Thin Desire or Thick Desire?
A concept that has changed the way I look at life
Almost four years ago, I came across a life changing concept in a 5 hour 30 minute long podcast episode between Amit Varma and Samarth Bansal on The Seen and The Unseen.
Amit had given up poker many years ago, he was a regular player of the game. There was a new form of poker that had recently emerged called Match Poker, which is different from regular poker although it looks and feels the same.
One of Amit’s friends got in touch with him and told him there was an IPL-style tournament happening for this new game of Match Poker and that he should join. The friend owned a team called Hariyana Hawks, where Amit joined and won twice with that team in the tournament. Then he went on to play for the Indian team in the Asian Games, and then also went on to win twice with the Indian team.
This was during COVID times, so it was all online.
But fast forward to 2022 a few years later they were invited to the World Championship event in Macedonia, Greece. Unfortunately, a few of the teammates did not get their visas, but the team went anyway.
But this time, they got massacred. Every team they had beaten at the Asian level destroyed his team at the event. He was absolutely gutted.
After that disappointing tournament, Amit coincidentally came across a book called Wanting by Luke Burgis. It’s a book written along the lines of René Girard’s Mimetic Theory, which states that you want something because somebody else wants it.
The frame he got from the book was: Thin and Thick Desires.
Thin desires are superficial, often mimetic, shaped by what others want. They’re fleeting, externally driven, and rarely lead to lasting fulfillment.
Thick desires, on the other hand, are deep, enduring, and rooted in your core values or life purpose. They often require introspection to uncover and are more likely to lead to long-term meaning.
Some examples of thin desires that he mentioned and that I can think of:
Running a marathon but also fiercely thinking about how many likes your post-run picture will get.
Going on a holiday with your partner but just waiting to post it on social media to show everyone your life.
Eating some food and waiting to upload it online.
Or at an early age, deciding to have a family with three kids or to study abroad and settle there without thinking about the present.
Your actions in the present are clouded by thin desires.
Amit realized that he was gutted not because of the loss but because of his thin desire. He had tasted this thin desire when they won the Asian Championship with Team India during COVID, and everyone had applauded him on social media.
But this time he couldn’t show pictures on Twitter, with thousands of retweets, because they had lost badly in the World Championship held in Greece.
But he realized, over time, that his thick desire was to just understand the game and enjoy it. He understood why they lost. He understood why the other team was better.
But the problem is that the thin desire overshadows the thick desire so much that we are often left gutted.
This is the actual reason why we have such “wants” in life. Wants come out of the need for approval and validation more than the actual doing and enjoying of the thing.
I was happy to have read this essay before I began writing my own book.
In a previous episode, Amit was speaking with Nilanjana Roy on the Desire to Be a Writer.
The thin desire is to get personal branding and acclaim to wear a suit and go to some event, to attend a book launch, to get complimented by people.
While the thick desire is:
I want to tell a story.
I want to write this book because I believe this idea needs to be read by the world.
There’s nothing wrong with a little bit of thin desire and it should be enjoyed but it should be adequately balanced with the thick desire. The thin desire may bring you pleasure in the moment, but it is the thick desire that will leave you happy and satisfied.
I am lucky to have adopted this mindset. And while I enjoy the narcissistic pleasure I derive from the thin desire of the applaud I get from my book, it is actually the thick desire of writing it and sharing the story that brings me long lasting happiness.
Had I surrendered to the thin desire of thinking about what the audience would think, I would have probably written a sub-par book (by my standards), and this would have made me unhappy and in turn, the reader even more disappointed.
The ardous task of writing my book and absolutely enjoying the process has lead me to not get underwhelmed my the thin desire of the personal branding and praise from the book.
In the episode, Samarth Bansal also mentions that his own battle with thin and thick desire comes when he works on an article where he has researched deeply and had a great time writing but when the moment to hit the ‘Send’ button arrives, thoughts start coming to his head:
What if I fucked up?
What will my readers think?
He said that he would feel like isolating himself for two days after hitting send.
This was his version of balancing thin and thick desire over time.
In fact, I resonate with this too when I’m pressing the send button to my readers on Substack. But I’ve become better at it over time and can now send out articles without thinking too much.
In my early days, my thin desire of thinking what the readers would think would overpower me so much that I would go back 5–6 times and try to edit parts of the article that seemed silly.
Certain parts of the article weren’t silly but they would appear silly because my thin desire at that time was overpowering my thick desire.
In the age of social media and continuous validation, we often tread a thin line thinking only about how something will perform on social media, rather than just enjoying the event.
We often fall prey to just posting about what we are doing in the moment rather than cherising that moment.
Who am I to be a saint and preach about this?
I too suffer from it at times. But I have been ruthlessly working towards chasing my thick desire more and have become better at it with nothing but pure practice.
I notice how spending time with my friends and family is my happy place of learning how to enjoy my thick desires.
I’ve also learned a lot from my wife, who seems to be somewhat of a master at chasing the thick desire. I have the pleasure of learning from her.
When I’m with her, I forget about chasing the thin desire, and I’m deeply lost in the moment of enjoying the thick desire.
Conclusion
My thick desire was enjoying the process of writing this piece and putting various thoughts and links together. But I also know that I will have a thin desire to see how many people actually read it in their email or validated me on social media.
Pre 2022 Ankush would have cared a lot about the thin desire of writing the blog post but 2025 Ankush has learned how to control that desire.
The thin desire recalibrates our brain into thinking more about the validation of doing the event, rather than the actual enjoyment of the event itself. But the true happiness comes from chasing the thick desire.
Thank you,
(Amit) and Samarth Bansal for articulating this so clearly. It helped me observe the phenomenon in my own life and make meaningful changes because of it.Relevant Reads from my blog:
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