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When Getting What You Want Becomes a Nightmare
And not getting what you want makes your life
There has been much talk in the media lately about Jeffrey Epstein and his sexual abuse of young girls. It has gotten me thinking. How happy was he with his alleged secret lifestyle of sexually abusing dozens of young girls, some as young as fourteen? At the moment he is sitting in jail with minor, possibly self-inflicted injuries. Or how happy was George Nader with his alleged underage boy trafficking? It seems like in both cases it must have been more of a compulsion than a pursuit of pleasure.
Not that I care about their pleasure, of course. They can both rot in jail if convicted of these crimes as far as I am concerned.
But the case has got me thinking about the dangerous allure of power, and how it fails to satisfy our deeper human needs once we get it.
It has also got me thinking about some of my favourite works of literature.
In Vladimir Nabokov’s iconic novel, Lolita, Humbert Humbert, the “hero” of the story, becomes obsessed with young girls after his twelve-year-old girlfriend dies tragically. Only twelve himself, he remains stuck in his sexual immaturity and spends his adult life pursing sex with “nymphets,” girls aged nine to twelve who have a certain “quality” that attracts…
