Good Morning Everyone!! Congratulations! Sisyphus’ boulder is atop the hill, and now we can rest. This week feels like it went by so fast, and next week will be even shorter. Remember to make full use of that Prime subscription and get all those last-minute gifts.

Today, for our main course, we’re going to dive into Viktor Frankl’s thoughts on desire and philosophically reinforce it with William James.

To burn that off, we’ll do something called the Direction Check.

To finish off with our Book Nook, we’ll open up Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.

I’ve had fun exploring this topic with you all, so let’s wrap up this week! Thought Breakfast is served!

This week, we’ve seen desire from many different angles:

But what happens when desire is aimed?

Frankl rejects the thought that pleasure and power are the ultimate motivators. He introduces the concept of the will to meaning. This means that meaning isn’t something we invent arbitrarily; it’s something we respond to. It’s not “What do I want from life?” but rather “What is life asking of me right now?”

Desire, then, becomes direction when it is worth suffering for. Meaning doesn’t remove the pain, but it justifies the endurance of it. This is, in my humble opinion, the most pragmatic view of desire. After all, you’d be more willing to suffer for the sake of your children eating than for the sake of that new car you want.

Suffering without meaning leads to despair.
Suffering with meaning leads to purpose.

William James takes a similar approach to Frankl, emphasizing commitment over abstraction. He says that meaning emerges through chosen attention and sustained allegiance to that object of your attention (going back to last week).

This means that desire isn’t even real until it shapes action. What we commit ourselves to, not what we fantasize about, reveals direction. Therefore, revealing meaning and purpose.

So now, after all we’ve learned this week, we can put it together as this:

Desire matures when it stops asking “What will satisfy me?” and starts asking “What is worth giving myself to?”

If that desire disappeared, would your life lose direction? Or just convenience?

“What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task.”
- Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

When people think of desire, they think of satisfying a need that will lead to happiness. The happiness described is often in the form of comfort, ease, loss of tension, etc.

Frankl corrects this assumption here, saying humans need tension. However, it must be meaningful tension, not chaos. Absence of struggle does not equate to fulfillment; it often leads to emptiness or boredom.

Frankl’s “tension” is the distance between who you are and what you’re called toward. It’s not anxiety or stress, but purposeful strain. Desire matures then when it points toward something worth enduring that tension and discomfort for.

Meaning, then, cannot be imposed. Responsibility is what transforms suffering into significance. Desire gains depth and meaning only when it’s tied to commitment, and not to impulse.

Munch on that for today. Again, I really enjoyed exploring this topic this week and I’m excited for what next week has to bring. Have a great weekend. Use it as an opportunity to point out the things you want that are worth enduring suffering for. Come back on Monday for another steaming hot plate of Thought Breakfast!!

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

Chef Ricky - Thought Breakfast