Desire is a fickle thing; one moment it is safe in your hold and the next it flutters away out of reach. You feel like you have complete control over it— you can feel its steady flow thrum through your veins, identify and define it, and use it to guide you towards the things that you feel would pacify it. You can let desire give shape to your ambitions and dreams, and then allow it to push you towards achieving them.
It seems concrete beneath your fingertips and stable beneath your feet, so you let it build a platform you can stand on. Did you know, though, that human senses may not always be an accurate means of perceiving reality?
They let you down time and time again, making you recognise strangers as friends and hear familiar noises in silent rooms. Yet, you continue to put your faith in them. You blindly step down the ladder of empiricism—and when you reach the last rung, you cling onto the rope of abstract transient emotions you believe to be real, and let go of it. The fall is a painful one if the rope chooses to vanish without informing you.
But desire is not simply present or absent; it does not merely go from being a treasured possession to an elusive concept. It often transforms itself, rapid and sudden, from one form to the second, to the sixth. Desire is a man with many mistresses, ostentatiously committed to one, bored, and hopping between the others, hoping to satisfy itself.
A rope dangling like a pendulum from one extreme end to another, threatening to throw you off at any moment, is only slightly more reliable than a non-existent rope. Granted, it does let you enjoy a good view of the expansive scope of reality before you go down.
Here’s a nugget of personal insight into the nature of that reality.
Desire and its derivatives, pleasure and success, don’t just build the rope— whether solid, dangling, or absent—but give shape to the entire world around us. Close to every modern technology today is driven by desire.
Our desire to surpass the limits of the sensory experiences the world can offer us has driven us to imagine and bring to life ‘worlds’ of our own. Our desire to have our own demands, lives, faith, community, opinions, and version of truth preferred over others’ has led to the revival of populistic partisan politics. Our desire for constant company and instant validation has led to the unbounded growth of virtual social networks.
And as our desires swing from one plane to another, transform themselves, and replace mistresses, so does the reality they birth. Unfortunately for us, they are faster than our ability to keep track of them.
Reality thus is in a constant state of flux, and we are in a constant race to adapt.
We keep hearing about how the world is changing all day, every day. This issue, however, revolves around students expressing their outlook on the evolving nature of the world and humanity through their stories, poems, artwork, and articles. It’s focussed not on the alterations, but on how we regard and respond to them. I hope you enjoy taking in the varying perspectives and forming your own.
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