How to handle your longing with love and care
There’s something rather annoying about being told you can’t have something. The more I know I can’t have it, the more I know I need it even more. In fact the longer I go without it, the longer I spend desiring it. The more someone tells me no, the longer I spend figuring out all the ways to yes.
Lockdown’s been a big motherfuc*ker lesson in surviving the aptly titled (but not snappy) ‘wanting-what-you-can’t-have’ phenomenon.
Here’s my short list for what I want that I can’t seem to have in lockdown times…
- hugs
- physical contact (with humans, Murphy dog is doing a fine job otherwise)
- time sat side by side on a bench with my Dad (with anyone actually)
- hugs and chat about shite in the kitchen with my Mum (with anyone actually)
- eating out with my best friends
- walks that require a drive somewhere
- being near or in water
- swimming
- love making
- acupuncture treatments
- a family of my own
- driving (anywhere, somewhere, nowhere)
- visiting my Aunt
- browsing the shops
- weekends away
- my local pub
- gigs and dancing
- someone else to cook dinner
- my cleaner
I read recently that wanting what we can’t have is all down to ego.
Well that’s my spiritual enlightenment back three spaces. The ego gets irritated and motivated by ‘lack of’ or ‘scarcity’ thinking. Somewhere deeper we start to believe there isn’t enough or I’m not enough. Our survival self kicks in. We get competitive, focus on achieving (hello sourdough starter lovers). It makes us feel good. It’s how we’ve been conditioned to find our sense of self worth in the world; to be busy doing, not busy being. Sadly this phenomenon is exacerbated by times of extreme stress, fear or anxiety — enter Corona Virus to the party.
The key route out of scarcity mindset is gratitude. Believing in the abundance of life. That there will always be more than enough for everyone. I’m good at gratitude, I’ve got the journals and the jars to prove it. It’s a worthy and much needed human skill if we want to believe in a more civilised society for all not few.
But in these corona times, of course we want what we can’t have. We’re living in a weird version of our lives with only 50% of the civil and free human rights we’re used to. We’ve been forced into lockdown. We want some control back. It’s normal. Focussing on what we lack gives us purpose and meaning (in normal times). But we’re not in normal times, we’re in lockdown. Some of these things will just have to wait or be adapted.
Sure I can meet up with my parents if we’re socially distanced. I can also order a take away if I get really fed up of cooking. I’m able to do acupuncture on myself (because I’m qualified fyi). I can browse the shops online instead of floating around the streets. I can focus on tidying my garden to feel like I’m creating and achieving. I can fail epically at sourdough starter and not lose my shit. I can try and enjoy the experience of cleaning my house because I have time on my hands at the weekend (ok maybe that’s a bit of a stretch).
But what do you do with those dreams and desires that mean so much, they feel like they might engulf you? Those dreams that are so big, nothing else really seems to matter? And what do you do if you’re caught in a double bind? That even if you could do something you can’t anyway due to other factors? That’s what corona feels like to me, a constant double bind.
The only things that really matter from my list are starting a family with someone I love.
There’s a huge scarcity pull in my life that doesn’t seem to compare to anything else. However much gratitude I gather in my journal, I am lacking without a family of my own. I could give up all other dreams for this one. Any day of the week.
Last year I was preparing myself for fertility treatment, to have a baby on my own. I’m reaching my mid forties. There is nothing I’ve ever wanted as much as a family of my own, but somehow it just never happened for me. The timing was always off for one of us. I’ve been single for two years and my heart breaks with the reality I may not now have one.
Then I found a lump. It’s a familiar lump. One I’ve had removed before. It was benign before and so chances are it will be again. But tests haven’t been able to conclude it’s non mischievous nature. I was told not to do fertility treatment until the lump is resolved. I was booked in for an operation mid March. Then lockdown happened. My operation got postponed until after corona (whatever and whenever that means?!).
So I’m caught in a double bind. I can’t proceed with assisted fertility until my cancer scare is sorted and so the only chance of getting pregnant in corona times is through natural measures. Lockdown isn’t exactly conducive to meeting someone new. Dating isn’t really allowed and let’s be honest if lockdown eases I’m far more likely to want to spend time with people I’m already close to than strangers from a dating app. So unless it’s someone I already know… you know chances are getting slimmer and slimmer…
A bloody double bind.
Nothing to be done.
On a darker day, I feel hopeless, helpless, furious, bitter. Like my heart has been turned inside out. On a good day I can find a list of small but merciful things to be grateful for. The peace and quiet, the space to be, the opportunity to build something with my business. No one to argue or disagree with.
I’ve learnt something comforting in these difficult of times.
When there is nothing you can do, and nothing to be done, the only thing left to do, is to be.
Just be.
Surrender. To accept you are where you are. To let go of all the things out there you could have been doing, and be with all things in here instead. Your hopes, your dreams, your feelings, your desires, your fears. To accept that you cannot change what you cannot control.
To handle your longing with love and care.
There is some respite in suspending the drive to do and just being with what is. The physical body releases the emotional tension, if only for a short while. The mind slows down, returning more to balance.
And just beyond the weird and unknown boredom, if you can keep surrendering some more, some of the pain starts to ease its way out.
And beyond the release of the tears, the longing, the hopes that have no home, there is space.
Space for something new, something different, something that might just awaken me in a way I couldn’t have imagined.
If you’re holding on to dreams you can’t quite reach in these lockdown times, know you are not alone. I feel you. And although we maybe alone we are also connected.
Let me know in the comments what things you’re finding to be and do to handle your longing with care.
