– What is it that you fantasize about?

World peace? I thought so.

Do you fantasize about international fame?

Do you fantasize about winning a Pulitzer Prize?

Or a Nobel Peace Prize?

An MTV Music Award?

Do you fantasize about meeting some genius hunk, ostensibly bad…

but secretly simmering with noble passion…

and willing to sleep on the wet spot?

– I’ll take two! I’ll take two!

– What was that?

Kimberly will take two.

You get Lacan’s point.

Fantasies have to be unrealistic…

**because the moment… the second…

that you get what you seek…

you don’t…

you can’t want it anymore.

**

**In order to continue to exist…

desire must have its objects

perpetually absent.

**

It’s not the “it” that you want.

It’s the fantasy of”it.”

– So, desire supports crazy fantasies.

Sorry.

This is what Pascal means when he says

that we are only truly happy…

when daydreaming about future happiness.

– It came today.

– Or why we say…

the hunt is sweeter

than the kill.

**Or be careful what you wish for,

not because you’ll get it…

but because you’re doomed

not to want it once you do.

**

So the lesson of Lacan is,

living by your wants

will never make you happy.

**What it means to be fully human is

to strive to live by ideas and ideals…

**

and not to measure your life

by what you’ve attained

in terms of your desires…

**but those small moments

of integrity, compassion…

rationality, even self-sacrifice.

Because in the end, the only way

that we can measure the

significance of our own lives…

**is by valuing the lives of others.

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