The bittersweet paradox of desire

Bittersweet may have many connotations and have been used in quite an ambivalent manner. The Greek lyric poet Sappho called Eros the “bittersweet”, an experience of pleasure and pain.  

The paradox of desire is that even the desire to stop desiring is in itself a desire. Hinduism may name desire as a life force, but it also calls it the ‘great symbol of sin’ and ‘destroyer of knowledge and self-realization.

 Aristotle said that it is the nature of desire not be satisfied, and most men live only for the gratification of it.

Whether apprehended as a dilemma of sensation, action or value, eros prints as the same contradictory fact: love and hate converge within erotic desire.

It’s the sweet torture of wanting something you cannot have; the impossible love; the unattainable love; deep down you entertain the feeling of want and even welcome it regularly into your daily thoughts until it consumes your entire being, to a point when it leaves a bitter taste of how and why you can’t seem to escape the imprisoned thoughts in your mind.

Like many unexplained mysteries in the universe; love has become an evolved emotion, a puzzled illusion with no clear cut, logical explanations. Many philosophers believe that love cannot exist without knowing its causal neighbor: hate. As much as one person can love, hate can exist just as powerful if not more so. Rather be hated for whom you are than loved for whom you are not.

“And hate begins when love leaves off…” whispers Anna Karenina, as she heads for Moscow Station and an end to the dilemma of desire.

Like the ebb and flow of the tides, so desire pushes and pulls the lover to act and also not to act. Maybe all of our desires are contradictory; we desire that which is not in our reach but once we have it, and tasted the sweet harvest of our actions, consequences and bitterness plants seeds of distaste, the desire is no more but an impulse, a somewhat fleeting moment.

The honest truth is that we all want something we cannot have, a life free of want would be ideal but our consumer driven lives tells us otherwise. Clever marketing plays with the consumers ‘minds by creating a desire wich in turn leads to action

Who ever desires what is not gone? No one. The Greeks were clear on this. They invented eros to express it. – Anne Carsons

The next time you desire something, put a harness on your thoughts and determine where is stems from and also the consciousness of your actions, maybe then a better we will have a better understanding of this powerful emotion.