I WANT BUT I CAN'T HAVE

     Years ago, in the middle of doing something I can't remember, I suddenly heard a voice: "I want but I can't have." I knew immediately this was a voice from the deepest part of me. Core. One of oldest, perhaps the oldest belief I had about myself. It was shocking - and heartbreaking that I myself, ruled by this idea, was the reason I felt so held back by a force I couldn't understand. I knew had everything I needed to have a successful life - but I couldn't seem to get ahead. 
     The voice was heartbreaking because I suddenly understood the world or circumstances or luck weren't holding me back. I was the one holding me back. I had been confirming the truth of the voice again and again. I'd been compulsively enacting a self-fulfilling prophecy. I began to understand why I could rarely keep commitments, was always moving from thing to thing and place to place, unable to follow through on opportunities, unable to create the arc of a successful career or maintain a long term relationship.
     A hidden part of my subconscious had revealed itself, and it was devastating, to think that all the time I lived under a tyrannical ambition, wanting to (in shorthand) be rich and famous, I was actually living out a very different goal, one that was about impoverishment, frustration and self-denial. 
     I thought this core belief must have come from childhood but in a sense that didn't matter. Its etiology might be interesting, but I intuitively knew understanding its source wouldn't help me walk out of the prison the voice kept me in. How then could I get free? Was the part of me that wanted to get free, to change, weaker than the voice? How could I transform a fundamental part of my psyche, my very being, so that I was no longer under its dominion? Did I, so used to pessimism about myself, frequently in despair, really think it was even possible? 
     Over the years, I've learned there are many roads to transformation. No one of them is the only one; all of them are useful, even necessary, for dealing with the negative sentences I pass on myself. I first had to acknowledge the voice inside me; my hearing it at all was a great gift, the first step in seeing the truth inside me. I decided that the part of me that heard the voice was greater than the voice itself. I tried to act out of that decision - even when I doubted I could. Through experience, I learned how to take a step back, put some space around the voice and in that way to begin to bring it down to size. It's been a slow walk to the kind of change I want and it's still going on. I understand now the voice will always be with me but I don't have to believe it.
     Most of that slow walk has been on a spiritual path. I learned to meditate and often found images that could help me. I saw a collapsed stick figure, the picture of despair, and I worked for months to get her arms and legs fleshed out, to put color in her cheeks and get her standing. Eventually, I saw her walking out into the world, smiling with her arms open wide. It was powerful and I can still think of that image and feel the possibility of change. 
     Because of my frequent companions, suffering and despair, I've learned how to surrender to something greater than myself, to the idea that the universe is benevolent and wants me to have a good life. I do what I can to cultivate hope. I try not to impose my will, rush to come up with solutions to all my problems - I've learned that if I concentrate on principles like gratitude and humility, the answers, the right actions, will come to me. The answers aren't the end; my resistance to change is a major obstacle; it's a challenge to take the risk of moving out of my comfort zone. I have to ask the universe to give me the strength to take the actions to make the answers come true.
     Does this sound as if the work I've had to do is done? Far from it. There are still many days when I can't connect with hope or gratitude, days when all I hear is the voice, repeating again and again, that I want but can't have. But some crucial things have changed. I used to think the fact that I was so held back by a voice deep inside me meant that there was no hope for me; it confirmed all my hopelessness and fear. But, slowly, slowly, I've learned it's all right to have things inside me I want, need to change. In fact, I've come to understand that dealing with the voice inside me, working to get freer and freer, is the real purpose of my life, the work I'm meant to do. In a paradoxical way, it's the struggle that's put solid ground under me. I'm anchored in the effort to change.
     I've come to believe something else as well. If the deepest change is possible for me, it's possible for all of us. Hope, gratitude, humility and the art of surrender will inevitably lead all of us where we want to go.