We are born wanting. Before language, there is the gaze—wide, unblinking, scanning the world for warmth, for milk, for the gleam of something new. This is the seed of what I’ll call baby lustery : not yet the full flame of adult desire, but the infantile root of it. The belief that what we see will satisfy us.
Today, try this: Look at something you want but don’t need. Feel the baby-lust—the pull, the fantasy of possession. Then, without shaming yourself, turn your gaze to something you already have that is good. Breathe. Stay there for ten seconds longer than is comfortable.
The ancients called this "the lust of the eyes" — a hunger that cannot be filled because it is not a hunger for things. It is a hunger for wholeness. For assurance that we exist, that we matter, that the next glimpse will finally make us feel full. babyling lustery
That small space—between the wanting and the looking away—is where you grow up.
Maturity is not the death of desire. It is the transformation of desire from grabbing to gratitude . We are born wanting
is the itch to acquire without the maturity to ask why . It’s the dopamine hit of a package on the porch, the high of a new notification, the phantom pleasure of "saving" a post we’ll never read again. It mistakes looking for loving, and wanting for having.
The Cradle of Want: On Baby Lustery and the Hunger for More The belief that what we see will satisfy us
Because the world will always dangle another shine. But you don’t have to stay in the cradle forever.
