Desire, Relationship, and the Self That Waits
A word.
A label that has haunted me through most of my adult life.
A puzzle, a mystery, a feeling—sometimes a source of happiness, sometimes the deepest misery.
I have often wondered whether, as human beings, we are ever not in relationship. We are always in relationship with something—things, places, situations—and then the most complex relationship of all: people.
And beneath all of this, there seems to be a search—always present, always alive in the heart.
A search for what?
Interestingly, our gaze is almost always outward. And perhaps that is why the search feels endless, without destination. Even when we desire many things, they remain outside of us. Over time, I have come to realise that desire rarely feels fulfilled. It seems to regenerate itself endlessly—an abstract longing, vast and insatiable, often counterproductive to the well-being of this fragile, mortal being.
Volumes of literature have been written on this subject, yet the search continues—often futile, naïve, and soaked in quiet agony. Some describe this yearning as resistance to reality, as the inability to accept that we cannot have it all.
But why do these yearnings feel so important?
Why do they keep pulling us back—towards the same patterns, the same cores that often feel dark, twisted, and jaded?
Let us dismantle this today—piece by piece, word by word, feeling by feeling.
I have yet to meet someone who says, with ease, that they are no longer searching. And when someone does say their search is over, it often carries a heaviness—as though it is now too late to ask these questions, too late to seek answers. Beneath it lies a quiet hopelessness.
Isn’t that interesting?
At least it is for me.
In my life so far, I have encountered beautiful expressions of relationships—and yet, the hole remained. A search persisted. A feeling that whispered: Is there still something? Someone?
The road to answers felt endless and, at times, delusional. My suffering deepened because no path seemed to lead anywhere, no answer came close to what I was truly seeking.
And then, this suffering led to a gentle yet profound realization—one that comes and goes. It feels important to say this, because when we touch something extraordinary, we often try to grasp it. And whatever we grasp tries to escape. Perhaps because our true nature is not to hold on—but to release, to give, to move.
The real search, I realized, is not a search at all.
It is an arrival.
An arrival at a place within ourselves where we were always home.
Always enough.
Always wanted.
Always cared for.
Always loved.
Have we ever given ourselves permission to arrive there?
What if the longing we feel is not for another person or another relationship—but a longing to finally belong to ourselves? A journey back home. A home that was never lost—only shadowed.
Shadowed by what?
By our beliefs.
By mental constructs borrowed from society, environments, information, and inherited narratives.
What if we chose to love a life whose compass always points inward? A love that brings us closer to ourselves, not farther away. This does not mean losing the ability to love others—quite the opposite. In my personal experience, it deepens the capacity to love without a barter system. Without I give you this, so you give me that.
Some intellectuals have offered me a counter-question:
Then what is the point of relationships?
You see—that is the point.
Have we ever truly loved someone without wanting something in return?
And have we ever truly been loved that way?
If we are all so certain we are right, why doesn’t it feel right?
So I ask:
Do we need to love more—or do we need to question and learn how to love and then learn a little more?
Until we meet again.