What Are We Really Looking For?

You know that feeling when you really want something?

Maybe you’ve booked a holiday and find yourself thinking about it while you’re making dinner or driving somewhere, imagining being there instead of here. The warmth, the sea, a break from the usual routine.

Or there’s something in your life you’d really like to get sorted. You’ve found a house you love and want your offer to be accepted, or there’s a difficult conversation you know you need to have and you want it to go well.

It can be as simple as wanting the weekend to arrive after a long week, the rain to stop before you take the dog out, or someone to reply to your message.

Take something you want at the moment and imagine having it.

What do you expect will be different?

The holiday might mean you can finally relax. If the offer on the house is accepted, there may be relief and a sense of security. If the difficult conversation goes well, perhaps you’ll feel that things are okay between you again. When the weekend arrives, you can switch off.

We don’t usually follow the wanting this far. We know we want the holiday, the house, the conversation to go well or the weekend to arrive. But underneath the thing itself, we may also be wanting the way we imagine we’ll feel when we have it.

So what are we really looking for?

Think back to something you really wanted and eventually got. Something you thought about often enough that it kept popping into your mind while you were doing other things.

Try to remember the moment when you knew you’d got it.

Maybe you’d been looking for somewhere to live for months and finally had the keys in your hand. You’d applied for a job you really wanted and got the call offering it to you. Or something that had been unresolved for weeks was finally sorted.

What happened in those first few moments?

There may have been excitement, but often there’s a release too. The shoulders soften, the breath changes and something that had been occupying so much of your attention goes quiet.

The wanting has stopped.

We usually assume the relief came from getting what we wanted. The house is ours, the problem has been resolved, someone has said yes, and we feel better. So naturally we give the thing the credit.

But something else happened at exactly the same time. For that moment, we were no longer wanting it.

There was nothing more to get from it, nothing more to sort out. The movement towards something in the future had stopped, and there may have been that lovely sense of ahhh.

So what produced the relief?

Was it the thing we got, or was the relief there because, for a moment, the wanting had come to an end?

We pay a great deal of attention to what we want and much less to what happens when the wanting disappears. Usually the moment passes quickly. Something else catches our attention, another thought comes along or there’s something else to do.

But those few moments are interesting.

We tend to assume that peace or contentment will arrive when life finally gives us what we want. What if getting what we want simply gives us a brief glimpse of what is here when we’re no longer reaching for something else?

We explored this another way in one of our online meetings, without getting anything at all.

You can try it now if you like.

Notice the contact of your body with whatever is supporting you. The weight of your body in the chair, your feet on the floor, your hands resting where they are.

Notice the movement of your breathing without changing it.

Then listen. Rather than going out looking for sounds, let them come to you. Something nearby, something further away. There’s no need to name what you hear.

If there are thoughts, they can be there. If there’s tension somewhere in the body, that can be there too. You might feel restless or distracted. Nothing needs to disappear and there’s no particular state you need to reach.

For a few moments, simply notice what is already here.

Without going into what you want to happen next, what needs sorting out later or how you’d like yourself to be, is anything missing from this moment?

Don’t look for the right answer. Just notice.

And right now, do you need to become anyone else?

Because the thing we want to be different isn’t always our circumstances. Sometimes it’s ourselves.

We’d like to be more confident, less anxious, calmer, more successful or more at ease. And just as we imagine the holiday, the house or the job will give us something, we can imagine that becoming this different version of ourselves will finally allow us to feel the way we want to feel.

If I were more confident, what would that give me? If I were less anxious? More successful? More at ease?

Maybe we find ourselves back in familiar territory: peace, security, freedom, feeling okay.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting things. We can look forward to the holiday, hope the offer is accepted, have the difficult conversation and make changes in ourselves and our lives.

But alongside all of that, we can begin to notice what we’re really asking those things to give us.

And every now and then, when the wanting stops, we might pay attention to what remains.