The root of desire is positive. The painful bits arise only from the absence (or a negative image of a scant presence) of that which is amazing to us. Whenever I therefore feel the want of a thing, I need only focus on the few bits of that thing which do presently contact me - something I do or some stimulation that occasionally contacts me. Were there none, I could not desire, and so the desire acts as a signal to find them. There may be not much more than a memory to turn to, but when the covert nonverbal dialog focuses exclusively thereupon, the lightness that comes from desire fulfilled is mine.
And what if through repeated practice, the memory is worn out, changed, tainted? The beauty of pure tragedy is that one must lose all sense of the thing lost before it is truly gone. At that point, the one who suffers the loss cannot suffer, because there is no indication remaining that anything at all is missing. If it changes, one can only hope that what remains is less than the feeling of something forgotten.
The choice, should one have multiple practiced approaches available for execution, is between systematic destruction of our contact with that which we love, or the toleration of some pain that comes before we can isolate and preserve what we have of the beloved. The first is oblivious tragedy the second self-controlled optimism.
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