Life is desire

A human is his/her desires. 

What makes each of them unique are their unique passions and temperaments. These passions are a result of many things, but mainly the milieu of their upbringing. This includes values imparted at school, at home, among friends, from media and literature, but also sheer luck and accident of birth. 

This also ties in to the spiritual idea of death before death, which means that a human can effectively die with the exhaustion of all desires, achieving transcendence and unity with the whole.

Because without desires, what is left in man? He/she is just consciousness, manifested through the senses. Aware of all senses and surely aware of hunger, lust and other necessary urges and the passing on of the world around him. Without desires, there is no direction, without direction there is an aimlessness and a lethargy that descends and life is bereft of fun and meaning. The question of, 'what do I do with my life', surely emerges. Life itself becomes a big question mark. 

Answers to this existential question are in big supply. Religions, societies and politicians are happy to provide you a readymade answer and rope you in as a soldier in their cause. Its not in my nature, to disrespect elders and old institutions, but such reverence is of habit, not out of any original insight. However, these institutions don't evolve with time rapidly enough and provide answers that our outdated, outmoded but also pervasively seek the cessation of the individual. 

They seek the end of individual desire and collapsing of a human's desire into the social/political idea that they have to offer. In that case, the human, the individual, dies, sacrifices himself, self-immolates, as he ceases to exist and becomes part of a religion, society or political party. Such groups, are not a group of individuals, but of human bodies. 

So one's desires are fundamental. There are many qualities and grades of desires and their quality can be measured by their outcome on the individual and his milieu. If they are salubrious, like a fruit tree, then they are good. If they are harmful, like a stream of sewerage, causing destruction in its wake, then its quality is evident. Habits, which are entrenched repetitive desires, also have their impact and their quality may also be measured just the same way. 

In fact, is creation itself a result of desire ? Because if cessation of desire prevents rebirth as per Indian spiritual tradition, then the presence or emergence of desire must be the cause of birth. 

For some reason, growing up in India, the difference between base urges and desire is rarely taught. Desires are bad is the notion and all of it must be suppressed is the notion. Desire and for that matter, the baser urges, must not be suppressed, but one must still be in control of one's action in the face of desires, lest unbridled passion should lead to unintended suffering. So our actions must be directed by our desires, but in complete awareness of our actions and their consequences. 

Having established what desires is and why it is fundamental, the question is how do we know what our desires are? One's desires are self-evident and emerge in the face of our interactions with the world, in the form of likes and dislikes. There is nothing new here and this is well-known.

More important however and this is perhaps the gist of my feeling, is living with your desires and standing up for them. All forms of groups, and this includes schools and one's own family and friends, are out to suppress you. All groups desire compliance, purely because all its members only know compliance. Their existence has meaning, only because they chose the creed or desire of the group and they could not see any worthy desire within themselves to preserve. The members of these groups don't even know what it means and what is feels like, to have a unique desire. 

It is also perhaps possible, that they all individually desire the same things, in which case they should respect your individuality, but they generally don't. They demand compliance and they are happy to cast you as an outsider the moment you reveal your unique preference. 

In those moments, one can choose convenience and safety or muster the courage to stand alone. Death is assured either way. The only question is what your taste in death is ?  Do you prefer the death of your individuality, of the very things that make you who you are, besides flesh and blood? Or do you prefer the death that comes with isolation, lack of social connection and sometimes a brutal end to physical life itself. 

Mind you, these deaths don't come swinging right away, not that they can't. Think about the number of young couples, girls especially, who die in the name of honor killing. Whose unique love, which is mostly never a choice, brings them death. This is also reminds me, that rarely are our desires chosen! Our desires appear, as was said at the outset, as a result of many things, including accidents of birth. In fact all desires are accidents, none of them are chosen. Nobody chooses to be gay or patriotic or a lover of a certain woman and this applies to our darker desires as well. But ones actions are chosen in the face of desires, and our actions must be salubrious, must bring good, not harm upon others. The consequences are perhaps the only measure. 

What harm could innocent love cause upon this world, except the well-deserved and worthy erasure of the life's meaning for compliant families and villagers?

But coming back to ones evident death, either way, it happens slowly. Like all life is slow death, death also can come through repeated acts of compliance and convenience. Standing up for ones desires and convictions, ideas, keeping in touch with what one likes and what one dislikes, is essential to an individual life. Else, one slowly ceases to recognize what defines them, ones sense of who he/she is, begins to drift away. Sure, losing your sense of identity is not a bad thing, but losing one's integrity is. 

Our desires are our direction and repeated acts of convenience and compliance are effectively continuous repression of one's desires, to the point where one ceases to recognize what one truly desires. Out of touch with one's desires, one is without direction, and thereby looses capacity for authentic thought, voice and action. 

Our work should be an outcome of our desires. A householder's life unfortunately involves earning money, making ends meet so that the family may survive and thrive. A householder, must either surrender to doing that which makes ends meet, or have the capacity of making money through the fulfilment of some of his desires from life. But enough about my conundrums. 

If a man/woman spends much of his/her life doing that which is disconnected from their innate desires, they will surely end up unsatisfied, deranged and mad. Repressed, forced everyday, one is bound to need enough to numb himself through life A life which now only resembles a slow death by a thousand cuts.