By Dina Aldabbagh

The reports are in: many people are severely lacking in an essential vitamin called “filled desire.” 

How does desire relate to health? Well, actually, I think desire is at the core of it all. Your mental, physical, and spiritual health is always influenced and guided by your desire. You have a desire to feel better — so you start exercising, you start eating foods that nourish you, you start paying attention to the way you talk to yourself, the boundaries you hold with others, the beliefs you have. You have a desire for love — so you start taking better care of yourself, you get in shape, you start saying loving things to yourself, you start ingraining loving beliefs about yourself, you start working on your self-worth, self-image, and self-concept around deservingness. You have a desire to understand the nature of the world more deeply, so you start seeking truth in God. 

The Bible includes, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life” (Proverbs 13:12 NIV). Chronic unfulfilled desire makes the heart sick. Notice, it says, “sick” — not “sad,” not “discouraged,” not “disappointed.” No: “sick.” Therefore it implies the opposite is true — that hope that is met makes the heart healthy. The fulfillment of desires results in health. “A tree of life” — so, more life. Desires being filled results in one’s expansion, facilitating more healthy growth and more healthy life. 

The truth is that discouragement, sadness, and disappointment all play roles in making one sick, as well as all the other negative emotions if felt chronically and constantly. Stress, grief, frustration, shame, resentment, hopelessness, anger, loneliness, insecurity, fear. All these emotions are normal emotions. Feeling them for a moment is not the issue. It is the wallowing in these emotions that brings one to illness. It is one thing to let a “negative” emotion come through you and serve as a signal, and a very different thing to let it come and make a home in you so that you stay in that state, always feeling that emotion — even long after the situation that triggered it has ended. 

All emotions that we feel, and how we frame them, are a means to the end of either health or sickness. It’s true that we all feel the same emotions, but we don’t all feel them the same way. Because your personal choice is the deciding factor on how an emotion is experienced and metabolized in your body. There’s no human being that’s a stranger to grief, disappointment, rejection, low energy — no. Many people fall into the trap of thinking this, though. “Oh, they’re so happy, they must have never gone through anything hard.” This is a lie that one must tell themselves to make sense of the reality that this other person is somehow still happy, despite life’s adversities touching us all. 

Why do the people with the most difficult lives feel the most inner peace? We see this all the time. You go ahead talk to so many grandmas and grandpas that are happy and ask them about their life…lots of adversity. Well, now that previous claim is rendered void. Hard life does not equal sadness; easy life does not equal happiness. It’s simply that the happy person has learned how to be happy. Happiness wasn’t some package delivered at their doorstep one day. Instead, it was this individual’s venture out into the world to forage for their peace and joy. Pick up one thing here, one thing there. Understand and learn nature more. “Okay, stay away from this berry, it’s toxic. Oh this one over here is nourishing.” It’s a process of learning how to maneuver through the wilderness and find the things that result in one’s health and more life — aka “happiness.” 

The truth is that a person who can’t accept the concept that they are the one keeping themselves in the dark — that they are responsible for cultivating their own joy, peace, and happiness — will need to buy into the belief that happiness, or the lack thereof, was a thing done onto somebody, instead of a process of asking and receiving, of trial and error. They must believe in victimhood or favoritism in order to make sense of the lack they see in their life. They must believe that others are simply privileged and favored by the world and they are not and therefore do not feel happiness. No one can give anyone else a feeling though. The most another person can do is trigger that emotion in you based on the space they allow you to hold with them. 

Hitting a little too close to home? Well, you’re here, so things are already shifting. This is not me condemning you, this is me empowering you. What is your responsibility is within your power. 

What if I told you that you had more power over filling your desires than you thought? What if there wasn’t someone or something or some entity or organization or government or country outside of you that was in charge of meeting your desires? It might feel like a lot of pressure on you, but it’s really not. What it actually is, is freedom. You’re not waiting for something outside of you to give you permission to meet your desires, you get to say so for yourself — “Yeah, my desire is allowed to manifest.”

But I know, I know, that sounds really big. What does “my desire is allowed to manifest” even mean? It means you don’t have to shy away from your desire because desire isn’t something “bad” or too “audacious;” it’s nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed of, regardless of whether it’s accepted or rejected. You can show up and say, “Hey, I want this. So…I’m going to do it. I’m going to look into it and see what it has for me there.”

And when you allow your desire to be clean, and honest, and shown, you do yourself a huge favor: you give it the chance to be fulfilled. Are you going to bat 10 for 10, 100% of the time? No. But, the more you ask, the more you get. The more you admit, the more is known, thus the more knows to come. We’ve all heard of “you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” — it’s true. You asking for something, you saying you want it, it doesn’t mean it will happen, that it will get fulfilled, but it offers the opportunity to. So instead of it being a 0% chance of it happening, now it’s suddenly 95%, or 50%, or even 5% — but it’s something. Even a 1% chance of something happening means it could happen. Means it could be real. And you don’t know unless you try. 

Likely not every desire you act on will manifest to completion, but with every single desire that manifests, you boost yourself. Every single filled desire is proof for your spirit. “I get good things.” “I am deserving.” “Things are easy for me.” Every single desire filled is a tree of life — it nourishes you and facilitates your health. You only need so many wins; they don’t all need to be wins, just some. But not leaning into your desire results in only losses. Just a lot of unmet desire. 

And what I’m asking of you is to try — because your health depends on it. We all have desires, many. If you desire something and do not act on it, you are deferring your own hope. That means that, yes, you are complicit in the decline of your own health. 

In our hearts, our minds, and our nervous systems, we do just want the best for ourselves. Our desires — not our urges, cravings, or dependencies, but desires — are our signals for how to achieve greater health. You have a desire to lose weight because you want a healthier mind, spirit, and body. You have a desire for a loving relationship for the same reason. You have a desire for friendship for the same. And it goes on for the desires of money, career success, a clean space, a good meal, good quality clothes, attention, excitement, community. These desires aren’t shallow, they’re essential to our health. 

So put aside the shame you feel about your desires and understand that they are your precise and accurate whispers on how to become healthy. They’re not just extra noise, they’re signals — indicators on where to go. You want to be healthier? Lean into your desires. Lean in. Health will follow. Trust. To hunger is human, to ignore it is your injury.