Essay 1

Justin Toney
Word Count: 1,133
Obsession

Obsession is a tricky thing. From the outside it can appear insignificant—or as insignificant as any
human being can appear. Within it, though, obsession is nothing less than the whole world. It consumes
completely. When obsessed, truly obsessed, a human being may seem possessed by the objective of their
obsession. The object seems omnipotent within their mind, needing ever to be present while still always at
enough of a distance to be wanted. Obsession is like so many things, except that it congregates all other drives
and wills. It is both addiction and the integrity. It is both love and hate. It is all things for all reasons because it
is wholly manifest within a person—becoming their very will and self.
In the past, I have compared women to cigarettes. Smoking, for a smoker, is a very easy metaphor for
anything. A car is like a cigarette: it burns, it smokes, it eventually dies, and you have to get a new one. Not to
mention, it’s expensive. Women are like cigarettes: at first I am looking for a feeling of calm, and then of
excitement, then I want only to fill the need that is not for the individual, but for the habit. (Not to mention, it’s
expensive.) One cigarette varies from another by only the subtlest means. The smoke is very much the same
consistency and content each time despite flavors or packaging, because the variety of smoking is only a
varying means to achieve the same thing: the habit of smoking. It may seem sexist to imply this is so about
women, but I dare a woman to carefully consider the reasons and underlying drives of her attractions and see if
they are not very different.
What is sought, in an obsessive life, is not the thing itself, but what lies beneath the thing. I do not want
the company of a person, I want the abstract promises this person can provide me. Things like happiness,
beauty, meaning, comfort are the forces behind the material world—even behind the chemical body. The very
fact that people can quit smoking, become celibate, or work themselves to death is proof of the ability of the
mind to overcome or at least struggle against the mechanisms of the brain.
It is counter-logical that a person would willingly choose pain or even death when faced with a choice.
And yet, what is more fundamentally human than this? It goes by many names: integrity, solidarity, bravery,
honor, love, hate, addiction, devotion, loyalty. I physically suffer from my addiction to smoking. I emotionally
suffer from my devotion to women. My grade suffers from my loyalty to the newspaper. My social condition
suffers from my hate of close-mindedness. I would give up very much that is precious so that I keep my honor. I
would sacrifice my comfort and happiness for the sake of integrity. Obsession is in all of these things. And what
is remarkable is that they are all the same obsession.
Going through college, I often contemplate dropping out. I am not a good student. I am not an academic.
I am my father’s son. And through my loyalty to him, to keep the promises I made and therefore my integrity,
for the sake of his love, I will finish this. I am obsessed.
 In the tenth grade, I read Moby Dick: a whale of a book. I read it to make myself appear literary before
my teachers and my peers. It was one of the most difficult and frustrating things I’ve ever done. I toiled over
those pages, searching and scratching—sometimes imagining that I clawed away at the very text and looked
into the darkness beneath it to finding nothing but a hint of beauty and truth to come. And yet, I read on,
because if I didn’t, I would not be anyone special. I read that whole book to be acknowledged.
My father recalls when I finished it. We were riding in the car during the summer when I was sixteen. I
slammed the book closed, frustrated, once more disenchanted with literature. Daddy and I had always read
together, but we had read trash fiction: sci-fi, fantasy, and historical novels. High literature was not really for
either of us, so I confided in him my one screaming question: “What was the point?” After hundreds of pages of
Ishmael’s long meticulous study of the whale, whaling, the whale oil industry, the symbolism of the whale, the
anatomy of the whale, the migratory habits of the whale, the legends of whales… For God’s sake, there was
even a chapter devoted entirely to that damn leviathan’s tail! I threw the book. What was the point after all of
that searching and studying and laborious reading to come to the end and not know where you have been the
entire time? After all of that, to not know anything for sure about Moby Dick was devastating. I wanted to read
it again.
And then I got it. It was the not-knowing. Ishmael missed it… he missed the point. The whale was only
an embodiment of what Ahab truly sought. The book itself was a thing that was meant to guide me toward the
object of my obsession. And it could be anything—the objective of obsession could be anything at all, and still
be just as obsessed over. It could be women, it could be God, it could be truth, or beauty, or purpose, or another
person. For me, I knew then, that I was obsessed with gratitude.
Why would I spend years caring for a sick mother if she never once said she loved me? Why would I
work at a newspaper for free and to the detriment of my classes if they never said ‘thank you?’ There is no
reason that I can imagine for me to have read that damn book, except to see the smile on my teacher’s face
when I show her what her lessons had allowed me to do.
Obsession is a tricky thing. It can be gratifying, but that passes. The smile fades, the thanks diminish,
and she who says love today may not mean it tomorrow. A cigarette burns, smokes, and dies. Then I need
another one, and another, and another… and one day it will kill me. The dangerous part about obsession is that
it turns us into Ahabs. We go seeking greater and greater satisfaction, sacrificing ever more of ourselves and our
efforts the longer and more wholly our objectives possess us. And one day, I’ll make one sacrifice too many,
and there I go. But at least someone will be grateful, and I think that if I can bring them that, then it may not be
a bad way to live or die.