Good Morning Everyone!! Happy Tuesday!! The sun is bright and the week is on its way. Remember, it’s the last full week before Christmas so get those prime orders rolling!

For our main course today, we’ll be expanding this week’s theme of desire with Schopenhauer’s insight. Burning that off, we’ll do a thought exercise called the Desire Loop Audit. To finish off with our Book Nook, we’ll open up Schopenhauer’s The World as Will and Representation.

Let’s dive in, Thought Breakfast is served!

Yesterday, we framed desire as lack. Today, through the eyes of Schopenhauer, we are going to see desire as conditioning. Schopenhauer describes desire not as something chosen, not even as something personal, but something automatic, learned, and endlessly repeating.

He argues that beneath all thought, morality, and personality lies a single force: the will. He says the will is a blind striving. It doesn’t aim toward the good, happiness, or fulfillment, but only wants to continue wanting. This means desire isn’t a meaningful signal pointing in the direction of fulfillment (as Plato would’ve thought). Rather, it’s the will expressing itself through us. Desire doesn’t arise because we’ve reasoned carefully. It arises because we are motivated by a force that never rests.

That’s why satisfaction is always brief and impermanent. The moment a desire is fulfilled, the will redirects itself toward wanting a new object. This creates a structural loop of wanting, getting, getting bored, and wanting something new. This also ties into why desire creates suffering.

Schopenhauer argues that suffering isn’t caused by failing to satisfy a desire, but by simply having desire in the first place. An unfulfilled desire leads to pain, and a fulfilled desire leads to boredom. Life is constantly oscillating between this loop of pain and boredom.

Yesterday we asked “What am I missing?” but Schopenhauer shows us that the question might actually be “What pattern am I trapped in?”

Before desire can be redirected, educated, or transformed, it has to be recognized as a conditional loop and not a demand.

Think again about the desires you might be carrying from yesterday. It doesn’t have to be dramatic. It can just be an ordinary, everyday thing like a purchase, comfort, distraction, or outcome.

Walk through this loop slowly and honestly:

Don’t judge your desire. Don’t suppress it. Just try and observe the pattern that’s happening. Schopenhauer said suffering comes from being trapped inside of wanting, not from failing to satisfy a need. This exercise isn’t really about fixing anything. It’s about recognizing the pattern.

“All willing springs from lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering. Fulfillment brings this suffering to an end; but for one wish that is fulfilled, there remain at least ten that are denied. Further, desire lasts long, and its demands are infinite; fulfillment is short and scantily measured.”
- Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (Vol. I)

Schopenhauer crystallizes his insight, saying that desire is not a problem or an imperfection in us because its very structure guarantees us restlessness. Every time desire is satisfied, the will almost immediately reorients itself toward something else.

Munch on that for today. Before you ask yourself what to desire or how to desire well, you must first see how desire conditions you to keep wanting at all. Have a great day, and come back tomorrow 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