We are always animals first, this I do not question. Some animals become a human when they have endured enough pain. It may seem as if pain single-handedly pressures the animal to become human, but this is not true. What makes the things we do to ourselves and others painful is when we reflect on them.
I cannot explain what the ultimate desire is in the usual mechanical detail because I am unfortunately compelled to speak of it only as the ever-growing anecdote I reflect on to gain my knowledge.
There was once a boy whose mother and father abandoned him and his brothers with non-relatives at a very young age. His aunt and uncle retrieved him, but his brothers could not come along. He lived with the aunt and the uncle for a few years before the physical abuse and the forced isolation began. By the time the boy was ten, he ran away to live with his grandmother. The grandmother’s history is full of pain, mistakes, and regrets, and that she saw that she could amend her errors by properly raising and loving this boy. For the first time in his life, the boy experienced love and the grandmother grew together. His grandmother was becoming older and could no longer support the boy alone, so she and the boy moved in with a different aunt and uncle. Here the boy was alone most of the time, ignoring everyone else in the family and only communicating with his grandmother.
The boy had a difficult time adapting to the new school. He didn’t have any serious friends to relate to, being that his new environment consisted of people who were content with their natural parents and family. So the boy remained silent and as adolescence came, the pain became more then he could contain. With no one to relate to, the boy felt isolated and coped with the isolation through silent depression and the occasional physical explosion of violence.
Then one day, the boy met a girl. The first thing the boy immediately noticed was her pain. He looked at her and saw something so exact it could not be mistaken: She endured the same silent depression he had. Though the causes were different, the boy did not feel alone any more. The boy wanted to be with that girl from that moment on and would wait as long as necessary to be with her.
The girl had recently discovered a way to break her isolation: Boys. When adolescence began, boys noticed her and wanted to pay attention to her. This was something she enjoyed because it removed her from her loneliness, even if it was only temporarily. Her loneliness was different then from what the boy knew: She was never a priority in the lives of those she loved. Thus, the boy that loved her was never a priority in her life.
And so the waiting began. Every attempt the boy made at trying to become important to the girl was always destroyed by his desire to tell her the emotions he had for her. She fell into a comfortable pattern of flirting and dating, numbing herself from her isolation. Overtime, the boy’s feelings for her only multiplied when he realized what she was doing and what she has experienced. He learned that he would have to wait until she was left with no other option but to confront her isolation by becoming a priority to the ones she loved: her parents.
Thus, the boy and the girl ultimately desired the same thing: Forgiveness.
The boy did not want to be alone, and when he saw that she was alone as well, it became obvious to him that he was not the only one. Her presence forgives his loneliness.
The girl wanted to be accepted by her parents, but they do not. She feels that it is her fault they do not accept her, thus she wants their forgiveness.