Season 4 Podcast 22 “Wants vs Desires”
Reference books show wants and desires as synonyms because we are often very imprecise in our language. We confuse wants with desires. In this podcast Linda and I shall present ten defining attributes or characteristics of desire for you to ponder. Here is attribute one:
One: We sometimes get what we want, but we always get what we desire.
Wants can be generalized, and it will be found that most of us have similar wants. Satisfying people’s wants is what makes billionaires. Wants, or instant gratification, create a very strong drive. All of us have experienced watching children, whether our own or others, throw tantrums because they didn’t get what they wanted. The tantrum may have been stimulated by a toy or piece of candy or some other eye-catching attraction they happen to come across on the store aisle while their parents are shopping. In the following list of synonyms, see if you can distinguish between wants and desires.
Wish for, long for, yearn for, hope for, care for, pine for, sigh for, hanker after, fancy, be bent upon, set one’s heart upon, need, require, necessitate, demand, craving, appetite, inclined toward, prone to, hunger, thirst, relish, lust after, importune, entreat, urging, beseeching, begging, imploring,
The list, of course, could continue. Rodale’s Word Finder, my reference book of choice, offers many other synonyms for want and desire without distinguishing between the two; but what if I said that all the synonyms above describe wants and none describe desire. Would you accuse me of dissembling? In effect I am asking you to redefine desire. We are apt to trivialize desire by defining desire as something we really want. However, desire is not an intensified want or a physical necessity.
Let me continue by presenting the second attribute of desire:
Two: Want is physical or temporal. Desire is spiritual.
Wants generally appeal to the senses. Advertisers know that. They are ingenious at packaging their products. They appeal to sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, and feel. They also appeal to vanity, sexual stimulation, and other less noble characteristics of human nature. Stimulants favor wants. Look at any display. We generally connect sexual stimulation to desire, but by my definition sex appeals to the natural man or to wants not to desires.
Once we start looking at wants as natural or temporal and desires as spiritual, the words take on a new meaning. In other words, wants appeal to the natural man; desires appeal to the spiritual man. I will add the third distinguishing characteristic.
Three: Everyone knows their wants. Our economy is based on that fact, but few know their desires. Our comfort is based upon our wants, but our salvation is based upon our desires.
Desire should not be confused with want or hope or dreams or goals or plans arrived at by reasoning or ambitions. Wants motivate us, but desires drive us. Wants are of the flesh; desires are of the spirit. Though it is possible that desire motivates those ambitions, it is not through necessity. Many forces affect our goals. However, we must look at desire, not always as an out-of-control passion, as a lustful glance, or even as a long-awaited goal. To understand desire, we must remove all planners, all designs, all goals, all dreams, and all sensuality—we must remove everything imposed by our society or provided by reason, ambition, appetites, passions or established programs.
