The things we long for

You know that goal that you have? That thing that you really want but try not to think about too much? I have those too. Goals that haunt me in the night because if I’m honest with myself, I’m scared of chasing them. Taking steps towards that one thing that feels just out of my grasp would involve a certain type of risk, one that I’m scared of taking. So I procrastinate, or distract myself with other things, or achieve easier goals that don’t take me to that edge. For me these desires take on an almost transgressive quality. As if to reach for them would be to extend into new territory that isn’t familiar or safe to my system. My psyche seems to create an allergic reaction to this kindled longing in me, and it’s grating.

In psychology, we call this resistance. It gets a bad rap because it often pulls us back away from the things we yearn for, but resistance has a purpose. It tells us that we need to pay attention to the pace that we are moving forwards. That we can only expand so quickly and to push too far too fast into chasing desires is dangerous and unstable. This is an idea that probably doesn’t get enough recognition in western society. Most of us have been conditioned to rough treatment of the self when we cannot honor our own pacing limitations.

Yet how will we honor this longing in us? We cannot just shrug our shoulders and say, maybe one day. Our desires demand some form of currency in our psyche, an action, a ritual, SOMETHING, to give acknowledgement of its powerful truth inside of us. If we only honor the resistance, we betray our desires and they haunt us like specters, creating tension that will only build. There are many ways to do this, limited only by our own creativity.

In Odysseus, an established path was prayer. One would speak to a god they felt an affinity to, and ask for help. In this simple act there is an acknowledgement of one's limitations, and yet there is also a spoken longing. This is often followed by a plea for help from deity; a force that might have answers not yet accessible to our psyche. Prayer works not just because it harnesses forces beyond our control, but also because it soothes the soul. It honors the need for both parts of us to be held at the same time, longing and resistance.

It is perhaps one of the hardest things for our psyches to actually look at our own longings. To look at longing is to behold a form of heartbreak, as we are still distant from the yearned for state of being. Throughout history prayer is perhaps one of the most popular tools we humans have discovered to address this discomfort. Separate from any religion or dogma, prayers can be made to the parts of us that are not as limited as our conscious egos, allowing us contact with deep parts of ourselves.

Today we often see the act of affirmations as a tool to honor our desires. We say a sentence imagining the future as we want it. This practice can be effective but it can also be a trap. When we just imagine our desires and fail to take into account our own resistance, we actually don’t move toward our goals. Often we play in the fantasy of a desire made true and yet because we aren’t contending with our inner obstacles, the goal remains a fantasy. We must hold both; the longing, and the resistance, when we try to grow into the person that can reach for the future.