Is Something Is Still Missing?

Ram Dass once wrote, looking back on his life,

“My inner work and meditation practice since then have made me even more aware of my drive for power and my need for achievement; this awareness has made it possible to let them go.”

Maybe you know that drive.

Honestly, it is probably part of what got you here.

It helped you land the job.

Save for the house.

Finish the degree that took everything you had.

Build the practice. Find the relationship. Make the move you had been planning for years.

You wanted something. You worked for it. And then you got it.

You actually did it.

But then something in you quietly starts looing again.

You know the feeling.

The wanting did not disappear when you got what you wanted.

It just changed its focus.

Nobody really talks about this part.

It feels ungrateful to admit it. Maybe even a little embarrassing.

I got what I wanted. Why doesn’t it feel like enough?

So we carry that feeling privately.

We assume everyone else is enjoying the life they worked so hard to build, while we are the only ones wondering what happened.

And our mind, trying to be helpful, starts to explain.

Maybe you wanted the wrong thing.

The wrong job. The wrong house. The wrong city. Maybe, whisper it, the wrong person.

And so the mind begins making another list.