Originally published in November 2019 and revised for the new website.
We do not move through the world solely by following what seems reasonable. We are also driven by feelings of lack that, in everyday experience, take the form of needs and desires.
Need and desire can both arise from a lack, but they do not produce the same experience. Hunger asks for an emptiness to be filled; desire is more like opening a menu, imagining the flavours and choosing which experience to move towards.
Transforming need into desire means moving from “I lack” to “I want”.
Giving shape to what we want
Desires are not fulfilled by an outside genie. They need to be recognised and a way found to express them. Then comes the test of reality: what does imagining their possible fulfilment feel like, and what does pursuing it require?
Desire broadens the range of possibilities, but brings a question of responsibility with it. What am I willing to choose, and what does it cost? Moving in one direction also means leaving something in the background.
Psychotherapy can accompany this passage. The desire remains the person’s own; in the work, it can be recognised and brought into relationship with the reality in which it seeks a form.