Desire and Identity

There's a connection between desire and identity. When we feel deeply about something we latch onto it as though it’s the spark that manifests who we are deep down inside. The trick, then, is to find things that resonate. The more we can look inside for this, the more we feel we perceive ourselves.

If we look closer at desire though we can see that the solutions for its attainment all revolve around gaining knowledge. The desire for justice, equality, love, and whatever else we could want, all have, at their core, the need to know in order for there to be a resolve. But, perhaps more importantly, in order to transform this into identity, the knowledge within us needs to be recognized by the world around us. The most common and meaningful acknowledgement comes in the form of others seeing our inner self surface. This confirms its reality.

A problem with connecting identity to desire is that desire is almost always about a comprehendible and unlimited perceived good. This makes it non-unique. For example, if I want to know all the languages in the world, be an amazing friend, be rich, have unlimited time, etc., everyone else can and would desire the exact same thing. Possessing a list of desires is nothing special and, because of this, can't be the foundation of identity. 

If this is true, how we exhibit our desires and how others come to know them plays a much more pivotal role in our identity. Desire itself is not enough. How we merge the subjective and objective self holds the keys. This can’t be done without the knowledge others have of us and how they reflect it.