The Price of Desire.

I identify with discipline. Everyone looks lazy.

I identify with running. Non-runners are missing out.

I identify with drinking. The sober people are crazy.

I identify with intelligence. People start to look ignorant.

I identify with talents. I feel bad for the less talented.

I identify with money. I feel bad for poor people.

So I change…

I identify with being lazy. All pursuits seem trivial.

I identify with non-drinking. The drinkers are fools.

I identify with atheism. The religious people are deluded.

Then I find God. All non-religious are doomed.

Did I really find God?

It seems I can abuse or over-indulge in anything.

I can make any belief dangerous.

The consequence is me getting lost in that thing — confusing it for myself.

I can’t afford to see myself in the mirror without it.

Then I renounce it, I cast it aside.

Now I can’t afford to see myself with it. As if that’s much better.

The sword that kills needs an arm to wield it and the water that drowns can also quench thirst.

Eat too little I starve, eat too much I die. Wade too far into the beach, I get swept away.

No thing is truly good or bad.

Everything has it’s natural dose, proportion or use.

The sword is connected to the hand — don’t confuse the sword for the hand.

The hand is connected to the arm — don’t confuse the hand for the arm.

But what force moves that arm?

What thought or state of mind?

How does it come to extend the idea of its self into an object?

And isn’t it more dangerous when it extends the self into ideas?

When it tethers me to some thing, that is when both thing and I are spoiled.

It is once I tether myself that I begin to see everyone differently… and ‘everyone’ includes me.

Because identify with discipline and I hate the parts of me that seem ill-disciplined. ****

Identify with running and I hate the part of me that doesn’t want to run.

Identify with intelligence and I hate any parts of me that don’t look intelligent. ****

What I hate in myself is what I critique or judge in others.

Is there ever hatred for others that is not also hatred towards self?

What’s the harm, I ask, in my desire for money, or excellence, or perfection, or improvement?

And something answers — just the small price of not being able to see anyone clearly.

A nod to Luke Smith, who kicked off this idea.

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