idols

Most people, if they have really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise. The longings which arise in us when we first fall in love, or first think of some foreign country, or first take up some subject that excites us, are longings which no marriage, no travel, no learning, can really satisfy. I am not now speaking of what would be ordinarily called unsuccessful marriages, or holidays, or learned careers. I am speaking of the best possible ones. There was something we have grasped at, in that first moment of longing, which just fades away in the reality. I think everyone knows what I mean. The wife may be a good wife, and the hotels and scenery may have been excellent, and chemistry may be a very interesting job: but something has evaded us.

- C.S. Lewis

Because this desire is there, does that fact make it necessary that the object of our desire exists? Could this longing, this desire, just be biologically wired into our brain to encourage growth and ambition? If there was no desire, no ambition, we humans would be in a totally different place, if that is, we were able to survive this long. A completely satisfied species with no will to move, create, reproduce would surely have passed on long ago.