Wanting More

We are the "you get what you get and you don't throw a fit generation."

I attended a business networking lunch last week.  I sat next to a woman who I hadn’t met before. 

“I’ve read your Substack,” she said.  “I’m exactly in the same place.” 

“What place is that?” I asked, not wanting to assume that she too sat home alone on Friday nights with a cat on her lap worrying about her future while her 15-year-old son played video games upstairs.

“I retired with a pension and moved to the Algarve about a year ago.  It’s lovely here but now after all the busyness of settling in is over I’m wondering is this all there is?  My life is fine.  I have nothing to complain about.  What’s wrong with me?”

I told her I didn’t have answers for myself let alone anyone else, but that more people than she may realize are having the same struggle. 

“You are not alone.”

“Yes,” she said, “that’s what meant so much to me about your article about struggling with “now what”?  I look out at so many of the women here. They seem so confident and competent.  They are running a business, writing a book or doing something important with their lives.  I feel so lonely being “just a little bit lost”.

I obviously understood.  We don’t talk about this enough:  our inner struggles and insecurities.  It’s so easy to compare our insides to the curated outsides that we see on others.

Often these feelings of aloneness and terminal uniqueness are worse than the struggle itself.

“Am I the only one?”  “What’s wrong with me?”

In my lunch companion’s case what she was really asking is “is it ok to want more?”

I was born in 1970.

My mother has told me that parents at that time were told if you picked up a crying baby you would spoil them.  It’s like the Cesar Milans of parenting wanted to make sure we didn’t learn to “beg at the table.”

Then, as I got older, my cries were often met with the enlightened parenting response of, “You want to cry, I’ll give you something to cry about.”

I share this not to criticize my parents but to recognize that many of us in mid life are from the “eat what’s on your plate generation.”

It can be very hard to hold onto the still quiet voice inside asking “is this all there is” when we’ve been conditioned to believe: “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit.”

It’s even worse when we add “gratitude guilt” to the equation.

How many self-help modalities advocate a gratitude practice?  Who hasn’t had a gratitude journal?

Maybe some people have lost touch with the good in their lives.

Instead, most of the women I meet are painfully aware of the dumpster fires in many parts of the world. We feel not only grateful but sometimes guilty for all the blessings we have. I don’t think lack of gratitude is what we’re struggling with. 

Rather, the challenge, especially as women, is to give ourselves permission to want more without shaming ourselves for being spoiled and ungrateful. 

What does More look like?  What does More mean? 

It isn’t what our advertising driven capitalist consumption culture would have us believe.

For me, more means honoring my yearnings, not as a spoiled child’s demands, but as a calling to creativity.

More means being able to hold contradictions.  That I can be deeply grateful for all I have and want things to change.

More means listening to the wisdom in my No’s.  That my No’s allow me to say “this is who I am separate from you and that is good and necessary.”

More means loving myself and knowing there are things I can do better.    

More means learning, growing, creating.

More means I am still alive and want to express that aliveness in the world in a tangible way.

More means not wanting to settle for everything is fine. It means wanting to fall in love with my life again.

Maybe you too are wondering is this it? Is this as good as it gets?

Don’t silence the yearning for more.  It is holy. It is needed.

Rebels. Renegades. Pioneers.  Inventors. They all wanted more.

Maybe your yearnings are meant to change the world or maybe they’re just meant to change your life but don’t leave the baby crying in the crib.

Pick it up ~ not to silence the cries but to say, “I am here with you.  I am listening to you. I won’t walk away from your distress.” 

You are not alone.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash