Check out the full notes for “Wanting” by Luke Burgis
“Desire is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want,” he said. Ravikant is drawing on the perennial understanding of numerous spiritual traditions about the link between desire and suffering: desire is always for something we feel we lack, and it causes us to suffer.
You can focus on what you lack or you can focus on what you have.
Not much in between.
This is why gratitude journals are recommended so often. And why the guidance is often to just write down small things, the trope example always being morning coffee.
But I am grateful for my morning coffee, in its different forms.
At the same time I can see some wanting when I think of my various morning coffee routines.
I miss the Upper West apartment where I first set up an iOS shortcut to order an iced quad from the Starbucks around the corner.
I miss the midtown apartment where my now-wife and I would take our Dunkin Donuts refillable cups to get them refilled.
I miss the East Village apartment where I would alternate grabbing a coffee from the corner store or the fancier place with terrible paper straws.
And when I lived in New York I would miss Philz Coffee, which now I can get a few minutes away. But I’d have to drive.
So yeah, I want that to be closer.
But I’m also grateful for my mornings pouring a cup of bottled cold brew with Booster at my feet, glancing at my wife rubbing her eyes walking to the bathroom, chugging the glass, saying “ok! let’s go.” and heading out the door for a walk.