Sehnsucht: Consider Me An Addict

When I embarked on my 30-before-30 list, I set out to knock some things off my want-to-do list, to put them in ink and start working my way down. I expected there to be a lot of lessons in that. I expected that there would be some hiccups, and I even expected that when I turned 30, there would still be some things on my list that I hadn't yet accomplished. Above all, I knew I was going to struggle with accepting the undone. I just didn't realize how much.

Source

Let me explain. I've been feeling this mourning lately, for things that I want to do but might not be able to. It's as if putting a deadline on these 30 things made me frighteningly aware of the finiteness of the world. Or it might simply be the fact that most of my physical and some of my financial goals were wiped clean away by one tiny little irritable nerve in my back.

Or maybe I've just been reading too many articles and I'm feeling sorry for myself for being a member of "Generation Screwed". Or maybe I'm coming across too many articles about millenials who are feeling anxious or having a hard time gaining any traction in this thing called the real world.

Either way, I was beginning to feel an overly dramatic delayed sense of doom and gloom--like it just hit me that the economy tanked, it just hit me that you kind of need to pick and choose your dreams, it just hit me that this world isn't exactly what the generations before promised us. See: John Stewart's commencement speech:

"Lets talk about the real world for a moment... I’ll be blunt. We broke it. Please don’t be mad. I know we were supposed to bequeath to the next generation a world better than the one we were handed. So, sorry... Somewhere between the gold rush of easy internet profits and an arrogant sense of endless empire, we heard kind of a pinging noise, and uh, then the damn thing just died on us. So I apologize."

I was bumming for a few weeks, trying to put my finger on exactly what I was feeling. It wasn't me giving up...that simply isn't in my blood. It wasn't entitlement--I know all good things in life are worth the sweat, tears and sleepless nights. It simply felt like I was longing for something. I wasn't sure what. I wasn't sure if it even existed. It just felt like something was missing.

So of course I kept reading. It's what over-thinkers do when their thoughts don't produce an acceptable conclusion. In the New York Times Article "Pinterest, Tumblr and the trouble with 'Curation'", Carina Chocano muses on why we seem to be, as a culture, addicted to perusing the internet for collections of other people's favorite things or, as she refers to it, perusing for 'lifestyle pornography'. Basically: why are chicks so damned addicted to Pinterest? And what is the fallout?

I thought I was just reading interesting social commentary about a popular social medium--what could this possibly have to do with me specifically? Alas, I stopped dead in my tracks when I read the following:

"There’s a German word for it, of course: Sehnsucht, which translates as “addictive yearning.” This is, I think, what these sites evoke: the feeling of being addicted to longing for something; specifically being addicted to the feeling that something is missing or incomplete. The point is not the thing that is being longed for, but the feeling of longing for the thing. And that feeling is necessarily ambivalent, combining both positive and negative emotions."

Oh. Uh, yeah. That sounds about right.

Except, contrary to what the contents of my own obsessively-curated Pinterest boards would have you believe, I long not for things but for experiences. For wisdom. For milestones. For the all-too-elusive happiness--though I don't know what it exactly looks like. I think I am, in fact, addicted to inspiration or enlightenment. After all, I do "occupy [myself] with or involve [myself] in it habitually or compulsively".

I openly acknowledge this about myself. This is not breaking news. In fact, this was a part of myself I struggled with pre-Pinterest. For crying out loud--2 of my goals are challenges based upon this very facet of my personality: Embrace the gray. Get your head straight so you don't have a full-blown crisis when you turn 30. (You could even argue that the list itself was a kind of stare-down to this tendancy. If you're so occupied with doing these things, I have an idea. Go do them.)

But I ask myself, how harmful is this really? The compulsion to better myself or find/do things that makes me happy? Allow me to present you one pin from my board labeled 'Inspiration', notably one of the most-populated board I have (second only to 'Good Eats'):

Source

On the one hand, not being easily satisfied means I'll always be trying, I'll never be stagnant. But on the other, if I'm not careful, it might make me someone who is wishing her life away, seldom if ever stopping to smell the proverbial roses or enjoy what I've worked so hard to attain.

I think there is a delicate balance in this, and I don't think that it is unique to me. I look around and see several of my friends struggling with this daily. We're all working steadfastly to make our dreams come true while struggling to reminder ourself that there is beauty in the journey.

So, the way I'm choosing to think about accomplishments from now on is inspired by my main dude Rumi:

"What you seek is seeking you." --Rumi

"Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself." --Rumi 

Basically, I'm choosing to believe that (a) if I put my head down and do some hard work, the universe will deliver, and (b) if I trust myself, I will find my way. This way my success is at once out of my hands and within me.  Maybe this way it won't be all on my shoulders. Maybe this way I can chill with the longing for a while.

Consider me a sehnsucht addict in recovery. Taking it one pin day at a time.