According to the Lacan, fantasies have to be unrealistic. The moment you get what you see, you don’t want it any more. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the it that you want, it’s the fantasy of it.

Desire supports crazy fantasies. According to Pascal, we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Therefore, “the hunt is sweeter than the kill.” Also, and therefore, be careful what you wish for; not because you’ll get it, but because you’re bound not to want it once you do. As Lacan says, leading by your wants will never make you truly happy.

Therefore, to be fully human, you have to strive to live by your ideals and ideas, and not to measure your life in terms of what desires you have gained but by those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality and self-sacrifice.

The only way we can measure the significance of our own lives, therefore, is by valuing the lives of others.