The Desire Answer

Hi, this is Daisy. Today’s Dirt is a poll and some good links. Thank you to our interns Walden and Becky for help curating!

On February 8th we touched off quite the discourse when we asked, “Is it better to desire, or be desired?” We started the conversation by asking 60+ people but opened the question to our readers with a poll shortly after.

782 of you took the poll and “to desire” led with 58.57% of the vote. Many of you also left comments on your answers which we really enjoyed reading. Below are some of our favorite responses (anonymized!) Thanks for making this such a fun experiment. 

To Desire

As Jesse says in Before Sunrise, “desire is the fuel of life, right?”. 

Considered the question as if the presence of one implied the absence of the other. Being desired by those you don’t desire? Horrible! Evil maybe. Yearning for those who don’t desire you?? A beautiful lifelong exercise. Christ-like, even 

Desire is not really about having or accomplishing the thing we desire, because then desire would cease to exist. It’s a feeling and state of being that occurs only when we are in motion towards an ideal. It’s thrilling and hopeful and inspiring and dreamy and so telling of our own values of what’s important to us. I’d never want that ability to experience myself, or life, like that to be taken away.

Everything you see before you was created by desire. Those who do not yearn will not endure. 

I’ve always felt bad for the boys who’ve liked me. But I have enjoyed the way my crushes consumed my entire life.

To desire is to exist in a fantasy of your own creation: this delicate dream state where you're powerless to your desire but simultaneously in complete control of its imagined realization. After all, it's YOUR yearnsome fantasy, isn't it? To be desired, on the other hand, is vulgar. It's submitting to the reality of going out into the world and being wanted, often for qualities beyond your control! Being desired makes you self-conscious about what you appear to have to offer. It means that there is a little mirage of you in someone's desirous mind, and who knows what she's up to? As much as I want to be wanted, I want to control the narrative more. I choose desiring.

To Be Desired

Being desired is so often the precursor to my desire. If desire is a dream of possibility, being desired seems to be my dream of that dream.

With a good outlook, there seems to be less ways that being desired can go badly. In many Eastern religions desire is the root cause of suffering.

Everyone who says it's better to desire is just self conscious about the fact that we all know it's less painful to be the subject and not the object, imho 

In my experience, this is often the necessary precondition to full-on combustion into desiring the other, and when they're both present, kablooey. Just one way of desiring is a drag and a bore, and ultimately the first step into hatred.

Listen y’all anyone who has just been dumped is going to say “to be desired” no matter if it’s the right decision or not

Sometimes it is okay to be flattened into a fantasy. Sometimes it is even freeing. 

There's an anguish oft associated with desiring. It eats me alive. How desperately I want them. How deeply I want to be desired in equal. To love is to burn, and frankly, I don't love burning. Being desired though, that's entirely different. While, yes, being a woman who is desired comes with many a pitfall, I find it on the whole, more peaceful. As someone who does not cater their appearance or persona to the flimsy whims of others, I feel like being desired is affirming in my personhood. Perhaps I am not insane. Perhaps I am not destined to be alone forever. They see my flaws and want me anyway. At least for now.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

• Love songs and accompanying YouTube comments (thesoundof.love)

• Complex has so many thoughts on Yeat

• Philippa Snow on “Poor Things” (MUBI) 

• “I kinda miss the time where pop music was really volatile and crazy. I miss the Paris Hilton days.” Charli XCX in The Face 

• SCRAPYARD by Quadeca (Spotify)

MIXTAPE

Good links from the Dirtyverse.

• This Becca Rothfeld essay on David Cronenberg and the transformative power of sex knocked me on my ass (The New Yorker)

• Please don’t make me check my carry on!!! (The Atlantic) 

• Terry Nguyen on girl blogging (Vague Blue)

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