Starting your life as the son of Zeus comes with a fair bit of baggage, and there are almost certainly plenty of expectations, but Tantalus seems to have handled it well: earning a reputation for his wealth and hospitality and as the mortal king. I would consider this a decent start toward an accomplished life. With a little pluck and determination, Tantalus could have even leapt past the nepotism that’s so visible and distasteful in much of elite society. I’m even willing to overlook his arrogance, and his pride, as those are understandable results of having Zeus as a father. And everyone, sooner or later, throws a bad dinner party for the gods that you want to impress, or invites the gods to a dull night, but, well, the line is crossed once you serve your son, Pelops, as the main course.
This chef’s special wasn’t what the gods ordered on that night, so they were unsurprisingly horrified, sending Tantalus to the deepest part of the underworld, where he was tortured for eternity with insatiable thirst and hunger—which seems like both an overreaction and completely reasonable, once I consider some of the shabby meals that I’ve been served. What’s notable about the punishment, however, is its mythological cruelty: whenever Tantalus attempted to drink from a pool of water, the pool receded from his reach; whenever Tantalus attempted to eat fruit from a tree, the branches lifted from his grasp. And that nice little tale of sadism is where the word tantalize comes from—a description of the taunt and tease and tempt and terror in all of those wonderful delights just beyond your reach.
Although my impulse is to write about how striving, about how wanting the unwantable, is utterly human, that seems incomplete. At best it is a partial truth—and it ignores the actual depth of those fundamental drives. I probably need to write about the nervous system, about viscera, about the yearning that is core to our cells, in a way that doesn’t stress anything special about being human and stresses, instead, the necessity of desire for every organism in a world of scarcity.
Just outside my window, as I type these words, I hear a small bird, chirping with excitement and anxiety and certainly tantalized by something beyond the reach of its beak. Perhaps if I move closer to the window, I will spot a squirrel, too, who is tantalized by a spec in the distance, and busy executing all those forever-urgent squirrel tasks. The sidewalk below me might have a few people who also appear tantalized—hurrying toward something, distracted by something, hoping for something—that’s visible in their walks, their posture, in how they scurry across the street.
What could be more natural, in other words, than wanting what you don’t quite have in this moment, than straining to grasp what’s just beyond your reach? From the moment you struggle to touch the mysterious, resplendent mobile high above your crib to the moment, many years later, when you’re hobbled and tired and looking with envy at the physique of a young physician in the hallway outside your room, there’s a whole lot of wants that pass through your mind.
And nearly everybody understands, sooner or later, that fulfilling a desire just fuels the creation of a new desire, to the point that achieving your goals becomes a recipe for discontentment—after the championship is won, after the contract is signed, after the house is bought, after the vacation is over, there’s almost certainly a restlessness, a sudden realization that all the energy that you’ve expended for so long needs a new outlet. Because what’s left after the climax, after you’ve achieved the goal, is a disturbing sensation of hollowness.
Reaching the top of any mountain does have the predictable and quite ridiculous consequence of making you curious about the view from below. And the only solution is to relish the messiness of the contradictory state that, if you want any fulfillment, you must maintain: a sense of satisfaction in the current moment while simultaneously striving toward something new. It is a wonderful contradiction, and it can’t be escaped.
You can’t lean too far toward satisfaction, as you’ll end up static and lifeless and indifferent, in a comfortable life that you abruptly realize is without meaning. Nor can you lean too far toward striving either, as you’ll end up forever chasing and unfulfilled and never able to comprehend the concept of enough. We might even be able to distill a few thousand years of philosophy and nearly every religious tradition into a succinct statement about the need to be present while also striving toward something better, if you can manage that peculiar dichotomy.
How unsurprising it is that our greatest stories typically force us to confront these conflicts, that literature is fundamentally created on the distance between character and desire. In navigating the ever-shifting landscape of desires, there are uncertainties, doubts, confusions, contradictions, paradoxes, misunderstandings, failures, regrets, and occasionally, of course, a bit of despair. So we wonder whether the path is right. Whether the goals are proper. Whether the conflict is worth the expense. But it is foolish to avoid these questions, to pretend that you’re past them, as there’s always, just around the corner, something that’s unknown to you, but that you’ll soon find tantalizing.
Yearning, reaching, being forever slightly hungry. That's good but can also increase the stress level. considering all the possibilities and choices available. My solution, when the steam reaches the top, is to revert back to the moment, the Now. Without losing sight of the goal, the desire and the hunger. Putting it in perspective.
That last paragraph fabulously unpacks my favorite part of study drafting. I'll spend more time than anywhere else on those distances and debates. In fact the "debate" is a narrative element that few writing coaches really seem able to justify but that you explain very well here.