Lust for the Forbidden Fruit

My first thought when I saw this picture: "Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack."

But I guess not everyone is ready to quote Titanic on the spot so the actual caption of this photo is: "I'm just waiting for summer." 

To which I say, amen, brother. 

Amen. 

Don’t get me wrong, winter is wonderful and being a Christmas baby, I feel like it has always been my moral obligation to say that winter is my favorite season. And I have always held up my end of the bargain, until I came to Penn State, that is, because enough with the cold already.

Sure, the holiday season makes everyone warm, cozy, and sentimental with thoughts of family while soft snow flutters and falls in front of the glowing hazy lights of home. But once the New Year comes and goes and we see winter for what it really is.

Cold.

And quite depressing.

To be fair, the yearning for summer has some correlation with the three nice long months of absolute nothingness. But there’s also something so nostalgic and dreamy about the freedom of the outdoors, wrapped in the slightly stifling blanket of the season’s humidity and moisture while cicadas compose the perfect soundtrack for your endless summer escapades. Call it a “midsummer night’s dream”, if you will.

But then the temperature breaks 100 degrees and I’ll be the first to admit that I have prayed (more than once) for there to be a refreshing blast of cool Arctic wind and that I will never complain about the cold ever again…so where does that leave us?

It seems like we are always yearning for something we can’t have. The human attraction for something grows exponentially when it is clearly out of reach. Forget my innocent examples of the changing seasons. Even from the very beginning, the Garden of Eden had its own forbidden fruit tempting the desires of humankind. These desires can be as trivial as a celebrity crush or that last slice of pizza you know you should leave for someone else out of pure kindness of your heart and impeccable manners or something completely life changing; the need to prove someone wrong, a job, a relationship.

So what’s the deal? Why is it that we are always driven by the forbidden fruit that we seemingly and knowingly cannot have?

According to psychologist Dr. Pauline Wallin and American educator George Loewenstein, this unrelenting lust and unyielding sense of determination is decided by four factors:

1. Heightened Attention: To be put simple, when someone tells you not to do something, all you can possible think of, of course, is doing it; even if you had absolutely no desire to do it before.
2. Perceived Scarcity: Who knew the laws of economics also governed human nature? When you can't have something, you want it more because you sense that other people will want it too. Bring on the competition because nothing will stop you from coming out on top
3. "Psychological Reactance": We're all rebellious by nature and no one is about to tell you what you can or cannot have.
4. Information-Gap Theory":We become curious about the unattainable and feel the need to take action and bridge the gap.

Whatever the reason is for this phenomenon, there’s no doubt that it can also be beneficial. Maybe all you need to get an A on that calculus exam is to have someone tell you that there’s no way you’ll ever be good at math.

So for now, all I can do is taunt Mother Nature and tell her that summer will never come.

Please excuse me while I make plans to buy a beach house in California as soon as pay off all my student loans and am finally financially stable because as right now, like that man, I’m also just waiting for summer.