Appetite

The problem with having an appetite is that it needs to be filled.

Whether you’re hungry for food, sex, power, or even another vintage Pendleton Board shirt solid-patterned size medium, that hunger will drive you to eat, fuck, win, buy, or whatever until it’s satisfied.

And then, of course, as soon as it is satisfied, you won’t be satisfied anymore and the cycle will happen all over again.  Which is why you’re fatter, more dissipated, exhausted, and broke than ever before.

And why, as the Buddhists remind us, life is suffering, the cause of which is desire.

Now, supposedly, you can overcome this condition of suffering by eliminating desire through following the Noble Eightfold path.  But unless you’re Buddha himself, that probably won’t happen since somewhere along that path—like right around the first or second step on it—you’ll be distracted by something shiny and desirable and by right back where you started, albeit slightly older and more disillusioned than where you were when you started.

The reasonable response to this, I suppose, is simply to observe your behavior with equanimity and continue in the ongoing attempt to accept the inevitability of the human condition with grace and humor.  And maybe have one fewer shot glass full of cashews as a snack during the day.

You don’t want to deprive yourself, since that just leads to overindulgence.  But at the same time, indulging in every desire, in the name of eliminating the tendency to cling to whatever feels good doesn’t work either; nor is it an effective strategy for fitting into last season’s jeans or Pendleton Board shirt.

One thing’s for certain: there will come a time in all our lives when desire is eliminated.  The problem is, as Wittgenstein pointed out, it won’t really be a time in our lives, since death, as he said, isn’t an event in life.

When you’re dead, you won’t have desires, so presumably that means no suffering, either.  

Yum.