Changing Your Desire

I recently re-read Dallin H. Oaks' talk on Desire from the most recent General Conference. This talk intrigued me because I have been thinking a lot about making some changes in my life. Not major changes, just small healthy changes, like eating better and exercising more.

In his talk, Oaks affirms that "Desires dictate our priorities, priorities shape our choices, and choices determine our actions. The desires we act on determine our changing, our achieving, and our becoming." I've always sort of seen desire as the first seed to a future reality. A smoker cannot quit until he actually desires to do so—-really desires it; not just to please someone else, but for himself.

But I've come to suspect that desire alone won't get you there. I've had this desire for a long time to drop 20 or 30 pounds. I do really want it. I know I want the benefits of being healthier and feeling healthier. It will improve my racquetball game, allow me to rock climb tougher climbs, give me the energy and strength to keep up with my kids. I really want this.

But's let's be honest. I have wanted this for years and I'm not any closer to my goal than when I started. So what's my problem? I know, I know, you're already laughing at me because its so obvious. But before I get to that, I want to run another tangent into the thread.

I recently read an article in the news about how presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann was taking slack because her family Christian counseling business had advised gay clients that they could "pray away the gay". Sarah Palin was in similar hot water for saying the same thing. This phrase has been battered about the internet recently, with gay advocacy groups up in arms at the very idea. But let's talk about it for a minute. If a person has a desire to not be gay, is it possible to change their orientation? If that's what they really want, is it possible?

LGBT advocates would say it is going against your nature to even try. Christian's would say it would be going against your nature not to. But I'm not so much interested in whether a person should as whether they could. The scriptures talk of repentant souls losing their desire to sin. In his talk, Oaks quotes Joseph Smith speaking of people who have "overcome the evils of [their lives] and lost every desire for sin." But have you ever heard of a gay person completely doing this? I've heard anecdotal evidence about people who have gone from gay to straight, but I've also heard that those people later admit that they have only deeply suppressed their same sex attraction, not actually changed it. I've not yet heard convincing evidence that anyone has ever completely changed such a desire.

We know that desires do change over time. When I was younger, I had a real desire to travel the world. I still would do it if I had the chance, but that desire has been replaced with the desire to settle down and raise a family. Okay, maybe that's not quite the same thing, but I think most people would agree that our true desires change over time. As we mature, we desire more to get along with others, quit being so selfish, and contribute to a peaceful world. Understanding of consequences changes desire.

To the contrary, there's also certainly plenty of evidence that a person can live in opposition to their desires, such as a gay or same sex attracted man who gets married and his kids. That's easy to visualize and it probably happens more than we know. One desire (to have a family) over-rides the other desire (to be gay). Which brings us back to my desire to diet. I am living in opposition to my desire to be more healthy. My desire to eat whatever I want over-rides my desire to be healthy.

As you were no doubt about to point out earlier, my problem is not HOW BADLY I desire to be more healthy, but what I'm actually doing about it. The problem is habit. Food is addicting and I've habituated myself to certain foods (and amounts of food). I've heard successful dieters say that once you start on a diet, it needs to become a permanent change, otherwise you'll just gain all that weight back.

So in summary, we have scriptures and prophets telling us we can change our desires. We have evidence that desires can gradually change. We know that habits can change as well. Yet people, all people it would seem, continually struggle to align their desires with their actions. So how do I align my behavior with my desire? Or stated another way, how do I convince my body to actually desire only healthy amounts of food to make achieving my goal easier? Or is it not supposed to be easy? Maybe, like C-3PO said in Star Wars, "We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life."