Why do I want it just because it's forbidden?
Sometimes the wish appears only after the rule does. A door marked "staff only", a message you were asked not to read, a thing you never cared about until someone said no. Then it pulls. And when you get it, it turns out you did not want it much at all.
Many people remember one such act from childhood. Small, pointless, done for no reason they could name then or now. The memory stays because the reason never arrived.
Augustine wrote about one of these, in Book II of his Confessions.
A tree of ordinary pears
He is sixteen. Near his family's vineyard stands a pear tree with fruit that is not especially good to look at or to eat. Late one night he and some friends shake the tree and carry off a huge load. They taste a few and throw the rest to the pigs.
Augustine had better pears at home. He was not hungry. He says they did it "to do what we liked only, because it was misliked."
Looking for the object
He does not stop at confession. He keeps asking what exactly he wanted. Not the pears; that much is obvious. Then he notices something:
"For had I then loved the pears I stole, and wished to enjoy them, I might have done it alone... But since my pleasure was not in those pears, it was in the offence itself."
— Augustine, Confessions, Book II, tr. E. B. Pusey
So the wish had no object. It had a shape: a line, and the act of stepping over it. The pears were only where the line happened to be drawn.
That is a strange kind of wanting. Most wishes point at something you could enjoy. This one points at the rule itself. Take the rule away and the wish disappears with it.
Augustine also notices he would not have gone alone. The friends were part of it. The line needed someone watching it being crossed.
Doing something that clearly harms you is a related puzzle, with its own page. Here nothing is gained and nothing much is lost. Only the line is there.
What the passage leaves
Augustine never fully answers his own question. He circles it for several chapters, and the circling is the honest part. The question passes to the reader: when I want exactly the thing I was told not to have, what am I really reaching for?
Epimelea is an app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.