I’ve been thinking about desire.

Not the kind that stars in movies and advertising, but the kind that makes people go–the desire that motivates people to achieve and succeed.

I have friends who are working to achieve their desires. One wants to be a poet and author. Another wants to be a mother. A third wants to be a romance writer. They know what their goals are, and they know what they have to do to achieve their desires.

Me, I wasn’t even sure I knew what my desire truly was. What motivates me? What is it that I want more than anything else? Then I realized that I did know what my desire was, but it is both more complicated and more simple than what my friends want.

I desire knowledge.

Not an education–although that can go along with it–just knowledge. I want to know things. To learn things. Many things. All different kinds of things.

I want to know about the founding fathers of the United States. I want to know how to fence. I want to know about the beliefs of the different religions in the world. I want to know how to make plants grow better. I want to know how photosynthesis really works. I want to know how to box. I want to know words–their meanings and how they came into being and how they’re pronounced and used properly. I want to know why people do the things they do. I want to know the perfect lemon cake recipe.

There is so much out there I want to know, and yet there is so little call for such knowledge, so little use for it. No one is going to give me a job because I know some plant physiology and I know some HTML and I know the basics of ethics. There’s just no call for it–yet they are all part of my desire.

And that, more than anything else, is why I sometimes have such a hard time. There is no call for my knowledge, and no one willing to pay me solely to learn stuff.

But there should be.