Thoughts for food
“In the period of preparation the soul loves in emptiness. It does not know whether anything real answers its love….The soul knows for certain only that it is hungry. The important thing is that it announces its hunger by crying. A child does not stop crying if we suggest to it that perhaps there is no bread. It goes on crying just the same. The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. It can only persuade itself of this by lying, for the reality of its hunger is not a belief, it is a certainty.”
>Simone Weil
In short, here’s what I’ve recently come to understand about dreams, ambition, success and failing. That desire for something more.
Our longings are facts before they are interpreted. There is something our internal philosophers cannot afford to know, given their job description. You can miss out on things by waiting too long, by thinking too hard, by floating one too many hypotheses, by confusing grumpy thoughts with intellectual integrity. In trying to protect us (from the horror of being duped by fine-sounding arguments), our internal philosophers sometimes talk us out of the deep longings of our heart. They are in danger of deceiving themselves if they try to explain away as impossible what in fact is already the case.
*These thoughts were inspired by “Forgetting Ourselves on Purpose” by Brian J. Mahan
Unfortunately, Christianity convinces us that our hungers and desires, though existent, should not be fed and even ignored on purpose for some kind of greater cause or good. This in turn is one of the greatest causes of pain to a lot of people I know and in my opinion a much worse thing to believe (for the sake of your personal well being) than the lie of pretending we are not hungry at all.
In Matthew, Jesus says we must deny ourselves to follow Him. Because of this I think it’s easy for your internal philosophers to deny you the longings of your heart in the hope of your longings being provided to you on a silver platter… but one thing I’ve learned in life is that the longings of your heart or not handed to you on a silver platter. If they were, they would not be longings to begin with.
This is not an argument against Christianity per se. This realization is simply a reminder that to live as a Christian is to deny yourself, to often live harshly, and to even die poorly (think of Jesus’ disciples). With this in mind, I think it folly to dwell on the desires on your heart when fundamentally you work in life to oppose them instead of embracing them.