It doesn’t matter how bad you want it.
We’re not always the best judge for ourselves when it comes to what is good for us and what is not. There’s been many times that I have wholeheartedly wanted something for myself, yearned for it even, it’s a feeling which Is hard to put into physical words. This feeling often comes with a range of other feelings, a sudden urgency to have it, a craving that you don’t feel will ever be satisfied until you do get it.
The definition of yearning is a feeling of intense longing for something, typically something that one been separated from or that is unattainable.
Think about your puppy when it can’t get to its favourite ball, it acts as though the world as they know it, is ending, the cries the whines, the look to the owner for help and assistance and as soon as it has that much loved ball back it’s like it never happened.
Think about when you’ve visited a place that feels like a home you never knew existed, the feeling of comfort you get when you’re there and the way it hurts when you leave. I have been yearning for a place since I saw it drifting from my vision as I was on the boat heading away from it and I wonder if it will ever stop, I don’t believe the yearn for it will ever be satisfied but in the same way, I fear to go back in case it doesn’t feel the same, in case it doesn’t feel as magical as it once was, it could ruin the joy that I have found in the yearning. While I daydream about it in moments which aren’t so good, while I close my eyes and imagine I am there while I meditate, revisiting it may take away that inner peace I have gained from finding it in the first place, maybe that’s all it was meant for, maybe it wasn’t ever meant to be revisited. Like any keepsake we hold on to, we can hold a piece of a memory yet we will never again get to feel how it felt for the first time, and it shouldn’t, memories are supposed to be remembered, not recreated.
What if this is the same when it comes to a past or imagined version of yourself, maybe you used to be different and through lessons and time you have grown, or maybe you have always envisioned what your life should look like, what you should look like. When you look in the mirror, when you look around you…it doesn’t look the same. Some would fear this, some would worry that they have took too many wrong turns, that the life they’re living isn’t meant for them. Funny thing is, it has to be meant for you, at least for right now and it wouldn’t be your life if it wasn’t. I look back and wonder if the turns I took in the past, the mistakes I made, the lessons I learnt, were meant for me but of course they were. No matter how difficult some moments are, no matter how many times I sat there questioning how I had ended up there, it’s always made sense in the end. All of my lessons were in fact meant for me because I have learnt more than I could have ever imagined through the harder times, through the times that have tested me.
I have also learnt from not receiving what I want, not getting what I yearned for so badly for, I don’t think yearning is beneficial to anyone’s growth, we find ourselves in situations where ‘we won’t be happy till we have that’, ‘we won’t be content until we reach that goal’, ‘I won’t be satisfied until I have x amount of money or x job’ Yearning leads us to believe that we should not be okay where we are and I don’t mean stay comfortable forever by any means but I don’t think we should yearn for the things that are so far out of reach, that we have been shown are not meant for us.
Some stay heartbroken for years, yearning for that person, wanting them back, romanticising all the time spent with them, yearning for someone to love them but how can that be healthy when yearning for a person who doesn’t want to be with us will forever and always make us feel unworthy, it will make us feel like we are undeserving when we are in fact very much deserving. Yearning for another human is almost as if you are choosing another over yourself, we have to be able to be happy, content, to feel loved, to feel worthy…all without the reassurance or validation of another. To love ourselves is to fully understand what love means and to trust in our path without the need for answers is full contentment.
It’s a choice to hold on to a memory or an idea of what you think you should be doing, it’s a choice to choose the past or the unknown in every moment of the present, yet the only thing that we can choose is the present, it’s all we have. Our lives will shape themselves in the way they are supposed to in order for us to be shaped in the way that we need to be, in order for us to become who we are meant to be.
I may continue to yearn for places but its not out of a place of unsettlement, it’s because of how it made me feel, who it made me feel like, we will always remember places and people who make us feel good about ourselves, who make us feel like the best us. That doesn’t mean those places or people are meant to be in our lives forever, what’s important is you create a world where you feel seen, valued, heard, loved without anything external. You deserve the love you give to others so freely, you deserve to choose things that choose you, you deserve to be happy exactly where you are without the need to be anywhere else, you deserve everything, and everything will come when you stop yearning for the things that don’t want you or do not fit in your life anymore.
It’s okay to grow, Is okay to one day wake up and recognise that you haven’t been putting yourself first, it’s okay to wake up and decide to stop accepting any less than what you deserve. It’s okay to be you. Every single day.
Sending Love,
K.