What is the value of Desire?

[BeHereNow]

There is profit in desires – for so they are increased. And indeed, Nathaniel, each one of my desires has enriched me more than the always deceitful possession of the object of my desire.
Andre Gide

What is the value of desire?
My philosophy tells me that I need to remove all suffering in my life. At the root of suffering is desire. If I desire to have (fill in the blank) it will lead to unhappiness and suffering.
By “fill in the blank” I do not mean just material things. If I desire wisdom, I am as likely to be as unhappy as if I desire a new Mercedes. It is the desire that causes the problems, not the “things”. Not what is or is not out there, but what is in me.
By “suffering” I mean unhappiness. It does not have to be gut wrenching agony.
Distinguishing between desire and motivation can be dicey. I think it is good to be motivated to live in a clean house. I will do those daily activities which add to the cleanliness of my surroundings. However, if I am a POW it does me no good to desire a clean hut. If circumstances put me in a flea infested, filth hole of a cage, it does me no good to desire marble floors. I need to accept the world I live in and the circumstances I have been given.

BTW, a special thanks to Corvus for giving me the motivation to start this thread.

[Corvus]

Whenever I struggled to acquire something, and was able to finally take possession of it, I was always disappointed. Then I realised the great amount of pleasure I got from simply desire- the excitement I experienced when desiring something, and the way in which to struggle for something was to add value to it. The greater the struggle to acquire something, the greater its value. If gold was as plentiful as sand, it would have little worth. If the POW had a marble floor, he might start longing for wooden floorboards. Now then, imagine desire divorced from the struggle for it. Imagine simply a burning passion for everything. <i>"Let the importance lie in the look, and not the thing you look at,"</i> says Gide in Fruits of the Earth. Imagine too the desire for those things that are readily available - <i>"But, Nathaniel, let your waiting be not even a longing, but simply a welcoming. Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else. Long only for what you have."</i> Why, this generates what it would not be too much of a stretch to call "love"! <I>"Understand that at every moment of the day God in His entirety may be yours. Let the longing be love and your possession a lover’s. For what is a longing that is not effectual?"</i>

The last two quotes come from what you called in a separate topic, "Good Zen!", though you may have been referring to the rest of it - the part about finding God and Him being happiness.

BTW, a special thanks to Corvus for giving me the motivation to start this thread.

Oh, don't thank me. It is a delight to debate these things. Thank Andre Gide.

[BeHereNow]

Whenever I struggled to acquire something, and was able to finally take possession of it, I was always disappointed.

Wouldn’t you be even more disappointed if you did not take possession? Imagine desiring something, struggling to get it, but never able to acquire. Desire feeds the struggle, making it stronger, more pronounced. The desire is never satiated, so it may whither and die a slow painful death. The yearning slowly seeps from you as you realize the object of your desires can not be had. Or perhaps the desire is so intense that it feeds your struggle to such an extent that no obstacle is too great. If the desire does not die it will surely consume your moral fiber. It will become your reason for being. Your struggle to obtain may overpower common sense. You may be willing to take great risks (irrational risks) to obtain that which eludes you.

Then I realised the great amount of pleasure I got from simply desire- the excitement I experienced when desiring something, and the way in which to struggle for something was to add value to it. The greater the struggle to acquire something, the greater its value. If gold was as plentiful as sand, it would have little worth.

Well, your example of the sand. . .sounds good,. . .let’s see.
If I am an Inuit I will have to struggle very hard to get a bucket of sand. Blubber is right around the corner. Will I value the sand more than the blubber?

Is the pesky gnat that eludes my every swat and causes me great sweat to capture, worth more that the butterfly that lights gently upon my nose?

If I happen on a $20 gold piece lying on the path, is it worth less the one I earned removing 5 stumps from the field?

If I am given an ice cream cone today for no effort, does it really not taste as good as the one given to me after doing my chores? What if my chores (my struggles) are much harder today. I may feel I should have two scoops of ice cream on my cone. I may feel bitter that I’ve been cheated out of my just rewards. All that struggle and such a small cone. The bitterness may flavor my ice cream.

Imagine too the desire for those things that are readily available - "But, Nathaniel, let your waiting be not even a longing, but simply a welcoming. Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else. Long only for what you have."

Yes. I like this, but in light of the other passages I may be putting an alternate meaning to the words. “ Long only for what you have." Says to me ‘be content with what you have’ or ‘desire nothing’. I can see now that you probably attach the meaning ‘desire what you have’, enjoy the enjoyment of having it. Do not enjoy the thing itself as much as the enjoyment of having it. Pleasure over existence.

"Understand that at every moment of the day God in His entirety may be yours.”

I read ‘God is available to each and every one of us completely and wholly every moment of every day.’ On this we may agree.



The butterfly may thank the bee for the visit since both have benefited.

[Corvus]

Whenever I struggled to acquire something, and was able to finally take possession of it, I was always disappointed.

Wouldn’t you be even more disappointed if you did not take possession?

I often do not take possession of the things I desire, but am still content simply in the desire. Perhaps because I realise the value of desire itself over the importance of the object, which is the reason I probably will not go to extraordinary lengths to acquire some valued object. My current greatest unobtainable desire is the translation of a Henry de Montherlant novel, entitled "The Boys". At around $US240 dollars, it is somewhat out of my reach. Easily obtainable is a book of de Montherlant's essays, at around $US5, but because I wish to defer my possession of it so as to increase its value, I will not buy it yet. If I bought both, I probably will read them and then never think of them much again. It is my experience that "familiarity breeds contempt" and "absence makes the heart grow fonder" are two of the truest aphorisms ever devised. But because this is often the way does not mean it is the only way, otherwise Gide's message would be lost.

Then I realised the great amount of pleasure I got from simply desire- the excitement I experienced when desiring something, and the way in which to struggle for something was to add value to it. The greater the struggle to acquire something, the greater its value. If gold was as plentiful as sand, it would have little worth.

Well, your example of the sand. . .sounds good,. . .let’s see.
If I am an Inuit I will have to struggle very hard to get a bucket of sand. Blubber is right around the corner. Will I value the sand more than the blubber?

First, let us differentiate between necessities and desires and say that necessities are almost always foremost. Personally I can't really imagine what an Inuit would think about sand. He would probably think it remarkable. I, never having seen snow in my lifetime, would be absolutely delighted to be shown a bucketful of it.

Is the pesky gnat that eludes my every swat and causes me great sweat to capture, worth more that the butterfly that lights gently upon my nose?

Wouldn't capturing that gnat in the event that one appears and eludes your every effort be worth more to you than a butterfly landing on your nose on a tranquil day? What if a butterfly landed on your nose whily you were trying to capture the gnat? (Unlikely, I know, but it is a hypothetical) Surely you would rather catch the gnat at the risk of disturbing the butterfly from its resting place then suffer quietly the bites of the pernicious little creature to enjoy the delight of being touched by the butterfly?

Also, comparing a butterfly and a gnat increases one's estimation of butteflies. For that we have to give some small thanks to the gnat. This is like what Andre Gide says about death. It is death that makes life so precious.

Nathaniel, I must speak to you of moments. Do you realise the power of their presence? A not sufficiently constant thought of death has given an insufficient value to the tiniest moment of your life. Don’t you understand that the moment would not take on such incomparable vividness, if it were not thrown up, so to speak, on the dark background of death?

If I happen on a $20 gold piece lying on the path, is it worth less the one I earned removing 5 stumps from the field?

If I am given an ice cream cone today for no effort, does it really not taste as good as the one given to me after doing my chores? What if my chores (my struggles) are much harder today. I may feel I should have two scoops of ice cream on my cone. I may feel bitter that I’ve been cheated out of my just rewards. All that struggle and such a small cone. The bitterness may flavor my ice cream.

These are, I believe, exceptions. The value isn't diminished because normally you would struggle to acquire these things, but exceptional circumstances bless you with one.

Imagine too the desire for those things that are readily available - "But, Nathaniel, let your waiting be not even a longing, but simply a welcoming. Welcome everything that comes to you, but do not long for anything else. Long only for what you have."

Yes. I like this, but in light of the other passages I may be putting an alternate meaning to the words. "Long only for what you have." Says to me ‘be content with what you have’ or ‘desire nothing’.

Ah, I see! Well Gide does say;

All the weariness of your mind, O Nathaniel, comes from the diversity of your possessions. You do not even know which of them all you prefer and you cannot understand that the only possession of any value is life. The smallest moment is stronger than death and cancels it. Death is no more than permission granted to other modes of life to exist - so that everything may be ceaselessly renewed - so that no mode of life may last longer than the time needed for it to express itself. Happy the moment in which your words resound. In other moments, listen; but when you speak, listen no longer.

But then again, the a later passage glorifies hunger:

The most beautiful thing I have known on earth,
Ah, Nathaniel, is my hunger.
It has always been faithful
To all that has always awaited it.
Is it on wine that the nightingale gets drunk?
Or the eagle on milk? And the thrush, is it not on juniper berries?
The eagle is drunk with its flight. The nightingale with summer nights. The plains tremble with their heat. Nathaniel, let every one of your emotions be an intoxication to you. If what you eat fails to make you drunk, it can only be that you were not hungry enough.

A recurring declaration is that, "Nathaniel, I will teach you fervour!" Desire is the entire theme of the book. I should probably state here that my hypothesis about "struggle" is probably something to which Gide would have objected when he wrote Fruits of the Earth. I am testing it out for a novel idea. Gide is quite content with simple desire, actuated by the self. Because it is actuated by conscious effort, there is the expectation that it will be a reasonable desire and that it will not turn into something sour, or lead to nothing. "Let the importance lie in the look". You have the rest of the quote in the first post.

I can see now that you probably attach the meaning ‘desire what you have’, enjoy the enjoyment of having it. Do not enjoy the thing itself as much as the enjoyment of having it. Pleasure over existence.

Yes, this is something you noticed in the topic on memory and action, and to which I answered that pleasure validates existence. It is perhaps worth mentioning that Gide wrote this book while suffering from tuberculosis as a hymn to those pleasures he came so near to what he came close to losing: travel, touch, hearing, smell, sight and taste.

You would probably find his "Later Fruits" more appealing to you. That was the book he wrote during his short love affair with communism, and is far more selfless than his previous one. In fact, I don't really understand it because it is so foreign to my thinking.

"Understand that at every moment of the day God in His entirety may be yours.

I read ‘God is available to each and every one of us completely and wholly every moment of every day.’ On this we may agree.

Yes, though we do have entirely different concepts of God.

The butterfly may thank the bee for the visit since both have benefited.

Well, I'm glad we aren't talking about a butterfly and a gnat this time, but yes, I do enjoy this discussion. It appears we see the same problems but have a different methodology to deal with them. I get the feeling in another time you would have been a stoic and I an epicurean.

[ST88]

What is the value of desire?

Desire helps focus the mind in a very specific way. By forcing us to focus on one thing that we want, for whatever reason, we can A) obtain it, which can be a value in itself, and B) continue on the quest to obtain it.

A) Obtaining that which we desire can lead to satiation, which gives us an opportunity to understand what the desire meant. What does it mean to have an apple orchard but desire an orange? Should we desire an apple, we can go out an pick one in less than a minute. But what does it mean to want an orange in such a situation? This helps us find out who we are. Obtaining a desire also does not need to be bad. If we desire the apple because of its sugar, we also get the nutrition within it. In evolutionary terms, what we desire is what we need.

B) Even if we don't ever get what we desire, we can find out what we are capable of in order to pursue it. This can help us to know what we might be able to do in similar situations. Be all that you can be. Such unfulfilled desire can give life meaning in short spaces of time, depending on how you define your life. This is desire as goal. Setting goals for oneself based on one's desires is a way of self-enlightenment which can't be achieved by mere reflection.

[illuminatus]

Eliminating desire would bring happiness? Perhaps, yet I do not understand how one could feasibly do so. Desire is what motivates us, what propels us through our life. Besides the only way I can even conceive the elimination of desire would be to be everything and everywhere at anytime.

[TQWcS]

Wouldn't you have to desire to eliminate desire? It doesn't seem possible to me.

[BeHereNow]

Corvus:
Thank you for your reply. It does bring me closer to understanding your desire to desire. We could go ‘round and ‘round with specific examples to illustrate our various points but I believe you have made yours and I have made mine. I share your belief that desire and struggle seem to be interconnected. I can see where some might say that the Struggle is the thing, desire and attainment only incidental or even nuisances.
I sometimes see your path of [ Desire > struggle > attainment > satiation > new desire > etc. ] to be a dizzying path, round and round the mountain spiraling to the top. Worried not so much about getting to the top as enjoying the trip along the way. It may be that there is no mountain top you expect to arrive at. “Life is a journey, not a destination” comes to mind. A phrase I agree with, though for different reasons than yourself.

ST88

A) Obtaining that which we desire can lead to satiation,

Yes, it can, if we temper our desires to those things we can attain. Also, if the initial attaining of our desire does satisfy us. I’m not sure what prevents us from getting in a loop of [desire > attain > desire more > attain more > etc…]. So we have two “ifs” in order to receive satiation. We must meet one or the other or we have no satiation and the desire may have little value.

which gives us an opportunity to understand what the desire meant. What does it mean to have an apple orchard but desire an orange? Should we desire an apple, we can go out an pick one in less than a minute. But what does it mean to want an orange in such a situation? This helps us find out who we are.

I believe this is where your introspection comes in. I might wonder why, when I have so many apples I seem to want an orange. Why is it that I am not satisfied with what I have? Would I be satisfied if I had the orange, or would I now want a kiwi fruit? Why do I feel deprived when others are envious of what I already have? Do I have more than them because I deserve more than them?
I have the feeling that your introspection might have a different flavor, but I’m having problems seeing it. Can you help?

Obtaining a desire also does not need to be bad.

This does imply that you see that desire may be bad or undesirable. Desire in itself is not desirable. It may, or may not, depending on other circumstances. Our friend Corvus seems to put more emphasis on desire, saying I believe, that desire itself is the goal.

If we desire the apple because of its sugar, we also get the nutrition within it. In evolutionary terms, what we desire is what we need.

We desired sugar, but we needed nutrition, not? We didn’t need what we desired, but evolution fixed things for us because unintentionally we received what we need from desiring something else. Our mind desires the sugar for enjoyment, but our body needs the nutrition for sustenance. I would think we would be better off truly desiring what we need. I assume you agree since you say “what we desire is what we need”.

B) Even if we don't ever get what we desire, we can find out what we are capable of in order to pursue it. This can help us to know what we might be able to do in similar situations. Be all that you can be. Such unfulfilled desire can give life meaning in short spaces of time, depending on how you define your life. This is desire as goal.

I believe I see this. Failure can make us stronger. But we have some more “ifs”. If you define your life properly. If your desire is not stronger than your character. I believe that one might see into one’s own nature, and realize that for whatever reason, desire was part of our inner being. To totally suppress all desire may seem very alien to us. We may look for a way to control the beast within us by making what might be a weakness into a strength.

Setting goals for oneself based on one's desires is a way of self-enlightenment which can't be achieved by mere reflection.

I’m just having too many problems with this one. You haven’t given much indication of what you mean by “self-enlightenment” and “mere reflection”. In order for this to be true it seems to me “self-enlightment” means simply enlightenment about the self, devoid of the self’s place in the larger scheme of things. Understanding your own being, in a limited way, isolated so to speak, from complete reality. And “mere reflection” would apply to that summer day musing where we ponder what we might be. Not that serious reflection that stays with us as we conduct our daily lives.
As my eyes read “self-enlightenment” the first time, my mind read “self-realization”, a term I sometimes use. At that point I had strong disagreement with your statement. Self-realization is the “Pointing directly to the human mind; Seeing into one's nature” that you may have seen me mention. This is total and complete. Realizing not only all there is to know about the self, but also understanding how it fits into everything else. There are many ways to do this. Meditation is not necessary. It may be possible to attain this with Desire as the tool or path. I can’t exclude the possibility.

I am seeing a usefulness to desire that I had not considered. To me it still seems a precarious path, with many chances for failure. Not for the faint of heart. Not meant for all of us, but well suited to an adventurer and risk-taker.

Iluminatus

Eliminating desire would bring happiness? Perhaps, yet I do not understand how one could feasibly do so. Desire is what motivates us, what propels us through our life.

More correctly, eliminating desire eliminates suffering (unhappiness), and an absence of suffering brings happiness.
Desire may be what motivates you. To broaden this to us (you and me), is a stretch. I am motivated to become a Buddha, an enlightened one. One with the Logos. One with the Christ. Unity will the Tao. I believe that both Buddha and Christ told us this is attainable. I believe this is the goal of all religions.

Besides the only way I can even conceive the elimination of desire would be to be everything and everywhere at anytime.

Yes! There! You have it!
When I am the Buddha I am everything, everywhere all the time.
If you are not convinced this is possible, do not take the first step. Find another Way.


TQWcS

Wouldn't you have to desire to eliminate desire? It doesn't seem possible to me.

A good question.
I might say I’m motivated to eliminate desire. A fine distinction possibly but a distinction none the less. I take care of my daily affairs to have a clean body and clean surroundings not because I desire it, but simply because I am motivated to do it. I am motivate to attain cleanliness because I believe that is part of Being.
If my goal is to eliminate suffering, and I believe the only way to do that is to eliminate desire, I might forgive myself one fault for the attainment of eternal bliss.
You might ask “Does BeHereNow desire eternal bliss?”. To which I might say “Why yes, I do!”
I know of no belief system which does not have at least one element of faith. Sometimes they are called “mysteries”.
I might say that “Desiring to eliminate desire will give me all that I desire” is the mystery of my belief system. I accept on faith that this is possible. Just as I expect to find some elements of your belief system to be “unacceptable”, I am not offended that you find the same with my belief system. If you are interested in a serious discussion we may shed light on your perspective. Not to bring you to my way of thinking, but to help you understand my way of thinking. I am sure I could find more to say on the subject. I feel this is probably not necessary.

[ST88]

A) Obtaining that which we desire can lead to satiation,

Yes, it can, if we temper our desires to those things we can attain. Also, if the initial attaining of our desire does satisfy us. I’m not sure what prevents us from getting in a loop of [desire > attain > desire more > attain more > etc…]. So we have two “ifs” in order to receive satiation. We must meet one or the other or we have no satiation and the desire may have little value.

What you call a "loop" I call a condition. Naturally, once desire is fulfilled, the system has the option of going back to the previous state where the desire is desired again or if there is a new desire. With sex, desire is virtually a permanent condition. Once fulfilled, there is again desire. However, with something like wanting to see the Temple at Burubudur, maybe all I want to do is see it once and then that desire is over. What is the value of each of these desires, and are they sufficiently equal as to be equally supressed in a desire-less existence?

I believe this is where your introspection comes in. I might wonder why, when I have so many apples I seem to want an orange. Why is it that I am not satisfied with what I have? Would I be satisfied if I had the orange, or would I now want a kiwi fruit? Why do I feel deprived when others are envious of what I already have? Do I have more than them because I deserve more than them?
I have the feeling that your introspection might have a different flavor, but I’m having problems seeing it. Can you help?

This is exactly my question. Whereas you might question the desire, I would question what is behind the desire. Please correct me if I'm wrong. The meaning I am looking for is not why I desire the orange, but what does it mean in my own mythos of myself that I would desire the orange. I have all these apples to provide me with fructose and fiber and flavor, why would an orange appeal to me if it would provide all those things also? Does it have to do with what I think an orange might be, or am I just bored with all the apples (and what does it say about me if I am)?

Obtaining a desire also does not need to be bad.

This does imply that you see that desire may be bad or undesirable. Desire in itself is not desirable. It may, or may not, depending on other circumstances. Our friend Corvus seems to put more emphasis on desire, saying I believe, that desire itself is the goal.

Certainly, some specific desires are bad. Otherwise we would not have a criminal justice system. But desire itself is not necessarily bad. Desire is a primary motivator. And with regards to Corvus, I will agree that sometimes anticipation of something is a much better experience than the something. Like waiting in line for Star Wars Episode I was a much more fulfulling part of my life than watching the movie was.

If we desire the apple because of its sugar, we also get the nutrition within it. In evolutionary terms, what we desire is what we need.

We desired sugar, but we needed nutrition, not? We didn’t need what we desired, but evolution fixed things for us because unintentionally we received what we need from desiring something else. Our mind desires the sugar for enjoyment, but our body needs the nutrition for sustenance. I would think we would be better off truly desiring what we need. I assume you agree since you say “what we desire is what we need”.

I would say to this that the problems begin when we divorce the apple from its constituents. When we started manipulating our love of sugar and removing it from the nutrients to be found in fruits, we began to alter the diet that we, as a species, evolved with. It is not wrong to desire sugar, but it requires context in order to make sense of this desire. In one sense, you are correct, because the current condition of the food supply is such that nutrients have been divorced from sugars and carbohydrates in order to sell us "foodsex" in a tube, as it were. But I would argue that this does not invalidate the beneficial nature of desiring sugar.

B) Even if we don't ever get what we desire, we can find out what we are capable of in order to pursue it. This can help us to know what we might be able to do in similar situations. Be all that you can be. Such unfulfilled desire can give life meaning in short spaces of time, depending on how you define your life. This is desire as goal.

I believe I see this. Failure can make us stronger. But we have some more “ifs”. If you define your life properly. If your desire is not stronger than your character. I believe that one might see into one’s own nature, and realize that for whatever reason, desire was part of our inner being. To totally suppress all desire may seem very alien to us. We may look for a way to control the beast within us by making what might be a weakness into a strength.

Ah, but character is not an issue. The "value" of desire should not matter from person to person unless we are talking about the value of any specific desire that a particular person might have. For example, my desire to grow irises may stem from a character flaw, but the actual desire that I feel has nothing to do with irises -- the flower is merely an outer referent for something that is within me. What is it? I would have to ask myself that question and reflect on it for a long time before I truly knew the answer.

But there are no "ifs" in this scenario. There is always the opportunity for self-knowledge in any situation. But always striving towards a goal that may never be reached is a particularly good one for this. I say potential because it's true, not everyone will take advantage of this -- mythology & literature is filled with cautionary tales of those who do not examine their desirous situations closely enough. But this does not matter. This particular "value" is there for the taking.

Setting goals for oneself based on one's desires is a way of self-enlightenment which can't be achieved by mere reflection.

I’m just having too many problems with this one. You haven’t given much indication of what you mean by “self-enlightenment” and “mere reflection”. In order for this to be true it seems to me “self-enlightment” means simply enlightenment about the self, devoid of the self’s place in the larger scheme of things. Understanding your own being, in a limited way, isolated so to speak, from complete reality. And “mere reflection” would apply to that summer day musing where we ponder what we might be. Not that serious reflection that stays with us as we conduct our daily lives.

I would argue that there is no "scheme of things" into which we must realize we fit. "Self-enlightenment" is used strictly in the cognitive-psychological sense here. If we understand why we act the way we do, what motivates us, and how we can benefit from this knowledge, we can be happier or more satisfied in our lives. Not that one thing follows another, but it helps. Understanding ourselves will help us to put ourselves in situations in which it is more likely that we will be satisfied and happy. It doesn't always work out that way, of course, which is just one reason the self-help publishing industry is so lucrative.

By "mere reflection" I mean that thinking about doing something is not going to yield as much useful information as actually doing it. You can study the art of sailing for years without stepping foot on a boat, but you won't achieve knowledge of what it means to sail until you get on the boat. It depends on what the desire is in order to achieve satisfaction with the level of knowledge, however. If all you want to do is learn some knots, then the book might be better.

Realizing not only all there is to know about the self, but also understanding how it fits into everything else. There are many ways to do this. Meditation is not necessary. It may be possible to attain this with Desire as the tool or path. I can’t exclude the possibility.

I don't see desire as an end-all, so I can't say that it is the path. And I don't know if I can agree that it is a tool, either. A tool implies that you have control over it, and can pick it up and put it down at will, which I don't think applies to desire. The way I see it, Desire is there, and you're going to have to deal with it somehow. Some see it as a speed bump, others a tether on a balloon. I would argue that you need tools in order to find the cause of desire. Otherwise, fulfillment of that desire is little more than an empty gesture.

I am seeing a usefulness to desire that I had not considered. To me it still seems a precarious path, with many chances for failure. Not for the faint of heart. Not meant for all of us, but well suited to an adventurer and risk-taker.

Another thing that desire can bring to us is a sense of fun and enjoyment. What is life without fun? What is happiness without enjoying it?

[BeHereNow]

The meaning I am looking for is not why I desire the orange, but what does it mean in my own mythos of myself that I would desire the orange.

Are you saying why do I desire the desire to have an orange? I have the feeling I am misreading, if not, I only understand the concept on a superficial lever. I need some help.

but the actual desire that I feel has nothing to do with irises

Problems understanding this. I think this falls back on my last query. Not the irises, not the desire for the irises, but the mythos behind the desire?

I would argue that there is no "scheme of things" into which we must realize we fit.

Yes, this is the crux of our different approaches to life.
A Toaist saying is “Pluck a blade of grass in the meadow and the frog in the pond crocks.” Not to be taken literally of course, I find this expresses my views.

By "mere reflection" I mean that thinking about doing something is not going to yield as much useful information as actually doing it. You can study the art of sailing for years without stepping foot on a boat, but you won't achieve knowledge of what it means to sail until you get on the boat. It depends on what the desire is in order to achieve satisfaction with the level of knowledge, however. If all you want to do is learn some knots, then the book might be better.

Your example works well.
I would say that reflection is the goal. There is a philosophy in Zen that advocates the empty mind. Reflection or introspection so intense the mind becomes an empty vessel. The mind is at once filled the the Logos, the Eternal. An instantaneous realization (understanding does not quite fit) of all that is, was or will be. I believe I have had brief flashes of this. I believe you have received the equivalent. Equivalent not meaning ‘the same as’, but rather of equal value.

Another thing that desire can bring to us is a sense of fun and enjoyment. What is life without fun? What is happiness without enjoying it?

Yes, desire can bring us enjoyment. Other things can also bring us enjoyment. You have convinced me desire is acceptable, but not that it is preferred.
Life without fun?, too stoic for me as well.
Happiness without enjoying it, is not happiness. Happiness without desire is a different type of happiness than you present.