How to Want Something in a Too Much, Not Enough World

The Dance Between Desire & Desirelessness

In the aftermath of the Super Bowl, which seemed designed to revive every unfulfilled mainstream high school dream, I am thinking about desire and desirelessness. 

So, wander with me as we stumble through the pop culture spectacle being broadcast to a troubled world. We’ll be touching on the topic of desire in the midst of a very settled life and end with a medieval Irish love story.

Oh, and there’s a writing prompt, too.

The question “they” got us to ask in 2024:

What if the class president/most likely to succeed/head cheerleader and the guy who catches the ball a lot really did fall in love 4eva? (Or at least a year and a day.)

And what if their partnership gave the world… Gossip? Distraction? Hope?

What if we could collectively ignore everything else on this burning, war-ravaged planet and give ourselves over to nostalgia and the belief that real life really could be about the high of the high school football game lasting forever?

We saw it all. Her red lipstick cheers. His bearded rage. The kiss, the kiss, the kiss.

We all got to watch those mouths at work. And in between, the most expensive 30-second slots in the history of earthtime told us what to want.

So much of what we understand to be desirable was writ large as a Las Vegas light show. 

Desire is a malleable, individual, delicate thing. Anyone who was born into capitalism has spent a lifetime being told what and who to want, and in what quantity, and at what price point.

It is exhausting to detangle your real, personal threads of desire from the great industrial loom of manufactured consumer demand.

And, oh, how nearly impossible it can be to give yourself permission to desire anything when you think about how much you already have compared to so many others. (As ubiquitous as it is, only 65% of the global population has reliable internet access.)

It’s another week of incomprehensible dissonance

Lest we forget, it’s Valentine time in America.

Of course, just as the NFL is making strides to become a global phenomenon, this country has exported this rosy cellophane holiday, too.

This week is “meant” to be about candy hearts and those soppy rom-coms we just can’t quite enjoy or resist. I’m trying to work with my kid to come to some easy “in the spirit of friendship” plan for the classroom Valentines, even though the whole affair seems weird and gross and forced when you just turned ten and would simply prefer extra recess time.

(If you haven’t been hanging with the elementary school set lately, note that the little cards sold in sets of 24 don’t cut it anymore. It’s about giving individually wrapped treats or throwaway toys to everybody now. If you need me later, I’ll be up to my elbows in marshmallow, Rice Krispies, and pink sprinkles.)

And, meanwhile, the rest of the Instagram feed that isn’t declaring a woman can cheer for her boyfriend if she damn well wants to or sharing the picture of said guy screaming at his coach, is drenched with mourning for the people of Rafah and a little girl named Hind.

To offer only one paragraph to the death toll and the ongoing humanitarian crisis… It’s nowhere near enough. And to leave all the other conflicts and injustices unnamed while I lavish words on the most famous person in the world - it can feel like madness.

It’s the strange and terrible imbalance of these times to sit on the periphery of so much suffering and still have the luxury to worry about all the things.

It’s beyond disorienting. And it can steal your power to create, to connect, to take up space in your own corner of the world.

How do we access desire in a too much, not enough world?

Long before the Taylor Swift’s Boyfriend Show and the fears related to this particular war, I have been thinking about desire and desirelessness.

Are desire and desirelessness on a vast continuum? Are they disparate islands, one all bedecked in flowers, the other just cool gray stone?

How do we find truth when caught in the real human urges for intimacy and the relief that can come through spiritual lessons of detachment? Are they really opposing energies, or is this just a failure of human vocabulary?

I’m still working on it.

Beth Kempton’s Way of the Fearless Writer has been keeping me company over the last couple of weeks. Inspired by the philosophy and culture of Japan, she describes that the writing can only really flow when you “experience the freedom of embracing desirelessness.” This comes from “listening, practicing, and trusting without trying to force outcomes.”

I get that, I do. So much of my writing this year has been about recognizing that it is smarter and more sacred to trust that certain stories refuse to be co-opted to suit the whims of the writer. Not push but presence. Not pressing archetypal characters into modern service.

So maybe it is a limit of language that makes me chafe at the idea of “desirelessness.” But then, I’ve been in a sort of awkward dance with desire for some time. 

The deeper desire for desire

Back in 2022, Jen Murphy of the Celtic School of Embodiment (and three time KnotWork Storytelling guest) led a yearlong women’s Imram, a journey of the soul. 

At Samhain, Jen invited us to look ahead to the next quarter turn in the year. As we entered the dark part of the year, we were asked to explore our desires and name something that we would like to see emerge with the springtime energy of Imbolc. 

I stated rather simply, though experience has shown me it is all far from simple, that I desired more desire. 

More than a year later, I am still living this question.

It’s a topic with deep, intimate roots for all of us, especially as we start to ask the biggest questions at the middle of life. Here’s the version I am willing and able to tell at this moment:

For well over a decade, I have created remarkable things from my desk that overlooks a five way crossroad. A family, a writing coaching practice, a book, a podcast.

So much magic conjured - even when working within the structures of maternal responsibility, matrimonial commitment, and the limited funds that come with taking the leap to entrepreneurship when you have a mortgage on a two income home. 

So many of my dreams for a creative, nature-fueled, love-filled life have come true, but… I have set aside countless other desires to stay within the comforting confines of this way of being.

Acculturated to be good consumer who has found a way to have it all, but also not to ask for too much, this feels like a dangerous question for forty-something middle class American white woman to say:

What is it I truly desire, when I already have so much, and desiring more just might bring it all crashing down?

That’s when I tell you I’m still search for my answer, and I remember what Martin Shaw says in Courting The Wild Twin, “Without eros, without risk, there is no culture worth making.”

And so, with such notions in mind, last week, in the Writers’ Knot, I offered the group this prompt: 

What is your heart’s desire? This is the language of prayer and fairy godmothers.
You must release your attachment to desire. This is the language of prayer and ascetic monks.

Walk the space between personal belief and spiritual teaching. Honor the contradictions in your heart and question the paradoxes in the culture.

Tell a story of desire/lessness.

I would love to hear your thoughts on desire and desirelessness in the comments.

A Story of Desire in a Culture that Demands Desirelessness

Finally, a bit of mythic medicine.

Last year, I shared the tragic love story of Líadan and Cuirithir. Two bards fall in love, but a long traumatic history and vows to the church doom their union before it truly begins.

As long as the family head cold does not turn my intentions into a mountain of tissues, I will be re-recording the story¹ and including a new commentary that explore some of my current thinking on the topic of desire and desirelessness. 

That will be available to my paid subscribers soon.

Please consider supporting Myth Is Medicine - you make it possible for me to pay my team to produce KnotWork Storytelling and you give me the freedom to dive deep in these pages, pushing the stories deeper and further.

1. The audio quality for Art, Love, God: The Tragic Love Story of Líadan & Cuirithir was pretty poor in the original , unfortunately, but you can listen now. As is so often the way with these stories, the conversation that followed with my wonderful guest, the author Bethany Hegedus took us in one direction - the role of creativity in a woman’s life - and I’m still curious about exploring other dimensions of the story.