Unmet Desire
“I don’t want to face my desires. I probably won’t ever get what I want anyway, so I’d rather not acknowledge what it is that I really want. It just makes me sad and miserable.”
I hear this message often from my clients. The words may be different, but the meaning behind them is the same; “Not getting my desires is painful”.
John Eldridge, author of Journey of Desire writes, “Bringing our heart along in our life’s journey is the most important mission of our lives – and the hardest. It all turns on what we do with our desire. If you will look around, you will see that most people have abandoned the journey. They have lost heart. They are camped in places of resignation or indulgence, or trapped in prisons of despair. I understand, I have frequented all those places before and return to them even still. Life provides any number of reasons and occasions to abandon desire. Certainly, one of the primary reasons is that it creates for us our deepest dilemmas. To desire something and not to have it – is this not the source of nearly all our pain and sorrow?”
What do you desire? Are you able to answer that question? I wasn’t. At least not right away. It took me a good amount of time to thaw from my emotional numbness and dissociation, so that I could connect with my mind, heart and body. The more I connected with my inner being, the more access I had to my true self. Slowly, my desires began to surface.
By definition, desire is something we long for or hope for. Desires come in all shapes and sizes. For example, I long to belong to a community where all of me is accepted. I long for a romantic relationship where someone loves me for who I am, and I can love them back. I hope to have children one day. I want to be healthy. I hope to have a new car. I hope I have a good day today. And even, I want some chocolate. We have “lesser” desires, “greater” desires and our “deepest” desires.
As you can see, some desires feel weightier than others. Some feel much riskier than others. If I don’t get chocolate, I can live with that. Can I live with not getting married or not having children? Can I live without a sense of belonging? What happens when our deepest desires aren’t met? How do we live in the midst of unmet desires?
Self-protection becomes paramount. Due to the immense pain we feel when our desires aren’t met, we look to escape through some form of numbing or anesthetizing. We look for comfort in what I call “imposters”. Alcohol, drugs, adventure, shopping, sex, social media, approval…. the list goes on and on. Whatever it takes to avoid the discomfort we “feel”, whatever will make us “feel” better, that’s what we reach for. We aren’t able to tell the difference between real life and a tempting imitation.
Eventually the imposters grow into addictions and we feel powerless to stop. Distraction, numbing and addiction all move us away from our heart’s desire and away from our true self. They make life more painful and less real.
Grieving, on the other hand, puts us in touch with the reality of “what is” and moves us toward our own hearts. We aren’t taught how to grieve as we grow up. We are actually trained in shame; never feeling like we are enough, or that something is wrong with us because we aren’t getting the desires of our heart. Grieving is the spiritual pathway to knowing our hearts.
What is the healthy process to follow with our desires? How do I manage my desires? Below I have listed a few practices to keep in mind when working with your desires.
1. Name them. In naming our desires we bring them into our awareness. We don’t stuff them or deny them. Practice asking yourself the healthy question…What do I want? Or, What do I desire today? Healthy and mature adults know what they desire and have the capacity to ask for them in a healthy way.
Take your desires seriously. Don’t minimize them. They don’t have to sound “spiritual”. You also don’t have to worry about whether or not you can get what you desire. Just stay with the question until you get an answer. By doing this, you stay current with your heart. When you are current with your heart, you are less likely to numb or distract.
2. Go for it! Go for it as long as you won’t be hurting yourself or others. And as you are going for it, learn to ask another question, What is under this desire? It may be that you are actually desiring something entirely different. For example, if you are desiring a nice car, what might be underneath that is the desire to be recognized. And underneath that, would be the desire to feel valuable and have worth. Buying a car won’t give you what you really want; worth. If you are desiring chocolate, you may actually be desiring the feeling of comfort. Chocolate may comfort you for a moment, but it isn’t lasting and your jeans start feeling tighter! When we know what is truly underneath our desires, we can move forward in a way that serves us rather than harms us.
3. Surrender the desire to your Higher Power. In surrendering, you are giving your Higher Power the permission to a.) answer the desire, b.) change the desire or c.) change you. Sometimes the desire is answered; if not immediately, then over time. Sometimes the desire can actually change as I have more time to reflect and ponder what it is I’m really wanting. And sometimes it’s me that needs to change. Perhaps the desire I have is actually something that I’m not ready for. It might hurt me or hurt others. Being open to being changed is a powerful step in moving forward with life in a peaceful way.
When I think of surrender, my mind immediately goes to the infamous Serenity Prayer. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” This prayer has helped me in knowing the boundaries of my desires. Sometimes the things I long for are simply out of my control. And in that case, I can ask for the necessary peace and calm to help me through the loss.
There are some unmet desires that are so deeply painful, it’s almost impossible to come to a place of acceptance and surrender. I have learned from experience, that I can rest with a “sorrowful acceptance”, meaning that I may feel the sorrow from time to time for the rest of my life. The sorrow doesn’t have to go away. I learn to be with the sorrow, recognizing it when it arrives and allowing myself to feel the sorrow once again. Welcoming the sorrow in this way, lessens its power over me and I am soon able to let go of it again.
I suppose that ultimately, I am talking about trust. It seems that everything comes down to that one simple word. Simple to say, but not so simple to live out. Can I trust God to do well by me? Do I really trust that God is good? Do I trust you enough God, to be enough, no matter what? There is a flow and rhythm to life. Can I wait and allow the natural flow of life to unfold before me?
To desire is to be human. To feel pain and discomfort when desires aren’t met is also to be human. The next time you have an unmet desire, I challenge you to meet it with vulnerability rather than self-protection. I invite you to trust. I encourage you to stay with desire and refuse to bury it; refuse to act as though it’s not important. Acknowledge the loss of an unmet desire, grieve it, and seek support as you walk through the grief. We all need a little help as we journey through life.
May you turn towards your heart and acknowledge your deepest longings, trusting God to meet you wherever you are.
