Weekend Reflection: Wanting Everything and Becoming Nobody

About this episode

This episode explores the themes of desire, identity, and self-abandonment through literary references and personal reflection.

In Dante’s Inferno, the lustful are not burned. They are swept, a great relentless wind moves them endlessly, helplessly, no footing, no direction, just the next gust carrying them where it will. This week’s episode is a weekend reflection; slower, more meditative, less about publishing and craft and more about the soul-work questions underneath. Lust in its oldest, broadest sense—unrestrained wanting. The fire the Greeks understood. The Cyclops’s single eye. Odysseus making himself Nobody to escape the cave. Emily Dickinson’s delight in being Nobody too. And the difference between failure (which you can face) and self-abandonment (which is harder). This is from a nonfiction book I’m working on. If the reflection register resonates, stay close—these weekend episodes will keep coming. The Difficulty is the podcast of Crossroads Publishing Group, a new IBPA-pledged hybrid press based in Chattanooga, TN. We publish serious nonfiction in three lanes—Argument, Reflection, Witness.00:00 What this episode is — the weekend reflection lane01:00 Dante’s lustful — swept endlessly by the wind02:30 The id, duende, and Heraclitus on fire03:30 The Cyclops — single eye, all surface, all…

People in this episode

Host: Chad Prevost

Topics covered

• self-reflection
• desire
• identity
• failure
• self-abandonment
• literary references

Keywords

• Dante
• Odysseus
• Emily Dickinson
• self-reflection
• identity
• failure
• self-abandonment
• desire
• literature
• soul work

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Crossroads Publishing Group, IBPA

Books & works: Dante’s Inferno

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