"We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes"
About this Quote
Proust observes that we rarely bend the world to our will; instead, time bends our will to the world. Desire begins as an attempt to seize something outside us, a person, a status, a future we imagine. Yet the stubbornness of reality, together with memory and habit, slowly reshapes the contours of what we want. The change feels like growth or compromise, sometimes like betrayal, but it is chiefly the work of time acting on the self.
Across In Search of Lost Time, desire appears as a moving target. Swann persuades himself that Odette is indispensable, only to discover later that his passion has thinned and his standards have shifted. The narrator cycles through infatuations with women and with social worlds, convinced each time of their absolute necessity, then watching his own fervor cool and redirect. This is not merely fickleness; it is the psychological fact that the self is not a fixed instrument of will. Memory rewrites experience; habits devalue what once blazed; new impressions and fears reframe what is thinkable. The world changes, but we change more.
There is both consolation and melancholy here. Consolation, because the failure to master circumstances need not be defeat; desires adjust, suffering softens, and what seemed intolerable becomes ordinary. Melancholy, because cherished passions are vulnerable not only to external obstacles but to our future indifference. The person who wanted so fiercely becomes a stranger to the person who no longer does.
Proust turns this recognition toward a defense of art. If life dissolves our desires, art can fix in form the intensity they once possessed, rescuing a pattern from flux. We learn, then, less to engineer reality than to study the transformations within us. Patience and self-scrutiny replace heroic will. The true mastery is not domination of events but the understanding that our desires are historical, porous, and perpetually under revision. Through that understanding, acceptance becomes an active intelligence rather than a passive surrender.
Across In Search of Lost Time, desire appears as a moving target. Swann persuades himself that Odette is indispensable, only to discover later that his passion has thinned and his standards have shifted. The narrator cycles through infatuations with women and with social worlds, convinced each time of their absolute necessity, then watching his own fervor cool and redirect. This is not merely fickleness; it is the psychological fact that the self is not a fixed instrument of will. Memory rewrites experience; habits devalue what once blazed; new impressions and fears reframe what is thinkable. The world changes, but we change more.
There is both consolation and melancholy here. Consolation, because the failure to master circumstances need not be defeat; desires adjust, suffering softens, and what seemed intolerable becomes ordinary. Melancholy, because cherished passions are vulnerable not only to external obstacles but to our future indifference. The person who wanted so fiercely becomes a stranger to the person who no longer does.
Proust turns this recognition toward a defense of art. If life dissolves our desires, art can fix in form the intensity they once possessed, rescuing a pattern from flux. We learn, then, less to engineer reality than to study the transformations within us. Patience and self-scrutiny replace heroic will. The true mastery is not domination of events but the understanding that our desires are historical, porous, and perpetually under revision. Through that understanding, acceptance becomes an active intelligence rather than a passive surrender.
Quote Details
| Topic | Embrace Change |
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