Denial is not fulfillment

“I want chicken tacos!” “No, make macaroni and cheese!”

“Give me that car!” “No, I was playing with it first!”

Every parent knows that the greatest source of evil in the world is conflicting desires. “Why can’t you just get along?” It’s a problem that obviously does not depart just because those children eventually blow out more birthday candles. Just look around, right? What, then, is the solution to such incompatibility of desire?

Well, some religious traditions have tried to solve this problem by reclassifying desire itself as an evil which should be eliminated altogether. After all, if no one wants anything, then everyone can get along. And the problem with that is certainly not that it reduces conflict. That’s a virtue of sorts. The problem is that it lacks love, which is a relatively serious defect.

See, the kind of low grade harmony achieved by mass-produced indifference is really just the illusion of society. Such people may be in proximity, but they are not knit together. How can you be knit to someone when neither of you want anything, including each other?

Without desire, it is impossible to sacrifice anything, since sacrifice presupposes the suffering of loss. And if sacrifice is the most clear expression of love, then until we are attached, we cannot let go. And if we cannot let go of one thing (like peace and quiet) for the purpose of gaining another (like having children), then how can we know that we love anything at all, let alone identify which things we love most? Similarly, when I desire nothing, what joy is there in others giving me gifts or satisfying my wants? How can I know I am loved by them, and how can I experience that love except in such ways?

So a society which merely stifles desire may have a sort of peace, but it’s the same peace anyone can have all by himself if no other humans existed. But didn’t God declare it was not good for man to be alone? And why so? Because until others and our love for them show up, desire and the guiding of it for their sake cannot produce the true harmony which alone is capable of revealing His nature. So we should be dubious about any moral agenda which says man should be as if alone, safe from the trouble of desires and others, but never producing any art with them either.

And this is why one of the most vital parts of raising children (and an opportunity inherently missing from households with only one child) is not so much teaching children to have fewer desires, but teaching them how to weave their desires into the tapestry of love.