Who is to tell us what to desire? It is perhaps what most distinguishes a person, his or her baseline: what one wants. Notwithstanding that many (most?) things of what we do desire are short sighted. I remember, for instance, in my childhood, wishing that I had enough money to buy shark jaws — it was what I wanted, the jaws (including the teeth) of a large, great white shark. If I had had $500, back then (might as well have been the moon, that sum of cash, when I was ten), I think I just might have bought them, one of the most useless things I can currently think of having. I lacked perspective, back then.
Let's take it one step up. If we were to take the perspective of one outside time itself, from the point of view of eternity, I wonder how many (most?) of our desires would look like to us. We are not children, and (for at least material things) if we want something badly enough, we can get it. What things would seem to us just so useless to us from the perspective of eternity, things we have gotten, things we will obtain? It is perhaps that some people have had something like this view, I think, people like Jesus, for one. People who are at once other-worldly and yet down to earth at the same time — they see.
What do these people say are important? Not material things (if we keep them for ourselves), but what? That strange word that pops up whenever we discuss things like "eternity": love. Above all else, love.
