The Brazen Desire: Wanting Without Enduring

The rain had been falling since morning, soft and persistent, as if the sky itself knew the weight I carried. It reminded me why I began keeping a pantry of hope, a place of words I could return to when life felt too heavy to bear. In my first entry, I wrote about how I collect words the way others store food or supplies. Lines that once held me steady. Thoughts that kept me from unraveling. Truths that carried me through the messier chapters of my life.

My pantry is still made entirely of words, nothing physical, nothing you can hold, just phrases I tucked away for the days when the world presses too hard. Today felt like one of those days. So I returned to that inner shelf and found the words that had once reminded me about desire and endurance.

Inside was a truth I had leaned on before:

“It is brazen to desire something without being willing to endure the pain.

A pain that does not kill me will eventually set me free.”

— Jin Buyun, Alchemy of Souls: Light and Shadow

There is something piercingly honest about this line. It carries a weight that lingers long after you hear it, because it speaks to a truth we often avoid. We all want things in life. We desire love that stays, work that fulfills us, healing that makes us whole again, or dreams that finally come true. Yet we rarely think of the pain that comes with wanting them.

It is easy to dream when everything feels light. But when reality starts pressing against those dreams, when life asks for patience, humility, or even heartbreak in exchange, we start to waver. We begin to question if what we want is still worth it. Jin Buyun’s words remind us that it is not wrong to want, but it is bold to truly endure.

I have often found myself caught between wanting and giving up. Sometimes, I have desired peace but refused to face the discomfort of letting go. I have wished for growth but resisted the pruning it required. I have prayed for strength but cried at the first sign of struggle. And yet, when I look back, it was never the comfort that changed me. It was the pain that did.

Pain has a strange way of revealing who we are beneath the surface. It strips away illusions and pretenses. It shows us what we truly value and what we are willing to lose. It doesn’t always destroy. Sometimes it rebuilds us, quietly and slowly, in ways we don’t even notice until much later.

When Jin Buyun said that a pain that does not kill will eventually set us free, I think she meant that pain, when faced and lived through, breaks our chains. It frees us from fear, pride, and even self-doubt. We learn that we can survive after the things we thought would end us. And in that survival, there is freedom.

The truth is, we cannot choose a life without pain, but we can choose what kind of pain we are willing to endure. The pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The pain of letting go or the pain of holding on too long. The pain of waiting or the pain of walking away. Either way, pain will come, but one kind leads to growth while the other keeps us stuck.

Maybe that is what this life beneath the mess is really about. To keep desiring even when we know pain is part of the journey. To keep choosing to live fully, not because it is easy, but because it is real.

If a pain that does not kill me will eventually set me free, then perhaps freedom begins the moment I stop running from it. Maybe it starts when I learn to see pain not as an end, but as a beginning, the quiet transformation beneath the chaos.

And so, I will still desire. I will still dream. I will still believe that there is something beautiful waiting on the other side of endurance. 

Somewhere in this pantry made of words, beneath the ache and the uncertainty, hope still glows softly, whispering that the rain will stop and I will bloom again. - MESSY E.

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