The Price and Prize
What is the consequence of desire?
Different goads kick and prod as we slog day to day, and we rarely see the fruits. Maybe we fear the consequences, afraid of success as much as failure. The demands placed upon us by our desires are often as clear and structured as the payments on an installment plan. However, payments can be put off indefinitely. Of course this has its own cost, but by the time Collections reaches out, the original compulsion is diluted. Payoff seems pointless. The desire has been purchased by other entities at a lower price.
This is the difference between author and critic, between athlete and broadcaster, between dictator and theorist, between lover and voyeur, between sainthood and seeker. To desire something, especially something great, is natural, as is the response from the crowd. Cries, jeers, pure hatred. Greatness produces its own opposite desires from those who resent it or feel the one desiring it is unworthy of his aim. And maybe he is; one problem of desire is delusion. To the same extent one is able to have faith in his deluded desire, he is more or less able to reach out and grasp it.
On July 13th, two desires were tested, one positive, affirmative, the other negative, resentful.
Trump is nothing if not delusional. A man with faith in himself, and faith in the people who love and believe in his ability to affect their lives for the better. A man with a desire who sets out to seize it no sooner than the full form of this desire has made itself concrete. Through prosecution, vilification, and now gunshots. He goes down, his secret service entourage suddenly folded over him like a living Kevlar blanket. Then he stands, he yells “Fight,” reaches out a fist, and grabs his desire from the air. He has seized it. And no wonder men cheer. No wonder his detractors tear at their shirts. A man who has seized his desire after coming under physical attack is a man who is inured to defeat. Voters see in him something they wish they could be: a man unafraid of his desire.
Two died at that rally. What of them? The shooter’s resentful desire took everything from him. His bullet was thrown off course by chance or miracle, and he died as he must have known he would. A cause with no remainder.
The other was sadly in the path of his projectile – who was he? What of his desires?
He was a 50-year-old father and local fire chief. His desire was to stretch out his arms to save his loved ones. He has seized his desire, too.
John Jay Stancliff is a writer and construction worker who lives with his family in Montana but makes it down to the Wagon Box as often as he can. His novel Fedbook is available on Amazon and other retail outlets. Subscribe to his Substack, NINEVEH 20XX.
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