Don’t Get Lost in Your Longings
The path of living with our longings is rarely straightforward. Navigating the Longing Path comes with many distractions and detours. In a previous article, I wrote about the benefits of paying attention to your longings. For many, acknowledging, let alone clarifying, their longings can be a challenge. For others, the challenge lies in getting lost in their longings. While I previously invited you to pay attention to your longings, I'd like to highlight a caution: Don't get lost in your longings. I'll spend the rest of the article explaining what I mean by this.
The Longing Path
Let's remember, our longings provide fertile soil for shaping our lives. They reveal unique attributes of what gives meaning to our lives. Longings point us towards life frontiers that invite us to engage life more fully. Over time, new aspects of what our longings point towards emerge. This is why it’s important to remain attentive to them and review our relationship with them. When we’re in a vibrant relationship with our longings, they can support us in deepening and expanding our engagement with life. However, given the sense of vitality that longings can awaken, it’s easy to get lost in them.
I’m often asked if it’s possible to become lost in longing. The short answer is yes. On the one hand, we can get lost in the possibilities our longings awaken. Here, we’re easily captivated by the many versions of how our longings could unfold, without landing on a particular path. On the other hand, we can become stuck on a specific path for how our longing must unfold. In this scenario, we’re tethered to a specific vision for how our longing should unfold. We’re no longer open to alternative paths. We’ll explore the tendency to get lost in the possibilities of longing in a future article. In this article, we’ll discuss what happens when we become overly attached to a fixed path of longing.
Before I get ahead of myself, I want to stress that there is nothing wrong with having a specific vision for our longings. This is normal. In fact, as we remain in conversation with our longing, nuances emerge for clarifying how we might live with our longings. What we want to be cautious around is expecting our longing to unfold 100% according to a predetermined plan. It takes discernment to know when to loosen our grip. When we insist that our longing must take a specific form, we’re usually off track.
The Longing Path versus a Fixed path
Focusing on the promise of what a longing evokes is often more enticing than navigating the challenges in tracking one’s longing. Without realizing it, we can become attached to a particular form or outcome for our longing (this is key). On the surface, it can feel like we're being hyper-attentive to our longing. The reality, however, is that we prioritize an imagined outcome over the longing itself. We become so focused on a fixed path that we miss the life-giving invitations that our longings offer us.
When Robert (not his real name) explored his longing with me, it became clear that he was lost in a particular version of it. He described his earlier life as vibrant, as it fulfilled many of his longings. At present, however, Robert viewed his life as "not working". A number of friends had moved away, and his previous work role no longer existed. While he put significant effort into recreating his former state, he couldn't recapture the specific conditions that had given him the sense of vitality and engagement he had previously enjoyed.
As we explored Robert's relationship with his longing, he realized he was struggling with the changes in his life, which made it difficult for him to stay open to how his longings might now take shape. Over time, Robert came to appreciate that if he remained solely focused on replicating his former circumstances, he would have likely remained stuck, lost, and frustrated. Remaining attached to a fixed formulation of how our longing should unfold generally doesn't support a life-affirming dialogue with it.
Off The Longing Path
Instead of bringing us closer to what brings us to life, getting lost in longing takes us further away. Expecting, and perhaps demanding, our longing to unfold in only one way makes it difficult to notice and consider other possibilities. Our longings end up in a holding pattern, awaiting that day when our imagined version appears. We become less aware of the emergent invitations from our longings. It makes me think of the theme of "Waiting for Godot." Two men spend their days waiting for Godot to arrive, but he never does. They wait every day, only to meet the same outcome. They neither perceive nor consider alternative views of the situation (maybe Godot was in a different location). This leaves the men in a state of uncertainty and disappointment. Perhaps the two men needed to pause and reconsider the routine they were stuck in, etc.
You've likely heard or possibly said to yourself, 'I won't be content, successful, or happy until x happens.' This can spill over to our longings. We view our lives as incomplete or lacking until our exact, predefined outcome has arrived. There's a song by the singer/songwriter Colin Hay called "Waiting for My Real Life to Begin." The title says it all. When we wait for our longing to transpire in the way we presume it "should", we essentially live the title of Hay's song. In the waiting, we tend to miss alternative paths for living into our longing. To reiterate, there's nothing wrong with holding an intention for a particular longing. At the same time, there's wisdom in holding such intentions loosely.
The Vulnerability of Longing
Being in conversation with our longing demands a fierce vulnerability. Having preconceived ideas of our longings makes it difficult to remain open to what might emerge from them. When we form fixed views of our longings we miss invitations to explore our longing path in alternate ways. In the extreme, we can become overly attached to specific visions for how our longings need to unfold. When this occurs, we become lost on a path that’s off-track from the life-giving nature of longing.
When a longing doesn’t unfold as we envision, we can become disillusioned, frustrated, and feel like we've failed or something has failed us. Our sense of hope deteriorates, and our longing becomes burdensome. This is one of the main reasons we become hesitant to explore our longings. There’s an inherent risk in engaging with our longings. When they don't materialize as expected, they can feel like a weight, and we lose sight of their life-giving potential. We draw conclusions such as: I must be doing something wrong, I'm just not getting it, or longings are just an indulgent distraction. As a result, longings are often pushed aside and kept hidden.
An overarching theme emerges from my numerous conversations about longings. Specifically, that they are something to keep hidden, because acknowledging them reveals a profound vulnerability. There’s the vulnerability that comes from being open to the emergent nature of longing. Additionally, there’s the vulnerability of admitting that you may not be able live into your longing. Longings are sometimes described in literature as an ache for something unattainable. No wonder we hesitate to name our longings. If we believe they're unattainable, we're unlikely to reveal them to ourselves, let alone others.
Rejoining The Longing Path
An aspect of longings that is often overlooked is the relationship we cultivate with them. The good news is that we can learn to shift our relationship to our longings. This helps us to reconnect with their life-giving role in our lives and offset our tendency to get lost in static versions of them. Cultivating a stance of awareness, curiosity, and openness to our longings supports a vibrant and resilient relationship with them.
The invitation is to hold a space for your longing and how it might unfold. When we acknowledge what is currently happening with our longing, regardless of its form, we can see what's possible and what we might need to shift. Instead of remaining lost in a static view of our longing, we become attuned to how it emerges and reveals ways to bring us into a closer engagement with life.
I’d like to highlight a couple of ways to recalibrate our relationship with our longing. One involves noticing what invites you to become lost in your longing. Although it's not easy, being radically honest about the tendency to become attached to specific results is helpful. People have shared the many reasons they remain attached, including fear of not achieving what they long for, not trusting their longing, and not believing another alternative could be as life-giving.
Another way to recalibrate your relationship with your longing is to become better attuned to it. Developing our ability to notice and become aware of how our longing brings us to life can help us give our longing room to emerge further. In other words, the more we give it real-time attention (not just focusing on a hoped-for future), the more potential options for expressing our longing might be revealed. In short, we develop a sensitivity to the nuances and subtleties of how our longing serves as a compass for what brings us to life. This also helps prevent distorted thinking, which can lead to unnecessary stagnation or suffering.
Questions to Consider for Rejoining The Longing Path
Can we find the courage to identify and loosen any static notions we might have for our longings? Can we invite ourselves to pay attention without holding ourselves to one specific version of our longings? These questions can help in developing a vibrant connection to our longings. The path towards a more lived life is not always clear. It requires our attention to notice how life might offer steps towards a more meaningful life.
At the same time, the impacts of an unrequited longing or a longing not unfolding as hoped are very real. This is definitely part of our journey in working with our longings. However, when we give ourselves time to slow down, listen, and become curious, we can ask the following questions:
Until the next article, here are some questions to ponder:
What is this longing really about? What is it pointing me towards?
What is it about this specific outcome that keeps me attached to it?
How might this attachment keep me from seeing what is integral to my longing?
When I open myself to consider alternative possibilities for my longing, what do I notice?
To reiterate, it's not that everything magically works out, but when we stay attuned versus attached to a fixed form of our longing, when we don't constrain it, we create the conditions for other ways we might nurture it and give it room to breathe.
If you find yourself lost in your longings, here are a few practices that can invite you to reorient yourself:
Note: With these practices, it's beneficial to permit yourself to be completely open and not restrict what arises. When we're open and allow ourselves room for imagination, it provides the opportunity to see what we're thinking/feeling/experiencing, and this is what we ideally want when we're working with our longings.
1. Write a letter to your longing.
Create or find a space where you won't be disturbed and where you can focus on listening. You might tell your longing what you're hoping for, why it matters to you, what your intentions are and how you hope not to get attached or fixated on a specific outcome. If you notice any particular attachment, that's okay. Return to the previous four questions and see what you learn.
2. An option for expanding on writing a letter is to have a conversation with your longing.
In your letter to your longing, imagine what it might say in response. This is not a trivial exercise. Considering how our longing might respond can reveal the assumptions and judgments we bring to it. The key is to come from a position of curiosity and to remain open to how a dialogue with our longing might unfold. This sets the stage for discovery.
References:
Beckett Samuel. Waiting for Godot. Les Éditions de Minuit, 1952.
Colin Hay, "Waiting for My Real Life to Begin," Going Somewhere. Lazy Eye Records, 2001.
