What Is Wanting?

(Originally posted on my Tumblr.)

In the English language, we use the word “want” in different ways. Is it possible to decide to want something?

If I am riding in a car with my friend, I can say, “Will you pull in here? I want to run in and get some milk.”

If the waitress is asking for my decision between two rather mediocre choices, I can say, “I want the zucchini pie.”

If a coworker asks me to take a break and go out for something to drink, I can say, “No, I want to finish this today.”

These are all common uses of the word “want.”

But then I see something like these:




















































This is an entirely different kind of want. This produces the desire for some sort of action— I want to make and eat that dessert, I want to cuddle those cats. This produces awareness of some sort of lack— I am aware viscerally that I do not have that dessert to eat nor those cats to cuddle in a way that I am not viscerally aware that I do not have milk, zucchini pie, or a completed task at work.

Yet both are accurate uses of the word want. Is it also accurate to label the latter experience as desire? Or is that an inaccurate use of the word, or does its standard use in sexual contexts render it inapplicable here?

Sometimes people say, “How can you be asexual? You want to have sex!” Well, yes. But it’s zucchini pie want, milk want, not cat want. It’s not the same thing at all, to me, and yet we use exactly the same word for it.

Thoughts?

(Photo credits: Graham Cracker S’mores Candy, Cats on Windowsill)