the intelligence of desire

why i recommend having a crush: desire as perception, knowledge, and becoming

“Each time my heart is broken it makes me feel more adventurous.” — Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

I’ve somehow become an unofficial ambassador for yearning - crushes, desire, and (by inevitable extension) heartbreak. Among friends and a few strange corners of the internet, I’ve built a small reputation as someone who earnestly campaigns for throwing your heart into the fire of love just to see what might emerge on the other side.

I stand by it. I should be hired as Head of Growth for Crushes and Loving, or Venus, if she were a 25-year-old girl with a Twitter account and a penchant for unsolicited advice. Because I genuinely believe that having a crush, and the kind of loving it demands, might be one of the best things you can do for your mind, your soul, and your life.

evidence of my personal brand from conversations with D

This is my best attempt at making the case for why. My quiet mission here is to rebrand the crush as sacred and to convince at least one person that desire is a vital sign of life, rather than a weakness.

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1. Loving sharpens the self and taste

People often talk about crushes as aspirational mirrors. Often, they reflect the qualities we long to cultivate in ourselves - confidence, charisma, creativity, spiritual clarity. When we fall for someone, we’re drawn to the version of ourselves that wakes up in their light as much as we are drawn to them as individuals.

When I have a crush on someone, I always like to ask myself: What is it about them that I wish I had within myself? That question almost always reveals something useful and tender, a part of me that’s waking up and wanting more.

I’m deeply grateful for every person I’ve ever crushed on, because each one helped carve the contours of who I am. I am a mosaic of of every crush I’ve had: the boy in my documentary photography class who deepened my love for images and attention; the musician who reshaped how I listen and refined my taste; the academic who made me think sharper, debate harder, notice more. Desire became a kind of curriculum, a map for who I wanted to become.

You also begin to sharpen your own taste in art. There’s a meme online: “The best time to get someone to consume a piece of media is when they’re in love with you.” And it’s true. When your crush loves something, it becomes radiant. A song, a poem, a film - they all take on new significance. Art becomes emotionally encrypted, glowing with secondhand meaning. Through that glow, you start to figure out what actually moves you.

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2. Loving makes life feel more vivid

I prescribe crushes the way others recommend magnesium or meditation. When a friend tells me life feels flat or grey, stripped of urgency or sparkle, I usually ask: when’s the last time you had a crush?

Because loving, even secretly or stupidly, can’t help but crack something open in us. It shakes us from mundanity, adds colour to the edges of things. Even if it doesn’t lead to love, or leads straight into heartbreak, it’s still proof that the heart is pulsating and that something in you still wants.

And I don’t think love has to last, or even be returned, to be meaningful. Love that doesn’t “work out” isn’t wasted, because the very act of loving is its own kind of arrival. To love is to expand, to reach and to be made larger by the longing itself.

We are meant to reach, to ache, to write bad poetry and send questionable texts, to become slightly (respectfully) unhinged in the most beautiful, human way. That’s how we come alive.

As my friend, N, put it: “The loss of desire is the greatest loss. That’s what true depression is.” I agree - I think the real tragedy is numbness, but we mostly get caught up in the fear of heartbreak.

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3. Loving makes you smarter

Anne Carson writes:

“Desire awakens, increases, and sharpens awareness. That’s the beginning of intelligence: the reaching.”

A crush tunes your brain to a higher frequency, because you start noticing everything: the cadence of their voice, the shape of their laugh, the emotional geometry of a song they once said they liked. Your world becomes high-resolution. In a way, desire is a technology of perception, which has the power to heighten attention, deepens awareness, and pulls you into presence.

It’s also epistemological. Plato saw Eros as the bridge between beauty and truth, a force that begins in desire and ascends toward understanding. Audre Lorde described Eros as the root of our power: creative, sensual, sacred. To want is to orient yourself toward it, to shape your perception around it. Wanting becomes a way of knowing, a way of becoming.

Yes, a crush might make you briefly delusional. You might find yourself spiralling, decoding texts like scripture, journaling like a 19th-century mystic overcome by divine visitation. But that madness, the reaching, can be an essential part of how insight arrives.

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A closing note from the heart

To be clear, none of this is a hot or original take. Anne Carson said it better. Plato said it older. But I still think it bears repeating, especially now, because sometimes we forget. Sometimes the pain of heartache hardens us, quietly, without permission. I know I forget, often. Even as the one writing this, I’m still terrified. Honestly, I’m writing it down just to remind myself of what I already know.

This isn’t an argument for chasing doomed love for the thrill of it. Heartbreak is one of the hardest things we’re asked to survive. This is not a romanticisation of pain, and I’m certainly not suggesting we pursue people who can’t love us back. That’s just reckless self-abandonment.

I believe deeply in something like soulmates - a real, mutual, sustaining love. That’s the dream, of course. But the search is hard, as anything worthwhile tends to be, and we have to keep trying.

I think heartbreak deserves less caution than most of us assume. Because love, even when it doesn’t last, is still worth the price of entry. It’s proof that you dared to care and that your heart was open. Even for a brief, burning moment in this life, you were fully, recklessly, beautifully alive.

me and who

So despite how much it can hurt, I know I would still do it all again, and again, and again. (Though hopefully not too many more times. Ideally, the next fall is the last one and it lands somewhere soft.)

It takes real effort to keep the heart soft in a world that tells us to harden. We have to fiercely protect our hunger for a hunger, from cynicism, from fear, from the quiet temptation to stop wanting altogether.

Because someone once said: we are not defined by the love we receive - we are the love we give. The act of loving, even without outcome, still expands the soul and reveals what we’re capable of carrying.

And if nothing else, maybe we can make some excellent (or awful) art out of it.

“I have sought [love] finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, is is what - at last - I have found” — Bertrand Russell (via M)

A mini playlist of thematically related songs. I have turned these songs into a Spotify playlist here (thanks P for the cute idea!):

Shark Smile by Big Thief

Jaded by Near Tears

Fade Into You by Mazzy Star

My Kind of Woman by Mac DeMarco

Margaret by Lana del Rey

True Love Will Find You in the End by Daniel Johnston

Lover Girl by Aaron Frazer

Kingston by Faye Webster

Love it if we made it by The 1975

After the first kiss by Faye Webster (Faye Webster just generally is great yearncore)

Eventually by Tame Impala

Timothy by Tennis

Turn to Hate by Orville Peck

Electric Feel by MGMT

Me and Michael by MGMT

All things end by Hozier

Somethinggreater by Parcels

Something Good by Alt-J

Something Good Can Work by Two Door Cinema Club