Page 34 - NAMAH-Oct-2024

Namah Vol. 32, Issue 3, 15th October 2024

boundaries to acquire what we want. It is very well-deserved admiration. Noble people are
easy for strong desires to influence our mind a fast-disappearing species in modern times
and push us into taking wrong actions. Some and the world needs them most now. Why
take ‘shortcuts’ to succeed by resorting to end up pursuing smallness when we can live
tricks like lying, deception and manipulative such a profound life?
behaviour in the hope of getting what they
want. The desire for status and richness, the
wish to appear more intelligent than one
is, the ambition to quickly rise up in one’s
career, the idea to blindly compete with one’s
neighbours, and even the need to control
others around us are some of those motives
that can push us into behaving in a harmful
manner without fully being conscious. If the
desire is intense, we can make risky choices
and endanger ourselves which could end up
tragically for some. Such is human slavery
to desires! Quite rapidly, they transform us
into animals.

We can totally avoid this fate if we are careful
enough to control our blind impulses as soon The psychological burden of anxiety and
as they surface. This requires a certain boredom
detachment and distancing from our desires,
our life-events, and seeing them for what Desires have taken a peculiar form in today’s
they are and how they influence our mind and times. Many want to gratify themselves
action. Standing apart gives us a quietude that immediately because it is possible to do so
is necessary to make good decisions. When in the modern technological age. But this is
the consequences become clear to our eye, a huge trap and a psychological burden to
we can then use our will and wisdom to get the young and old alike. For those who do
rid of the very temptations (even ruthlessly, not have the means, there is an enormous
if need be) that could have led us on to the pain of losing out. Those who feel lucky
path of danger and to our downfall. If we are enough to satisfy their pleasures soon become
too involved in life, we cannot act prudently desensitised to pleasures, bringing them even
because our intelligence becomes fuzzy and more dissatisfaction as a result (see ‘hedonic
distorted, making it harder to make good adaptation’ (5)). All that remains is added
decisions. A witness-like attitude is a great anxiety and boredom. It is better to rationalise
help at all times. the eternal fact that desires will always keep
us dissatisfied and slowly move away from
What more, with such a refined and upright them. The key to restore a balance is to live
character, we can stand as a great example a simple and minimal life of few wants and
of personal nobility to the world and earn a needs.

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