Sort the desire

Around 306 BCE, the philosopher Epicurus bought a house with a garden just outside Athens and opened it as a school. Unusually for the time, women and slaves were welcome. His followers became known as the philosophers of the Garden.

Epicurus taught that pleasure is the goal of life, which made him notorious, and still makes "epicurean" sound like rich food and fine wine. But his idea of pleasure was strikingly plain: friends, conversation, and freedom from pain and fear. He lived mostly on bread and water, and once wrote to a friend asking for a little pot of cheese, so that he could have a feast whenever he liked.

In his Letter to Menoeceus, Epicurus sorted desires into three kinds:

• Natural and necessary: food, shelter, rest, friendship, freedom from fear. Easy to satisfy, and painful to go without.
• Natural but unnecessary: a fancy meal, a nicer apartment, a vacation. Fine to enjoy, but you don't suffer much without them.
• Empty: fame, power, endless wealth, everyone's admiration. These come from opinion, not nature, and have no limit.

The third kind is the trap. A natural desire has a stopping point: you eat, and you're full. An empty desire doesn't. A raise becomes a baseline, and the next one looks necessary. Psychologists call this the hedonic treadmill: people adapt quickly to gains, and go back to wanting more.

Much anxiety comes from treating the second and third kinds as if they were the first. "I need that promotion." "I need them to like me." Sorting the desire doesn't mean you can't want it. It shows how much weight it deserves.

Epicurus wasn't against pleasure. He was against bad deals. In the Letter to Menoeceus he says some pleasures should be passed up because they bring greater pains afterward, and some pains are worth choosing because a greater pleasure follows.

So the second question is about cost. What does chasing this take from you in calm, sleep, money and time with friends? A desire can be natural and still not be worth what it costs this month.

Jess is a well-paid engineer who likes her team. A rival company has offered her a "Head of" title for the same salary, with longer hours and a two-hour commute. She doesn't especially want the job, but she can't stop thinking about how the title would look to her old classmates on LinkedIn. She's been sleeping badly since the offer came in.