Liar, Liar, Spark Desire

Do you know what you really, truly, honest-to-dog, want from life?

Yeah, me neither (but if your answer was yes I'm super happy for you and please tell me your secret). Lately, I've had a rough time defining my desires. Rather, I've run a whole marathon of dropping desires, and am only now looking back on them as I desperately try to gulp willpower into my depleted lungs. This realization had led to some self-reflection and general philosophizing, which I'd like to share with you, whoever you happen to be. It seemed a fitting topic for my first story on here, as publicly sharing my writing has been one of my most frequently sought after and dropped desires.

Something I can name among my first desires was the desire to read. I'm a huge bookworm - I absolutely adore reading, especially high fantasy and surrealism. I remember reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the backseat of my family's new minivan. I was ten years old, on a snowy road trip with my parents to go skiing in Colorado. Any sort of storm howling outside the windows has always made me feel cozier inside, and on this day the flurries of snow blowing past the car buried me so deep in my reading that the world around me ceased to exist and Harry's adventures became my reality. Even the ink and paper stopped being consciously viewed by my mind and all I saw was the story, playing like a movie in my head. When the imaginary film suddenly cut off, replaced by a grimy white screen, I was dumbfounded. It took a few moments for me to process that dirty snow had poured in through through my shattered window, covering the open book and hiding the words from sight. I then noticed that I was sitting not upright, but at a roughly forty-five degree angle. It turns out that the car had slipped on black ice, careened, and after rolling over two or three times, hit a large pile of hardened snow on the edge of the interstate. I had been so absorbed in reading Harry Potter that I hadn't even noticed being in a car crash. Afterwards I developed such a bond with the Prisoner of Azkaban that my mom threatened to throw it in the trash if I kept re-reading it over and over. I got addicted to tons of other book series, and many times tried to write my own, falling in love with the ability to paint my imagination in someone else's head by using pretty words.

Now, I'm majoring in English Literature, and I tell myself that Lit is my favorite subject. I tell myself that I still love to read and interpret books. I tell myself that I love to write. And yet, I haven't written anything of my own accord in almost a year. I enjoy the books I read for school, but sometimes it's difficult to force myself to read them, let alone pick up books to read for fun. I tell myself that I'm too busy, that I don't have time, that I have no interesting books to read or topics to write about - but all of these are just excuses, lies. I was so actively into all of it before, and now I don't even do it, while still claiming I feel the same desire. Which leads me to question just how genuine my desire actually is.

A similar pattern has repeated itself, on a greater or lesser scale, with pretty much everything I've ever wanted to do. It's happened with the desire to make music and to sing. It's happened with the desire to draw and make art. It's happened with the desire to edit videos and create digital content. It's happened with the desire to develop video games, and even with the desire to play video games. This last one is especially shocking - if not for the occasional loss of even that desire, I'd chalk all my undesirable issues up to nothing more than video game addiction and laziness. But there's gotta be more here - there's no way that my only desire is to lie to myself about having other desires just to pass the time. It is a scary notion, however. There have definitely been times when I've lied to myself about various things for various reasons, and the idea that my whole life may be a lie frightens me.

Luckily I was gifted some guidance this past Christmas, in the form of Paulo Coelho's book The Alchemist. It's a story of a boy who journeys to achieve his "Personal Legend" - a dream of finding treasure which became his life's main desire. Despite being written with a simple nature reminiscent of The Little Prince, The Alchemist offers up many cryptic notions about the meaning of true desire and the myriad struggles everyone encounters on their way to reaching it. While reading this book, what immediately caught my eye was something Coelho described as the four main obstacles of achieving desire. First came the courage to embark on a dream, second the will to leave behind what we love for the sake of the desire, third to overcome our fear of being defeated, and finally to overcome our fear of succeeding and having nothing left. There are many other deeper and more complex ideas about desire laced throughout the story, but I'll leave my deliberations on those for another post. What I realized upon finishing the novel and reflecting on the boy's life compared to my own, is that I got stuck on taking the very first step.

Sure, I read many books as a kid, planned out plenty of stories, penned a fair share of poems. But I always shied away from getting my work out there, and as soon as I realized my desire of gaming, my still-existing desire of consuming and creating literature got partially shelved. Once I discovered my desire of video editing, my desire to do well in competitive games got partially shelved. And on and on it went. The meaning this carries is that I never committed enough to any of my desires to truly follow their journey. I'm scared of losing them, but I'm also scared of one desire hindering another. And thanks to this fear, I've ended up halting my own journey on all of my desires with one leg forever raised to take the first step.

This realization hasn't made me suddenly spring out of bed each morning with a newfound fervor to accomplish all of my desires. I've actually been stuck on this first vocal post for a whole week at this point! It has, however, made me understand that all my dreams and desires are completely valid - I just need to take it into my hands to actually work on them, to decisively set off on my long journey. And to that end... I think a little bit of lying to myself is acceptable.

I've never really thought, "I want to improve my writing and share it with more and more people". I've always just wanted my writing to be interpreted, enjoyed, and admired by many people, to be impactful. But for that to happen, the sentence I've never thought is a necessary goal - I have to actively read and write while seeking to improve my skills at both, and have the courage to share my work with more and more people, instead of aimlessly jotting down short rhymes in a notebook. While that in itself isn't my desire, it's the movement of breaking my raised leg out of its invisible restraints, and completing that first step. And as a step in achieving my desire, logically, it really should be part of my desire. Thus, I've decided that even if I have to lie to myself, I'll make myself believe that this one sentence is indeed what I want. This year, I'm planning to take a similar step for all of my desires - how can I know that they'll get in each other's way if I've never truly tried any? And I hope that, even if it makes me a bit of a liar, I'll be able to spark my true desire.