it’s okay to want a beautiful life
let yourself lust
embracing Desire
I remember talking with my brother at one point, who knows what he wants: a simple life with a few specific luxuries that he can pretty reasonably attain and not much else. He stated his desires to me and I said, oh yeah, I guess that’s what I want too. He laughed in my face and said: no it’s not. You have always wanted a Big Life.
He was right. I have always wanted a big, beautiful life, and I was kind of shocked that I needed someone who apparently knew that even better than I did to tell me that—to give me permission to admit what I wanted.
Ever since I was young, I was always angling towards the steepest path to max-freedom and max-leverage (though of course I couldn’t have named that at the time). I got a job as early as I could legally earn money, and worked through high school so I could go to dinners with my friends, get myself pretty things I liked, invest in things I thought would benefit me. I loved earning, and I loved being able to live freely (which back then meant going to the mall and getting a frozen yogurt and a new tshirt, lol) with the money that I earned. One could say that not much has changed, except my priorities — which shifted in order (but not in contents). Eventually, I began prioritizing doing things that gave me life force above prioritizing maximum earnings.
Somewhere in that reshuffling process, I kind of lost track of the fact that, despite the re-ordering, I still do, in fact, want a beautiful life. But as I got more into this artistic and soulful part of the world (and myself), I noticed that it felt almost taboo to say you wanted an ambitious, extravagant, beautiful life. There was this sense that doing soulful work should be enough for you.
So, I convinced myself that this was the case for a while—that all I wanted was just to write my little essays, eat my few meals a day, and I would be just fine!
But in hindsight, it is so obvious that this would not satisfy me. That the bigness of my ambition matches the bigness of my desires. And that this bigness is all something to embrace, not be ashamed of, or to break apart and only embrace parts of; it is one big package—Me!
I like nice things. I want to adorn my home beautifully. I want a big, beautiful kitchen to cook for all the people I love in. I want a wardrobe that feels like it reflects me. I want to travel to the places where my people are without thought. I want freedom, ease, flow, effortlessness. These things require a degree of freedom that you can really only achieve by admitting that you want a beautiful life. Because to get what you want, you usually need to at least acknowledge that you actually want it.
it’s okay to work soulfully & have desires (duh)
So this is me saying — to anyone who is unsure — that you can pursue your soul work and embrace your desires. You don’t need to stop wanting, or view material desires as some sort of impure ugliness in you that you need to suppress just because you’re living from your heart. It’s fine: you can want to make your art and make a beautiful life, too. In fact, they are clearly meant to be in service of each other. I wrote this essay about figuring out the dance of turning my art into a business, and it’s something I want to write even more about. Because I see this I-just-want-to-be-a-vessel-for-God-and-receive-nothing-for-it-attitude A LOT. This sense of: well, I picked this un-prestigious thing that isn’t an obviously lucrative career, therefore I must suffocate my desires and convince myself that I Don’t Want More.
But actually, it is perfectly okay to re-orient your ambition towards what you are talented at and want to see more of in the world. This is really the crux of what I am saying: that you shouldn’t be ashamed to go hard after the thing you want, that you are good at, and that has the capacity to benefit the world and help you thrive in the process.
Call me Randian, but I think a little selfishness is good, actually. If what you want drives you to create something that the world needs, that is healthy. That is generative. And being generative is how we change the world. Desire is natural—it is human. Desire is what perpetuates our species; it literally creates Life.
Don’t think your ideas are any different. There needs to be a lust in creativity. Or at least: it doesn’t hurt if it is there. You shouldn’t make things Just To Make Money, but you should also be okay with making money as a side effect of making beautiful, important things. Also, serving the market is a loving act. If people want things, and you have the capacity to make them — you should probably make them! And you should be rewarded for making them! Making things requires time! Energy! Effort! LOVE! For goodness sake, you deserve to be rewarded for devoting yourself to the work that you feel you are here to do, and you shouldn’t have to compromise on wanting a beautiful life because of it. (This is also clearly how we get more talented people to choose more aligned, soulful work, who presently feel stuck trading their souls for money because they think that is the only way to actualize their desires.)
What I’m saying is that this whole desire-shaming-thing that happens when you start to embrace being an Artist doesn’t need to be the case. I have done the non-attachment thing, the just-surrender-blindly-and-trust-in-the-universe thing. And hey, it is a beautiful state to be in, one I am certain I will dip in and out of many times in my life. But lately I have also been realizing that you can nudge the universe a little bit, tell it where you want to go, who you want to attract, what you want to actualize. You can admit what you want.
And you might be in a totally different state, a different phase, have a different relationship to your desires as you grow. We ebb and flow in all things. I wrote recently of being in a state of wildness. And in that wildness is this sense of being on the hunt—a feeling of hunger, desire, a vision of what I am chasing. But if you are feeling that hunger, consider this a nudge to lean in. To embrace the ferocity of your desire, to create from love, from ambition, from desire, from lust, from soul. To let it all coexist inside of you.
You can want to thrive, want nice things, want a little cottage, want a nice vacation, want to retire your parents, want a stunning kitchen, want the time and space to garden and tend to your home, want the freedom to be a present mother or father — wants that can be made possible through the freedom you can access by creating value for the world and being rewarded for it. I want to give you permission to want, to yearn, to create from soul, without denying yourself what you truly want.
You don’t need to be satisfied with less. You don’t need to shrink, to pretend you don’t want because it is more polite, more altruistic, more selfless, more sweet to do so, to posture as humble and modest, when really you are Large and Lustful. The systems that be are there, either way, waiting to be harnessed by your gifts. And it’s harder to change the system than it is to change your own behaviour inside of them. So, if you think the incentives of a system promote morally perverted misaligned, then alchemize the system by acting in a pure way inside of it, and show the world (and yourself!) that you can still have a beautiful life, while living in alignment with your Soul.
It’s settled then. I’ve given myself permission to Want. So, why write this? Because I wish someone told me at the beginning of my journey that you can want a big, beautiful life and pursue what feels like your Life’s Work. These are not in conflict, you don’t need to choose. Your competence in one domain is likely more of a reflection on how you relate to excellence than a specific, isolated skill you won’t be able to bring with you. You don’t need to sell your soul to have the material life you want, or reclaim your soul while settling for a contracted, constrained life that doesn’t actually please you or make you feel safe. I’m writing this because I wish someone told me: it’s okay to want a beautiful life and to want to do beautiful work to create it. If I had heard that, I might have acted sooner on pursuing both.
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related essays you might enjoy: to actualize yourself, actualize your ideas, unblock your mind, don’t let your ideas rot, embracing my Wild Woman
Thanks for letting me live my beautiful life. Appreciate you all. Much love.
So glad you wrote this, there seems to be an overwhelming lack of pursuit or desire on substack, in its place is this yearning for a quiet, ‘work’ free life. However, being creative, being an artist IS work, and if there is a demand for your creativity you should be rewarded for it. Being ‘creative’ and wanting are not mutually exclusive.
Yes it okay to want a beautiful life and even better to have fullfilling life. We probably also need defense for "it is okay to be karma yogi" or "it is okay to have ascetic life"