The Weary Box

Alright, folks: hold on tight, brace and/or gird your loids, and get ready for some internet/armchair and/or toilet-derived philosophy.*

Have you noticed that if you have a certain desire (no, not THAT one; also, yes, it makes you a bad person), once you finally satiate the object of said desire, you are left…still desirous?

Sure, you may enjoy whatever the thing is in the moment—promotion, tasty snack, or particularly shiny rock—but the pleasure, much like your performance in bed, is only fleeting.

Soon, you will be back to wanting.

It’s almost like once we attain what we seek, we are left as empty and wanting as if we had never received anything at all. As the french would utter, POURQUOI?!?

Speaking of which, ahem, de qui:

According to French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Jacques Lacan (not to be mistaken for Jacques Lycan, the 2nd frenchiest werewolf in all of Manitoba), desire relates to lack.

Well, what the hack is lack?

Before I answer that and by necessity dive into a LOT of penises (incidentally, that’s the second time I’ve had to write that today), let’s suffice to say that unconscious desire drives everything.

So, when we are pining away for some banal object #52, we actually are longing for so much more. Thus, when we receive banal object #52, we still lack.

Yes, yes, I know I skipped a lack. Lot. A lot of lack.

But does this explain why we are the way we are?

No, but I think it gets us closer to explaining our monthly credit card bill with all the random purchases to our significant others. But perhaps not the one from August 16. Sheesh.

According to Idahoan philosopher and overly outdoorsy Hemingway look-alike Patrick F. McManus, everyone has a worry box. Everyone has a worry box; some are large, some are small, and all are full.

And, when one worry is relieved, another takes its place.

I am a fan of this theory—being filled to the brim myself with of all sorts of fascinating worries—but I don’t think it just applies to worries. No, McManus, there is so much more wrong with us.

I think in general that the human (i.e. all that is related to our physical form or meat-slab) aspect of ourselves is simply a black hole. A maw of unfathomable emptiness that can never be sated with anything Earthly.

Oh, but we try to fill that hole with all sorts of neat shapes and sizes, but the whole hole invariably remains the same. Quite a hole, indeed.

And that’s about the best you’ll get out of me on this topic.

I know you wanted more—

Did you actually want more? What’s wrong with you? Well, here; read this book.

*It was actually the shower.  Again.