Desire often rises toward the glow of a life, yet the glow is held up by depths we rarely see.
I have been wanting to explore mimetic desire for quite some time now. My energy kept moving toward the places that asked for my full attention, so this theme lived quietly in the background and waited for its moment. I feel that the moment has arrived. There is enough steadiness in my system to follow this thread with care, until the next wave finds me again.
The idea of mimetic desire traces back to René Girard, a French thinker who observed how human longing often forms through the longings of others. His insight still moves through our social, digital, and interior worlds. I came across Girard’s work again through Luke Burgis, whose newsletter explores the currents that guide human desire. His framing widens desire into something relational, a pattern that travels between people. This is the terrain of mimesis, where one person’s desire becomes the quiet starting point of another’s.
I want to approach mimetic desire from the angle of basic human needs and the suffering that rises when those needs remain unmet, because this is where the real texture lies. Girard once wrote that “all desire is a desire for being,” and this becomes visible when we look at the needs that shape human longing. Desire grows from belonging, safety, coherence, and recognition. These needs shape the pull toward people whose inner landscape carries something we long for ourselves. The instinct forms long before the conscious desire. It rises from the body and from emotional patterns that once helped us navigate life. What moves us is often the atmosphere around someone, a sense of alignment or ease that seems to radiate from them.
And of course, once you start looking at desire this way, you begin to realise how many of your own longings were never yours to begin with. A fun discovery if you enjoy little existential surprises.
The digital world intensifies this field. Screens surround us with signals of how people live, create, rest, and succeed. These signals appear polished, yet they carry emotional texture. A feeling of coherence. A sense of flow. A life that looks lit from within. Desire forms in response to these atmospheres. The screen removes distance and places hundreds of these surfaces in front of us each day, until the line between our own longing and the longings of others becomes blurred. What looks like a desire for the visible object often turns out to be a response to something underneath it, a deeper state that the surface only hints at.
The iceberg offers a clear image for what this hides. The tip rises above the surface with a clean, sculpted shape, yet its stability depends on the massive underwater form. Lives follow this structure. A painter’s depth, a musician’s presence, a writer’s voice, or an athlete’s precision rests on years of invisible formation. Repetition. Injury. Solitude. Repair. Discipline that rarely enters public view. A sleepless night spent in a hotel room, meeting despair before a performance that asks for everything you want to give the next morning. The submerged structure is what holds the visible part in place.
I often think of Frida Kahlo in this context. Her colours and intensity draw people in. Her paintings feel alive, as if they carry a flame that never dimmed. This is the visible part of her iceberg. Yet beneath it lived chronic pain, long periods of confinement, and emotional landscapes shaped by extremes. She once wrote, “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint,” a line that reveals how devotion and despair shaped the very foundation of her work. Her mastery formed through layers that few would willingly enter.
This structure appears everywhere. If the path toward mastery were smooth, the world would be full of masters. The highest expressions of human ability grow from turmoil that remains hidden from view. The underwater part carries the cost that sustains the tip.
Most people encounter only the surface. They feel drawn to the glow of someone who carries clarity or composure. The attraction forms quickly because the visible layer appears whole. Yet the submerged part often includes experiences that many would turn away from if faced with them. It holds the repetition that built skill, the heartbreak that opened depth, and the long rebuilding that shaped resilience. Every polished presence rests on layers that rarely reach the light.
The same architecture lives inside each of us. Qualities we cherish often carry origins that lie in shadow. Strength can rise from fear. Sensitivity can rise from vigilance. Creativity can rise from rupture. The luminous part of a person grows from the weight held below the surface. Carl Jung described this process as an encounter with the shadow, a meeting with the parts of ourselves that shape us most deeply. He believed that true potential awakens in these difficult moments, when the hidden layers of a life begin to reveal their power.
Every presence that feels magnetic carries the structure that formed it. Frida’s life makes this visible. Her brilliance rose from a landscape built from pain, persistence, and emotional courage.
Sometimes the most beautiful masterpiece grows from the deepest despair of a human being. And in a world that shows us only the tip of every iceberg, both online and in life, this truth offers a quiet form of grounding. It invites a more spacious reading of desire, guided by the awareness that every glow comes from depths we rarely see.
ADRIANA