Good Morning Everyone!! Happy first night of Hanukkah! The Festival of Lights symbolizes light overcoming the darkness. Even for Christians, that’s a pretty good attitude to bring to this Advent season. Nonetheless, it’s Monday. The boulder’s at the bottom of the hill and, as Aurelius would put it, we have social contracts to fulfill. So get after it today and start the week off right.

This week, we’re changing the scope. Last week was all about attention. Since we got very deep into how attention ignites our desires, we’re going to spend this week talking about desire.

Today, for our main course, we’re going to consider the ideas from Plato’s Symposium and we’re going to see, through the eyes of Sigmund Freud, how that translates to modern times. To burn that off, we’ll be doing a thought exercise called “Naming the Lack.” To wrap it up with our Book Nook, we’ll be opening up the primary source with Plato’s Symposium.

I’m hungry, so let’s dive in. Thought Breakfast is served!

Plato makes the core claim that desire does not originate in abundance, but in lack. Because of that, what we want most points us toward what we feel we are missing.

In the Symposium, Plato uses the character Diotima to teach us that Eros (god of love, desire, and passion in Greek mythology) is neither god nor mortal, but a mediator. He then says Eros is child of Penia (poverty) and Poros (resourcefulness). The myth has an encoded psychology; desire is neither pure lack (despair), nor pure fullness (contentment). Rather, it’s a mixture of lack and striving. Desire is restless and creative, unsatisfied by nature. It moves us because the natural course of events hasn’t satisfied our needs. Further, it can never settle our needs permanently, because where there’s abundance in one area, there’s lack in another. Since what we desire points directly to where we feel deficient, desire shows us our unmet needs and unclaimed potentials. This turns the act of wanting into a diagnostic.

Now, we all know that as human beings we can have desires that aren’t ultimately good for us; junk food, addictions, etc. Plato says that desire doesn’t lie, but it misleads when it’s misunderstood. Are we wanting something itself? Or wanting what we believe it will fix?

Plato makes a distinction here that splits desire into two categories; upward (toward truth, goodness, and beauty) and sideways (distraction, repetition, and substitution). Many of our desires are just attempts to escape boredom, numb anxiety, and fill inner silence. The object of our desire is often incidental and the relief is the real goal. This prompts us to ask ourselves if desire is pulling us toward growth or simply away from discomfort.

Sigmund Freud uses modern psychology to validate this idea of Plato’s, saying that desire emerges from lack and repression. He says the unconscious wants what consciousness cannot tolerate or access. This anticipates ideas later developed in attachment theory, which states humans develop desires in order to satisfy what’s missing internally, which can be developed as young as infancy. All of this gets rooted in Plato’s original idea; what we want most points us toward what we feel we are missing.

This isn’t to say that desire is a flaw in the human psychology. It’s a signal. It alerts us when something needs to change. So the danger is never in wanting, but rather in never asking what the wanting is pointing to.

Identify one recurring desire that you’ve been having. Maybe you’ve been working hard for a raise, or maybe you’re thinking about your dream car.

Ask yourself:

Name the lack without solving it.

This exercise shows how quickly our perspective can change on our desires by implementing Plato’s simple observation.

“Love is the desire to have the good forever. For if love is for what one lacks, it must be for what one does not yet possess. No one desires what is already present to him, nor what he already is.”
- Plato, Symposium (Diotima’s Speech)

Here is where Plato (through Diotima) reframes the Greek god Eros (desire) as something born from lack. We don’t desire what we already possess. Why would we? We desire what we’re missing. Love, then, is not abundance. Love is tension that lives in the space between having and not having.

This kind of changes how we might understand wanting. Desire points us in the direction of something absent to us, whether that’s beauty, meaning, permanence, etc. If we fixate on the temporary things like status, pleasure, or approval, we remain restless because those objects can never fully satisfy the deeper lack that sparked the desire in the first place. So desire isn’t something to suppress. It’s something to educate. The question isn’t whether our desires are correct, but rather whether our understanding of the true object is correct.

Munch on that for today. We’ve laid the foundation for this week’s theme and now we’re rolling. Have a great day, and come back tomorrow for another steaming hot plate of Thought Breakfast!

In a landscape flooded with hype and surface-level reporting, The Daily Upside delivers what business leaders actually need: clear, concise, and actionable intelligence on markets, strategy, and business innovation.

Founded by former bankers and veteran business journalists, it's built for decision-makers — not spectators. From macroeconomic shifts to sector-specific trends, The Daily Upside helps executives stay ahead of what’s shaping their industries.

That’s why over 1 million readers, including C-suite executives and senior decision-makers, start their day with it.

No noise. No jargon. Just business insight that drives results.

Subscribe free today.

Thank you for reading along with us today! If you enjoy this content, and want to start your days grounded in thought and mindfulness, I suggest you have a seat at our table! Smash that button below to check out more editions and subscribe!

Remember to stay mindful, smell the flowers, and take it easy.

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast