Why We Don’t Choose Our Models

One of the strangest things about being human is that we rarely know where our desires come from. We think we do, of course. We speak in the language of preference—”I’ve always liked this,” or “I just feel drawn to that”—but underneath those feelings is a quiet truth: our desires are formed in relationship to others, usually long before we’re aware of it.

That might sound troubling, even insulting. But it’s not. It’s just reality. And once you start to see it clearly, it becomes one of the most freeing truths we can accept.

René Girard, whose insights animate so much of the Cornerstone Forum’s work, showed us that we learn to desire through imitation. We don’t choose what we want from scratch. We catch our desires—often from those we admire, envy, or fear. These people become our models. They show us what seems desirable, and they shape the horizon of possibility within which we imagine a good life.

But here’s the hard part: we don’t choose these models consciously. Not at first. We inherit them. We absorb them. We imitate without realizing we’re imitating. Our parents, our older siblings, the heroes of our childhood, the kids we wanted to be like in school—they all settle into us. They become part of how we feel, judge, want, and act.

And when these early models contradict each other—or when we carry forward relationships charged with rivalry or confusion—we end up with what I’ve been calling a composite model: an interior structure made of layered and often conflicting models of desire. Some of the people we imitate call us toward virtue. Others pull us toward resentment. And more often than not, we try to serve all of them at once, without realizing that’s what we’re doing.

This is why freedom is more complicated than we often assume. It’s not just a matter of willpower. You cannot will your way into new desires. You can only imitate your way toward them. And until we become aware of who we’re imitating—until we see the models inside us—we remain captive to forces we don’t understand.

Which brings us to grace.

In the Christian tradition, freedom is not the absence of influence. It’s the right ordering of it. True liberty comes not from standing alone, but from following the right model—and ultimately, from allowing Christ to be formed in us. That’s not a metaphor. It’s a literal transformation of desire.

We don’t choose our early models. But we can, over time, become conscious of them. We can see the imitations that shaped us. And we can choose whether to continue serving them, or whether to let them go.

That’s the task. Not to become autonomous, but to become rightly formed.

And it starts, as always, by noticing:
Who am I trying to be like today?
And do I really want to become what they’re becoming?

More soon.
—Rico