Yeah, most desires are part of the territory, and not really influenced by our beliefs.

As a child I was very drawn to asceticism. I thought that by not qualifying any of my natural desires as 'winning', I could somehow liberate myself from them. I think that I did feel liberated, but I was also very religious and so I imagined there was something else (something transcendent) that I was fulfilling. In later years, I developed a sense that I needed to "choose" earthly desires in order to learn more about the world and cope with existential angst. I considered it a necessary 'selling-out' that I would try for 10 years. All this to explain why I don't tend to think of desires as a given, but as a choice. But I suppose desires are given after all, and in my ascetic years I just believed that being unhappy was winning.