer through our desire. If something is out of our control what is the point of allowing desire to take over. We must learn to be more objective, just be careful not to desire it, although it must be in our control so surely that’s fine. I was going to suggest it’s a crazy minefield with no answer but that all seems pretty simple and straightforward to me. Now then, that palm tree I was thinking about, I’m sure that’s something within my control…
Observations and Misunderstandings 