When You Long For Something That Doesn’t Come

If you realize it, there are many situations in life in which you want something with all your might, and you even make great efforts to achieve it, but it does not happen. It seems that if you yearn for something too much, that goes away. Very often, when you stop wanting that goal so intensely, suddenly one day that possibility opens up that allows you to achieve it.

When you want too much for something to happen, or for something to arrive, you already enter a state of unease and a certain discomfort. The hours seem to you days and the days years. You try to make use of all the patience you have available, but you cannot get that which you dream of so much out of your head. Sometimes it is a love, other times a job, or money, or the recovery of health … It becomes urgent to get it and you feel that a large part of your well-being depends on achieving it.

That situation where you long for something too much and it doesn’t come is, so to speak, the polar opposite of chance . You can’t get reality to tune in with your desire. You do what is necessary and, for one reason or another, what you expect does not happen. What is this all about? How can it be explained, from a psychological point of view?

Why do you long for too much?

The first question you should ask yourself in such cases is why do you long for something too much. The key here is in the word “too much. ” That excess reveals that you have built circumstances that have led you to a dire situation. There is a very strong need and satisfying it is assumed as a decisive factor for your well-being. You feel that that “something” that you are eagerly looking for is in an illusory way essential for your well-being.

The first question then revolves around whether really what you long for too much has the transforming power that you grant it. Some believe that a great love will free them from loneliness, sadness or isolation. Others believe that great work will give meaning to their lives. There are also those who feel that if they had much more money, their problems would end, or that by overcoming a certain health condition their life would pass peacefully.

This exercise of putting the source of all happiness in something often leads to distortions. The usual thing is that it is the cause and consequence of a process of idealization. Deep down, it starts from the idea that there is a full state of life, a paradise, that must be reached. Supposedly, not achieving it is what causes us displeasure. The object of our desire represents that paradise in our mind. Human beings are given to that.

Why doesn’t what you long for come too much?

The question of why we do not achieve what we want can have many answers. A first approximation leads us to conclude that sometimes we simply want what does not exist. Many times we are imprisoned in impossible wishes and unrealizable fantasies, such as being rescued or getting something external that gives weight to our existence.

May the love of another human being solve our lack of self-love. Or that social recognition gives us the sense of transcendence that we do not have. Perhaps that the life that we lead and that we have built up to now will suddenly disappear and become an existence without the shortcomings or errors that we have carried up to now.

Although it is politically correct to say that “anything can be achieved”, the truth is that it is not. There are impossible goals to achieve and it is important to recognize them. We cannot, for example, live forever. Nor is it possible to prevent suffering from coming into our lives. Likewise, there are great feats that, indeed, can be achieved, but they often involve long processes and constant and well-directed efforts.

There is also what Jung called “synchronicity.” Coinciding circumstances with the unconscious processes that we live are created. Sometimes we just look at our rational mind and see that there is a great longing, but it does not materialize in an achievement. Perhaps we unconsciously desire something else and, ultimately, that is what we achieve. The human being is so complex that, many times, he even wants to suffer. Of course, that is what he achieves, but he does not realize how he did it.