Sustaining desire

I love chocolate. I spend more time than I care to mention thinking about chocolate. 

If it was a particularly long day at school, I would crave a certain chocolate bar and build my desire until I finally had it in my hands. 

Then each time, after inhaling the chocolate, I would realise it didn’t live up to my expectations. It was certainly good, there was no doubt about that but in hindsight it wasn’t worthy of all the time I spent craving it. 

Which brings me to an excerpt from a book I’m reading. The book is called: ‘Psychoanalytic Film Theory and The Rules of the Game’ by ‘Todd McGowan’ and the excerpt is:

‘We cannot satisfy ourselves through having because having is precisely what destroys the desirability of the object. In this sense, self sabotage represents a desperate attempt to sustain desire. Manufacturing ways of not having the object keeps us desiring it”

You see it in astronauts and world cup winners. Despite hungering for a goal for years, possibly decades, there is a sense of loss after achieving it. 

A sort of ‘What do I do now?’ feeling.