What do we Really Want?

I just read an interesting blog (?) called How to know what you really want. The author brings up the idea of mimetic desire - that is to say, most of what we really desire is based on copying other people around us. The people have different relationships and social distances so they may influence us differently but the influence remains. So desire is social.

This really connects with me as a result of my emotional baggage handling over the past two years. I noticed that a lot of the things I desired before I started this emotional baggage handling system have mush less draw for me now. I really mean this in a good way. I find it liberating. It helps me to see things more objectively.

In case you came across this blog serendipitously without seeing my other posts, my emotional baggage handling system is based on breathing and recollection. It basically involves recollecting memories and breathing very slowly (sweeping your head right ot left on the inhale and left to right on the exhale). Scientifically, I think the slow breathing allows your body to recalibrate the various emotion-laced memories with a new body chemistry created byt the slow deep breathing itself. Whatever the case, the technique seems to be slow but deeply effective.

In the blog, the author introduces the idea of 'mediators of desire' and identifying them as a means to gain insight to our own desires and where they come from. With my emotional baggage handling system, we can use his ideas to give us 'space' between the influencer and ourselves so we can see the desires more objectively and then make a bbetter decision as to whether we really want to 'keep' those desires or not. Then I think we can really begin to take ownership of our desires. As the author implies, it is fine to get desires and influences from outside but much more rewarding to make thos desires our own, expecially if we can do that from an objective viewpoint.