After We Get What We Want

This week, after years of trying, I achieved a goal I had been reaching for in my work. I had booked the number of clients I aspired to have in a week. It was an ideal day when I realized I had arrived at this place. I walked my dog in the warm spring sun, under the blue sky, alongside the blossoming cherry trees and felt relief and joy. As is my nature, I started to reflect on the ever changing states of joyfulness and suffering. It can't simply be that I get what I want and the difficulty in me goes away. I know better. I walked on and really took it on. I imagined what it would be like if I had the things I think I want. For an American, I think my wants are rather humble. But even so, I played the game of what if. What if I had the relationship I want (even with its innate difficulties), if my one bedroom place suddenly had another bedroom, if I continued to have enough clients. I closed my eyes and imagined them suddenly being a reality and sensed what it would feel like in my body. I asked myself, "would there still be the ache of longing, or a subtle anxiety, an inescapable loneliness, or an underlying restlessness coursing through me, however mild?" I threw the question out there and the answer came boomeranging back, "yes, there would be!" I knew it was true so I threw it back out and asked the bigger question, "what do we do with this perpetual yearning?"

I then thought of my morning's parenting moment and saw my answer. I was walking with my 6 year old daughter to school and she was telling me how she was suffering over the fact that a friend of hers wasn't paying attention to her. That the girl was now playing games my daughter didn't want to play at recess, that she wasn't engaging with my daughter on line or talking with her between activities as she had before. This issue with her friend keeps returning. I could hear my daughter's hurt and how she was turning it into blame. I thought to myself, wow, this human condition of people pushing and pulling at one another starts at an early age. I wished my daughter could see that she didn't need to chase after anyone and yet, I knew the reality that we all go through this struggle throughout our lives. Hopefully we learn from the experiences as we age and handle them more compassionately and gracefully, but ultimately, as long as we are in relationship to others, we will endlessly face the challenge of meeting each others needs. All there is to do is to surrender to what we feel and in the softening find some peace. The answer to the struggle is to simply feel the struggle. Just like the answer to our desire for something more is to simply feel the desire. I know it's not what we want to hear (and I am not at all suggesting that we don't try to get what we want). Some days I can't hear it and that's okay, too. The gift is still there for us to receive when we are ready. Trying to explain that to a child is another story, but she was listening and often I think children get things faster than adults do.

Whenever I get in touch with wanting something I don't have, I think there is something I need to do about it. Can't I fix it? It is as if I were to fix the outside thing, the inside would be fine again. But, if there's something getting what we want shows us, it is that another want will arise. I could circle around on that never ending loop, or I can sit down and sense what is going on in my body and breathe with it, letting it be there just as it is. It is in practicing staying in the present moment that allows us to feel the unmet need, (longing, desire, unrest), and enables us to bare it and find its fulfillment. Its fulfillment is our own comfort. We can distract ourselves from feeling this place by keeping ourselves busy or wrapped up in crises (our own or others), in blaming people or things, or in perpetually fixing. But, if we are ever forced to settle down by some significant change, this place of yearning will present itself and when we can bare to stay present, there is an intangible reward it offers.

Though I may get what I need in life (actually, I often do, but maybe not in the form or time frame I expect it), some part of me is always going to long for something. In that understanding, I can breathe a sigh of relief. There is nothing more I need to do than continually see the gifts I already have. I can enjoy walking by a beautifully flowering tree or some ornate piece of iron on an old brownstone door, or the sensation of rain touching my skin, or cherishing the shared laugh with a friend, or appreciating the fact that I turn on the faucet and water flows. The comfort (peace, love, whatever we call it) we need to make us feel complete, and not in need of anything more, comes from within.

It could be that next week, I will have all the clients I need or it could be that my daughter will have her friend's attention. Either way the wanting will inevitably arrive at some point, but maybe we can find some refuge in the idea that the real answer is not in fixing it, but in feeling it and finding compassion. The rest takes cares of itself.