How to Avoid the Desire Trap: The Stoic Perspective
Stoic Strategies for Daily Living — 19
[This is the nineteenth article in the series Stoic Strategies for Daily Living. In this series, I will explore Stoic solutions to our everyday problems. The emphasis is not just on solutions, but also on how to apply them to our daily lives. In this article, I explore what Stoicism says about being at peace with ourselves. Chuck Chakrapani]
The nature of our desires
Our way of life is geared toward getting more. When we get everything we hoped for, we realize we need more.
Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds. His friends asked him if any accident had happened to him. Alexander answered: Do not you think it a matter worthy of mourning, that, when there are so many worlds, I have not yet conquered one? — Plutarch, De Tranquilitate Animi
Desires cause misery because they never end. We are on a treadmill that we can’t step off of. Our work brings us frustration rather than fulfillment. Our travels make us weary rather than relaxed. We accumulate wealth that we cannot spend in our lifetimes. We never examine our lives, so we repeat the same old patterns in the same old way.
Our goals seem easily achievable. A hungry person doesn’t want food assured for life, but just wants the next meal. Someone who is in a clerical position doesn’t want to be the CEO but wants to be promoted to the next higher position. Someone whose job pays $85,000 doesn’t look for a job that will pay them $500,000, but one that would pay $100,000. The catch is that, once we achieve any of these goals, we see that the goalposts are actually a little bit further ahead than we thought they were.
What we don’t realize is that the goalposts have moved and will keep moving and we can never ever get there. Why do we never ever notice the moving goalposts? The reason is that they are moving slowly and imperceptibly, by inches rather than by yards. So, the ever-moving posts look stationary to us.
What do the Stoics have to say about all of this?
1. Our desires are a treadmill, not a racetrack
Our desires are of two kinds: desires of nature (needs) and desires of opinion (wants). Natural desires such as having enough to eat, having somewhere to live, and having enough to clothe yourself, are easy to satisfy. As Marcus Aurelius says:
Very little is needed to make a happy life. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.67
Desires of opinion, on the other hand, can never be fully satisfied because the fulfilment of one want creates another. One million dollars creates the desire for the next million; one exotic vacation creates the desire for the next more exotic vacation; one promotion creates the desire for the next promotion.
Nature’s wants are slight; the demands of opinion are boundless. Suppose that the property of many millionaires is heaped up in your possession. Assume that fortune carries you far beyond the limits of a private income, decks you with gold, clothes you in purple … you will only learn from such things to crave still greater. — Seneca. Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium, 16
Realize then that if you have a roof over your head, if you have enough to eat, and if you have clothes to cover yourself, you have all you need to be happy. Anything else you may have is more than you need; it is abundance.
2. Satisfaction fades away quickly, desires never
Remember the things you desired and got? Maybe it was a new car, a new dress, or a promotion? Do those things appear as great to you now as when you desired them and got them? Does the car you thought you’d feel so good driving last year make you feel the same way today? Is the promotion you fought for and got two years ago as exciting to you today? Does the dress you thought would make you look very good a few months ago make you feel as good now? If you are like most people, the chances are no, they don’t. Whenever you fulfil your wants (desires of opinion), the satisfaction you get is short-lived.
Those who don’t have them imagine that everything good will be theirs once they get these things. And then they get them. Yet their longing and anxiety remain unchanged. So is their desire for what they don’t have. — Epictetus, Discourses, 4.1.174 (Chuck Chakrapani, Stoic Freedom, Ch. 1)
Who was ever satisfied, after attainment, with that which loomed up large as they prayed for it? — Seneca. Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium, 118
When we recognize that we have probably most of the things we ever wanted when we were younger and, in fact, much more, we see the nature of desire. It tempts us with eternal satisfaction but what we end up with is a brief moment of satisfaction that is quickly gone. It is time to get out of the game that is rigged against us.
Why wait until there is nothing left for you to crave? That time will never come… If you retreat to privacy, everything will be on a smaller scale, but you will be satisfied abundantly; in your present condition, however, there is no satisfaction. — Seneca. Letters from a Stoic: Epistulae Morales Ad Lucilium, 18
3. Look at what you have, not what you don’t have
The biggest trap that desire sets up for us is to put our focus on what we don’t have, rather than what we do. Since what we don’t have is the entire world, no matter what we have, we still can have more, as the story of Alexander shows. By definition, there will always be things that we don’t have. Why do we have this sense of poverty? How do we say goodbye to the misery caused by our desire? One effective strategy is to take our eyes off what we don’t have and look at what we do have.
Don’t dream about things you don’t have. Instead, think about the best things you now have and how much you would crave them if you didn’t have them. At the same time, don’t value them so much that you will be upset if you lose them. — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 7.27 (Chuck Chakrapani, Stoic Meditations, 7.27
Do you want more because others have more? Look at those who have less than you.
When you see many ahead of you, think how many are behind! — Seneca. Letters From A Stoic: Epistulae Morales AD Lucilium, 15
