Duty and Desire

Our egos often want to turn desire into duty. We love burdens. We pride ourselves on carrying heavy weight. In fact, as tormented or self-sacrificing as we may appear, complaining about how hard we’re working and all that we’re carrying is a form of bragging. We will accuse others of not realizing how exhausting all this work is, but if we follow all the work back to its origin, it all started with a moment of desire. Perhaps, more precisely, it started with a moment of desire that we turned into a duty rather than acknowledging we were given a gift to help us grow and evolve. 

We turn desire into duty because it’s easier to clamp down, to constrict the calling of desire, than it is to open up to the unbearable gift of it all. It’s not that there isn’t enough, it’s that there is more than enough. Always. We may not always be able to feel that, but we have all felt it at one time or another.

We can never earn the experience of desire. We can’t beg desire to appear. We can’t yearn for possession, to be taken over by something, to feel passion. We don’t earn that kind of experience. The duty that too often becomes a substitute for desire actually blocks the gift that is innately ours, that comes from being human. The more we incarnate, the easier it becomes to get in touch with our desire. We work so hard to feel as though we deserve the breath in our lungs when all we have to do is say, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you even for what feels like a burden.

We need to remember we aren’t doing anything for desire. It will get along fine without us. If we lock it down and never let it come through our bodies, it will just keep moving and seeking ways to express. It’s simply trying to help us become who we really are. When we realize that, an immense sense of gratitude takes over: we finally feel the joy that we get to have this life, these desires.