I Would Saunter Into the Kitchen, Choose My Poison and Kick Back on the Couch

The work is less about fighting what we feel, and more about meeting desire with curiosity, integrity and wisdom. When I was a kid, I had a designated “junk food drawer”. I remember a particular kind of joy in choosing what I felt like eating: chips, chocolate, biscuits.

I would saunter into the kitchen, choose my poison and kick back on the couch. These were simpler times. W hen I was a kid, I had a designated “junk food drawer”.

Perhaps you are raising an eyebrow. Such parenting might seem laissez-faire, irresponsible even. But this small act shaped my relationship to my body and its needs.

Hunger was to be listened to, not feared or repressed. “When you are hungry, eat, my mum would chime. I recognise the privilege of growing up in a home where food was abundant and the fact that I could usually stop when I had enough (a capacity I have since, ironically, lost).

Yet, as an adolescent, I was struck by how often food became a site of negotiation and tension in other families. For many, food represents a source of profound struggle, bound up with shame, discipline and judgment. Of course I didn’t get away scot-free.

If food wasn’t a struggle for me as a child, other desires were – the desire for rest, pleasure, recognition. This is a strange moment in the history of desire. Digital platforms and their algorithms increasingly anticipate our desires, sometimes even before we register them ourselves.

Do you need an app that tells you to drink water before you feel thirsty? What’s more, we live in a culture adept at stimulating desire while simultaneously encouraging us to distrust it. We are sold viral food trends, alongside GLP-1 medications that can suppress appetite and, for some, calm the food noise”.

But what is the actual problem here? Do we desire too much, or too little? Or is there a more interesting question at play?

It may come as a surprise to some, but Buddhism does not propose that we eradicate desire altogether. Rather, it asks us to look closely at the ways desire arises; how it feels, what shapes it and where it leads. The heart communicates through its wanting – through its pulling, beckoning and reaching.

We begin by respecting this dynamic. And giving it enough space to reveal itself on its own terms. With time, we develop trust in our own discernment and capacity to move with wanting, rather than being trapped by its demands.

Not all wanting is the same. Some forms of desire entangle us; others support our flourishing. A useful Buddhist concept here is taṇhā, the Pali word for craving or thirst.

This is wanting with a particular flavour: sticky, insistent, difficult to release. We crave something, get it, and sooner or later we want it again. The object of our yearning fails to live up to what we had subtly imagined, and the experience of satisfaction itself fades, giving way to more wanting.

In fact, I am likely ensnared right now, as I reach for my third cup of coffee. The problem is not necessarily the coffee itself but our grasping at the idea of it and the promise it carries. Like a dog with a bone, we can’t loosen our grip.

In Buddhist thought, desire can also take a wise and wholesome form, an aspiration or intention to care, to grow, to practise non-harm, and to minimise suffering and confusion. And then there are very practical desires and instincts, like the need to eat, rest, move, connect. They are to be noticed and responded to wisely and compassionately.

And this is where matters get interesting. Rather than immediately gratifying or repressing desire, we can learn to get to know its different faces, textures and patterns of movement. What sits behind the urge, or the pining?