A thing called Desire

verb (used with object)
1 to wish or long for; crave; want.
2 to express a wish to obtain; ask for; request: The mayor desires your presence at the next meeting.

noun
3 a longing or craving, as for something that brings satisfaction or enjoyment: a desire for fame.
4 an expressed wish; request.
5 something desired.
6 sexual appetite or a sexual urge.

These are the dictionary meanings of the verb and the noun 'desire'.

As a verb it is an action word for it describes an action aptly that of wanting, and acute deep wanting such as craving. Or a wish like wishing for something or a request in formal terms. These are nomenclatures given to feelings that exist somewhere deep inside us - where that inside is we don't quite know or can't really point out, but we know our desires, our cravings, our wishes and our wants very clearly - again we may try and hide from them, we may try and deny them and we may even try to mask them but truth will be out. What is it that humans desire, what is it that they want - and here I am not taking the very obvious in view such as health and food and shelter - I want to know what it is that we all basically physically and emotionally crave and want and is there a confluence of our desires or not? When Freud famously asked 'what do women want?' he was I presume talking of women in general and what their wants and desires are that stay hidden from the eyes that see the world. His view was that even women aren't fully aware of their own desires for a greater part of our wishes and dreams and wants stay trapped and locked away in the sub-concious and we have no access to it through our concious and awake mind. It all got me thinking, what are our secret desires and wants, and can we ever go deep down inside us to try and find them out and if we succeed in doing so even minimally would we then be aware of parts of our own nature that seem inexplicable to us at this point? When we are awake we generally know what we want and plan our days and life accordingly, we choose our life paths in accordance to them and we believe ourselves happy in a job or in a relationship because superficially we think that is what our true wants are - but at times our dreams go sour, life loses its meaning, things stop making us happy, for something pulls at our innards and tugs at our hearts, and we get a nagging feeling that not all is right, that somewhere, some place, at some juncture we misinterpreted our wants and made a wrong decision.

The noun desire is name of ideas, of intangible things - basically something desired and wanted and specifically sexual desire. Do we acknowledge our desires? Are we allowed to vocalize our deepest wants not necessarily sexual, but otherwise if by some miracle we come to know of them? And, what of sexual wants and desires? where does that fit in? Is it primitive and animalistic to validate such wants? Freud theorized, now hardly accepted, that women became hysterical and had various neurotic disorders because they were inhibited and could not express their physical and sexual needs in an open manner as it was considered uncouth for a woman even to publicly accept the truth that she has sexual feelings or that she is after all a sexual being. Now when I ponder on the issues of women in the 21st century Pakistan, I wonder if Freud was all that wrong? Are we all sexually suppressed and repressed women who ought not, must not express their desires whether it be a verb or a noun.