Recently, I was talking to a friend about desire and how we suffer because of it, an idea at the heart of Buddhism.
He pointed out that our desires, by their very nature, tend to concern things we do not currently possess and are not guaranteed to possess. For example, if we know that we have enough food in the fridge for dinner, we naturally won't desire the mere prospect of having enough food for dinner.
To test this hypothesis, I started listing my current desires. As it turned out, none of them was guaranteed to be fulfilled.
Then I began to wonder: Why don't we desire things we already have, or things we know we can almost certainly have? Why don't we long for a slice of plain bread? Why don't we crave the air we breathe or a simple glass of water? Why don't we yearn for the ability to wake up and walk, or to simply exist? Why don't we long to stop along the way and smell the flowers? Why don't we thirst for the world already unfolding around us at this very moment?
And yet, we can condition ourselves to desire these ordinary things.
After two days without food, a slice of plain bread becomes a feast. When we twist an ankle, we would give anything to walk freely again. When we catch the flu, we long for the simple pleasure of breathing through an unblocked nose. Someone stranded on Mars might yearn for nothing more than the feeling of grass beneath their feet.
It seems that we often discover the value of ordinary things only when we are deprived of them.
The Stoics had a practice for cultivating this awareness, known as negative visualization. They would periodically imagine losing the things they possessed and cherished. Some even practiced voluntary discomfort, temporarily giving up their comforts and living with very little, almost like ascetics.
The point was not to suffer for the sake of suffering, but to rediscover the value of what was already theirs.
While this form of practicing gratitude may seem strange at first, I think it offers several benefits.
First, it teaches us not to take things for granted.
By imagining life without the things we possess, we begin to appreciate the value they add to our lives, including the value we may have failed to recognize or make use of.
Imagine living in a vibrant city. You might take its public transit, coffee shops, density of people, and endless possibilities for serendipitous encounters for granted. Then, one day, you move to a quiet village. Suddenly, you find yourself longing for everything you once had but barely noticed.
You realize how many opportunities were right outside your door, while you spent your evenings idling away at home.
By imagining such a loss before it happens, we can appreciate what surrounds us and squeeze every last drop of life out of it while it is still ours.
Second, gratitude creates a sense of moral responsibility
When we count our blessings, we begin to recognize how fortunate we are. And with that recognition comes a certain moral weight: the responsibility to make the best use of what we have been given. And that drives us to take action.
For instance, if you were fortunate enough to be born in a country with abundant opportunities, access to education, and personal freedom, and you recognize this through negative visualization, shouldn’t you naturally feel some obligation to make the most of those advantages?
Third, it reminds us to cherish what is temporary.
Everything in life is temporary.
Friends move away. Parents grow old. Summers come to an end. Youth quietly slips through our fingers.
We often live as though the things we love will always be there, until one day they aren't.
By contemplating their impermanence, we learn to cherish them while they last. We become more present in our friendships, more attentive to our families, and more appreciative of the fleeting seasons of our lives.
Finally, it is an exercise in empathy.
When we imagine what it would feel like to lose the things we take for granted, we begin to understand, however imperfectly, the lives of those who have never had them.
Someone who has contemplated the loss of their ability to walk may feel a deeper empathy for those who cannot. Someone who has experienced hunger may better appreciate what it means to live without the certainty of another meal.
Without this imagination, it is easy to become indifferent to the suffering of others, or worse, to grow into a privileged snob who mistakes good fortune for personal merit.
In conclusion, perhaps the answer is not to rid ourselves of desire, but to learn to thirst for the things we already have.
To imagine their absence so that we may cherish their presence.
To occasionally live with less so that we may rediscover how much we already possess.
And, above all, to recover that wide-eyed wonder for the ordinary world around us, before it slips away.