He Who Desires

“He who desires, but acts not, breeds pestilence.” -William Blake, “The Proverbs of Hell”

I’m tempted to write, “This means that…” But this quote is too moving and enigmatic to yield so easily to interpretation and application. I feel impelled to marinate in it a bit, don’t you?

Desire can be dangerous, sometimes fatal. A pestilence pervades society and threatens all. Blake suggests that unacted desires might be a greater harm than fulfilled ones.

What inner or outer law keeps us from acting? It could be a parent’s order, a biblical command, taboo, or conscience. These prohibitors know the future all too well: do x, and y will surely follow. But we begin to suspect that life might be more than compliance. That unwieldy desires give us no rest, or turn up as displaced obsessions, steps removed from desire’s original object.

This quote from Blake is unsettling, and it is somehow irresistibly inviting as well. I find that his words are acting upon me, bypassing my command center, even as I seek to understand them more fully. They speak of that two-sided coin of desire. We sense that we do less than we ought, and we wonder about the unfulfilled lives we might leave behind us. There are tolls to be paid regardless of the road we choose to travel.