the problem of borrowed desire
if you’d never heard a love song...
If you’d never heard a love song, never seen a rom-com, and never witnessed couples walk in the park holding hands…would you have ever fallen in love?
La Rochefoucauld wrote about this in 1665: “There are some who never would have loved if they never had heard it spoken of.” This applies to more than just love.
People want what they are told to want.
A desire, experienced as this organic voice from the inside, is often borrowed from the outside.
To a certain degree, this is inescapable—we are apes, after all. Apes ape. We learn to speak via mimicry, we learn to work tools via mimicry, we learn to fight via mimicry. And yet to be nothing but a set of mimicked performances is to miss the point of being human.
The direction of conviction is always inside out.
If you want to live with conviction—if you want your steps sure, your decisions unwavering, your plans unshakeable—then your desires have to be your own. They must emerge from your specific backstory, your unique personality, your particular spiritual bent…
Everything else will be blown away when the storm comes. And a storm always comes.
Taken from Bangers (2025)