To want and to find within oneself the power to want. Everyone wants something, but some cannot bring themselves to want. Wanting is desire, rather than need. Need is more essential. As if desire is not essential. Most people cannot want. They wait for things to be given. Or they prefer to be with thoughtful people who give without being asked. For some, wanting means not showing deference, for some it is a weakness, and for others it means not deserving. In our society, many people explain away their inability to want by defining it differently. Instead of wanting, they become caretakers of others’ wishes. Defending someone else’s right feels easier. Because in truth, they are not asking for anything for themselves. What would happen if they did?
Some people are afraid to want. Afraid of not receiving or of being disappointed. Afraid of rejection. Desire and the self develop in parallel. They confuse wanting with greed. They associate it with being brazen.
The lack of wanting exists to complete what is missing. It is the desire to attain what one does not have. It is what fills the absence. For some, it is easier to deny the lack; for others, since they believe their lack can never be filled, there is no point in wanting. The person who does not know how to want, who cannot want, actually has an avoidant personality. They also run from their own desires.
Wanting is forming a relationship. It is entering into connection. It is the opposite of “I neither want nor care.” The person who cannot want is somewhat depressed, feels guilty. Perhaps they believe they do not deserve it. They confuse needs with desires. Having as much as one needs is enough. They themselves are not “too much” anyway. The self wants; the self desires. The fuel of the self is “desire.” Even if they know they cannot attain it, they continue wanting. They live with the fantasy until it happens. To be able to want means knowing one is unfinished and being open to growth and formation. A person with a grandiose self does not want, nor does a person with a very weak and fragile self. Wanting — being able to want — is a measure of development. It is a measure of aiming to grow.
Lack of desire happens only in depression. You don’t even want to want. It is as if your mouth is plastered shut; you don’t even want to speak. If clouds of hopelessness cover your sense of self, you cannot want. Wanting is hoping, and hoping is wanting.
Some people think they are not worthy. To be able to want, you first need to feel that you deserve it. And they think they never do. They come into the world and leave it only to fulfill the desires of others. They believe that chasing others’ desires will lessen their guilt. But “guilt” does not end by serving others. Not being able to want and giving up wanting is the greatest punishment a person inflicts upon themselves. Enjoying the imprisonment created by excessively rigid boundaries, they drain their guilt, and by not wanting, they make their punishment even heavier—because punishment is the price of guilt.
Those who think wanting is shameful are unaware of the shame they inflict on their own sense of self. They weave their self with shame and stitch it with sin. Shame, sin, taboo, “what will people say”…
But what does your own self say? It is difficult for people to embark on their own inner journey. Because this journey includes disappointments, neglect and abuse, deprivation and emotional fragility—these are worth seeing, yet they create a sense of worthlessness on the conscious level.
Like a barren desert full of desires but never satisfied. The self is fragile and sensitive; its desires are vivid and alive, yet suppressed by the person.
Now desires are mixed together. Is this my mother’s desire or mine? Society’s or mine? Where are my boundaries, how much have I merged with the other? How much of me is truly me, and how much is the other’s self within me?
Wanting begins in infancy. The baby wants through milk, crying, the breast, and affection. If not given, the baby stops wanting. It survives on its own limited resources. It lives with whatever it can manage and then withdraws.
Do we need to become unable to want in order to want? Do we need someone to push us from behind? Or is it about being nudged by impulses we refuse to hear?
The end of desire and wanting does not exist. But the end of giving up wanting — and being unable to want — is a bottomless, dark well.
“I have seen the bottom of my lack of desire,” says one of my clients. “I no longer want to see it. I know the end of not being able to want. When I was struggling in that bottomless well, I experienced the helplessness of being unable to want, and I paid the price of giving up my desires by losing the ability to feel pleasure. If I can feel pleasure, if I can want, then I exist. Wanting is the greatest sign of existence; wanting is the result of choosing between fading away and stepping forward. The unseen one, the one who does not want to be seen, the one who believes they are unwanted — that is the one who cannot want. Wanting is also asking. Wanting is being active. It is standing against passivity, creating the ground for being dynamic.”
