The Neuroscience of Wanting: A Letter to My Younger Self

“Write a letter to your future self,” Mrs. Fawson said.

At least I think it was Mrs. Fawson. The years blend, and I can’t remember my grade school teachers’ names like I used to. Except for Mr. T. He taught typing asdf;lkj keep your fingers on the home keys and was an anomaly, the only male teacher in school. Glasses, brown tweed suit. He was probably younger than I am now, but to me his bald head shouted ancient! And Ms. C, who was the PE teacher, and I was pretty sure a lesbian. She loved Steve Young and had a mullet. Maybe she really did love Steve, or maybe he was a cover, or maybe I was just a kid who didn’t know yet that ladies can have haircuts like that and be totally into sports and not be gay. I can’t remember my homeroom teacher’s name, but when I see a picture of my classmates, I can recite their first and last names—about 20 in all—even though I was only in class with some of the kids for one year. If I could find that picture now, the character tees telling the story of our 90s suburban culture, I would see her name printed next to my classmates, but it’s not important now.

“Write what you want to be, where you want to live, who you are married to. Write about your career and your education that led you there. Then, fold it up, put it in the envelope, seal it, and write ‘To be opened in 2025.’”

Even though I opened it nearly every time I came across it in my memorabilia, I didn’t need to reread it to remember what I wrote about the job I wanted. Nestled amongst the letters from pen pals, birthday cards, trinkets, and baubles from my childhood travels to exotic places like Wisconsin and Florida was a letter that said what I wanted to be:

Astronaut. First woman on the moon.

I remember a kind of sinking feeling while writing that letter. I wrote astronaut not because it was true, but because it was sensational. I wanted to do something. Something that mattered. Something that people would see. And, most importantly, something that a girl hadn’t done yet. Something a girl wasn’t supposed to do. Something a girl wasn’t allowed to do. I was keen on bucking stereotypes, even as I wore dresses and played tackle football with the boys at recess. I had no interest in going to space. Not really. Maybe I wrote it because I really didn’t know what I wanted to do, and that’s not a good enough answer when the school mill is pumping out kids ready to go to college and go into debt to get a degree and a job and a mortgage and a life.

Writing that I wanted to be an astronaut was more of a barely conscious nod to the wanting. An admission of wanting something I didn’t think I was allowed to want, which happened to be wearing a spacesuit. The wanting may well have worn a three-piece pink suit, a habit, or a wetsuit. The wanting was something I wasn’t familiar with yet, and wouldn’t be for a very, very long time.

The Buddhist’s talk about wanting as the source of our suffering. Tanha is craving, and it’s the second noble truth. Okay, great. So enlightenment = not wanting. I’ll get right on that. I meditate. I try to focus on the not wanting. I get after myself for losing focus. One, two, three, four, breathing, feeling the tickle of breath in my nostrils, why is one nostril kinda stuffy, I can’t forget to pick up more hay for the guinea pigs, why am I the only one who thinks about this, dammit, one, two, three, four, breathing in, exhale.

I work on not wanting. Not wanting a sandwich, not wanting to write a bestseller on my first try, not wanting to lose 24 pounds, not wanting to stop lying about how much weight I actually want to lose, not wanting to stop caring about my weight, not wanting my husband to do more around the house, not wanting my debt to be gone, not wanting to move, not wanting to never want to leave where I live. All the small mutinies I stage against my own wanting, every single day, the same mutiny I staged at ten with a spacesuit.

In my final term of my undergrad, I sat in my psychopharmacology class learning about neurotransmitters and how drugs actually work. Did you know that docs don’t really understand how anesthesia works, by the way? They just know it does. Did you also know that anesthesia has to have several different components working at the same time? Numbing, amnesia, immobility, and loss of consciousness? It would be pretty fucking terrible to be unconscious but fully able to feel the painful shenanigans they were performing, like that colonoscopy you put off for years until you saw someone share online about their precancerous polyp.

In this class, we learned that dopamine is a real darling of a neurotransmitter. Sciencey-sounding folks on the interwebs like to talk about dopamine like it’s in charge of pleasure. Like Oprah, standing on the brain stage, “You get a hit! You get a hit! EVERYBODY GETS A HIT!” But dopamine is so much more interesting than that. Dopamine is synthesized from tyrosine, and when it’s broken down further, it becomes norepinephrine. Dopamine is critical for motivation and movement. Hence why someone develops a movement disorder like Parkinson’s when neurological degeneration hits the dopamine neurons that are prolific along a certain pathway in the brain. Dopamine also has 5 different types of receptors and acts on the adjacent neuron in complex ways. Dopamine (DA) does initially work as a reward system, but it is much more heavily involved in motivation and movement. Imagine you're playing a slot machine. You get a good set on your third try! DOPAMINE! So you keep playing. 3rd, 4th, 20th try, nothing. 21st? Winner! When does the DA show up? Not when you win. Not when you think you'll win. It shows up when you don't know if you're going to win or lose. Your brain doesn't care about winning or losing; it cares about NOT KNOWING. So, no, you don’t want to “dopamine fast,” bro.

I tend to think about spiritual things through the lens of biology and neuroscience, even though I’m aware of the risk in that, flippantly bolting dopamine onto a 2000-year-old Buddhist concept like I’m a sloppy mechanic. That’s not what I’m doing. This is just how my brain processes information. It sees a pattern and asks, “So what?” Science that never gets applied to an actual life feels like mental masturbation to me. Be that as it may — it occurs to me, with tanha, that the goal isn’t to get rid of the wanting. Because remember, getting rid of wanting is getting rid of dopamine. Bad news, bears. The goal is to make friends with it. To invite the wanting in, to give it a chance to stand on the stage and shout as loud as it wants about all the things it’s longing for.

This is some scary shit, my friends. It’s scary to let the wanting out. To really turn your face toward it and ask, what has been lurking in the deepest parts of me? Sometimes the answer will be terribly destructive to the life you’ve grown pretty comfy with. It’ll ask you to look at your answer (astronaut) and say, “But what is this really about?” (hint: not astronauting).

And then (probably) comes the existential pain. What was this life really about? What do I believe now about myself, my relationships, my career, my identity? And if you’re feeling particularly angsty, try out asking what this whole shindig is really all about. Holy shit, it’s a wild ride.

I wouldn’t say I’ve come out on the other side because the longer I’m walking this dark road with a little beacon of light illuminating just my next steps, I’m really thinking there isn’t another side to get to on this side of whatever this all is. I think that might be an important part of healing, and it relates directly to the wanting.

Thich Nhat Hanh wisely once said, "When you walk, walk. When you eat, eat. When you die, die." When you want, want. First, the awareness of the wanting, and then knowing I don’t actually have to work to change it. We go through too much of life not turning toward the wanting long enough to stop trying to escape it.

Ah, there it is. Another delicious piece of self-awareness. Relax. The wanting doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re human, with human neurotransmitters doing what neurotransmitters are supposed to do to keep you reaching and moving and living. Can I watch my wanting now, not with a negative eye turned toward the Self, but with compassion, humor, and lightness? Can I say, “Ah, here I go again. Wanting. Ah, yes.” No running, no forcing, no judgment.

So, little Morgan, scribbling on your blue-lined, red-ruled paper. If I were to write you a letter in return, here’s what I would say:

Dear Morgan,

I will first warn you that this letter will contain a few swear words. I know you’re totally into trying them out right now, and if it hasn’t happened yet, your brother and sister will hear you say “God” one day, and it will scare you out of cursing for a few days.

Okay, here’s the first big news, and I know it will not come as a shock to you: we do not become an astronaut. We don’t like math in fifth grade, and we don’t like it in 16th. Speaking of 16th grade, you get to have a big, long stretch when you’re not in school, but when you do go back…whoooo boy, you’re going to love it.

Here’s what I will tell you about marriage and kids and where you live: you DO live both near the ocean and near the mountains, and it’s the absolute best. You have three kids, and I won’t spoil it for you, but they are outstanding humans. You will go through some absolute shit years of motherhood, but you will be astounded at how they change you into someone you are really proud of. Marriage is going to be much different than you expected. You’ll weather things you really can’t imagine and wouldn’t be able to prepare for if you tried. You’ll do your best, and sometimes do your worst, and you’ll still be together.

I don’t have the heart to tell you details about all the heartbreaks, but I will tell you this (and really mean it): You will be okay.

In the darkest of dark days, you won’t think you will, but believe me, you are much stronger and more stubborn than you think.

Pursue your delight dangerously. Don’t let them tell you what you can’t do. You’ll want to be wild, and they won’t like it, but even though it goes underground for a while, the wild is still there, ready to make a good ruckus.

Right now, you think that becoming an astronaut (or whatever a grown-up spectacular equivalent is) will make you seen, make you belong, and make you worthy of love. Oh, Morgan - you already are. You don’t have to do anything more than be exactly who you are.

I love us.

~Morgan