To desire is to obtain; to aspire is to achieve.”
This is a strong place to begin because Allen opens with an intentionally bold claim.
“To desire is to obtain”
At first glance, Allen almost sounds like he is saying, If you want something badly enough, you’ll get it. I don’t think we should accept the sentence that literally.
Desire by itself doesn’t guarantee possession. I can desire a million dollars, better health, a successful business, or an engineering degree, but simply wanting those things doesn’t make them appear.
I think Allen is getting at something deeper: desire establishes direction.
Before you can intentionally obtain something, you generally have to recognize that you want it. Desire creates the target. Once something becomes important enough to you, it begins affecting what you notice, what you pursue, what you’re willing to learn, and what you’re willing to sacrifice.
So desire isn’t the accomplishment. It’s the beginning of movement toward the accomplishment.
“To aspire is to achieve”
Aspirational thinking goes a little further than simply wanting something.
To aspire means you’re reaching upward toward something. You’re not merely saying, “I’d like that.” You’re beginning to orient yourself toward becoming capable of attaining it.
And I think that’s where Allen’s argument becomes much stronger.
Your aspiration can begin changing you before it changes your circumstances.
If I aspire to become an engineer, for example, the degree doesn’t magically appear because I pictured myself having it. The vision can influence whether I study tonight, whether I go to class when I’m tired, whether I ask for help when I don’t understand something, and whether I continue after failing an exam.
The vision gives those individual actions a destination.
But Allen deliberately pushes this further
Look at what immediately follows:
“Shall man’s basest desires receive the fullest measure of gratification, and his purest aspirations starve for lack of sustenance? Such is not the Law: such a condition of things can never obtain: ‘ask and receive.’”
He’s challenging a pessimistic assumption: Why should we believe our lower impulses can become reality, while automatically treating our highest ambitions as impossible?
That’s interesting.
Allen isn’t merely telling people to dream. He’s questioning why human beings sometimes give enormous credibility to their limitations while treating their possibilities as fantasy.