The ‘forbidden fruit’ — Why we crave what we can’t have.
Temptations lurk behind every cornor. No matter if it is another human which attracts you way too much even though you are in a happy relationship, that piece of chocolate cake which seems to have a hypnotising effect on you even though you promised yourself to be strong enough to resist, or a career change which you want but are not qualified for:
if it seems impossile to get, we want it.
‘We want what we can’t have’.
When I recently had a talk with one of my roommates, it didn’t take him long to talk about one of his favorite topics: Women and how to get them. He usually always complains that he cannot get a women to like him. This time, I reminded him that our neighbour downstairs has a crush on him.
“That’s too easy.”, he simply said. “I want a challenge.”
This conversation has stuck with me since, and I started thinking more deeply about his words. Is it true, do we desire what seems to be unattainable to us? Are we only hunters, looking for our next ‘prey’ to lay our eyes on and to put all of our efforts in, even though we know that we are actually not interested in the outcome, but rather the process of admiring someone or something from afar?
According to Buddha, the root of all suffering lays in desire, because we can never satisfy all of our wants. Because of that, we loose ourselves in books about girl next doors who miraculously attract mysterious billionaires. We want the same as them: a hand that reaches out to us and to take us on adventures we couldn’t have even imagined.
Even though we promise ourselves to stay strong, we actually want nothing more, than to taste the ‘forbidden fruit.’
Our ‘normal’ life suddenly feels boring and meaningless. We want the tension, emotional roller coasters and the untameable tamed.
We want to chase the unchasebale, we want the dopamine release of the successful hunt, because humans crave ideas about people, career chances or other improvements, which they can fantasize about. By craving something what we usually cannot have, our desire increases. Soon we are trapped in a game to which we do not know the rules and forget, that we invited ourselves to play it.
But what happens, if we miraculously satisfy our desire?
Once we get what we wanted, we only get disappointed, because human imagination tends to trick us by imagining scenarios, which are ‘too good to be true’, meaning that reality can never be as good as the expectations we created in our minds.
Once we get what or who we want, the hunt is over and our brain stops producing the recurring dopamine rushes, which were the driving force during our ‘game’. Our addiction can not be fueled and therefore we lose interest in what we wanted most. The mysterious veil thins out and therefore reveals, that underneath is simply another human being or a job, which suddenly isn’t as appealing anymore as it was when it was unattainable.
We loose the sense for reality by ignoring what we already have and what we need to be grateful for, when we should simply stop, take a look around around and be appreciative for what we have already accomplished and for the people who are in our lives.
