Missing Has To Be Part Of Life, Not A Way Of Life

Learning to miss is also part of our personal maturity. Feeling the permanent hole of an absence can sometimes be very corrosive, so it is necessary to start by force in the art of goodbye, in that “letting go” that hurts and despairs, but that in the end is part of the life cycle.

We know that the concept of “missing” is always associated with the lack of a person. However, it is curious to become aware of something very concrete: the human being is a specialist in missing objects, situations, people and even abstract dimensions that are impossible to define.

We speak of emotional and existential voids, of those internal worlds so complex that sometimes put our mental health at risk.

“I miss the person I was before, when I was more cheerful and had more hopes, more illusions.” This idea, this sense of involution that many of us may have had more than once is what the psychologist Robert Plutchik defined as “longing for the past being”, and which he also included in his famous theory of the wheel of emotions.

We cannot forget that living immersed in this subtle bubble flavored with longing creates a desperate longing for something we had or were in the past. In turn, the longing leads to vulnerability, and this does so in fear and even in the beginning of depression.

Thus, before allowing ourselves to drift like an Ophelia immersed in the aquatic world of sadness, it is necessary to train ourselves in the art of goodbye and, above all, in knowing how to miss.

That country called “miss”

There is an invisible country.  There is a parallel, imprecise and intangible world that we all frequent on occasion, called “missing”. We turn the knob to enter it whenever someone we love walks away from us.

We frequent it when we leave behind a routine or an activity that was meaningful to us. Likewise, we live – almost – permanently in this country when we lose someone, or even when we feel a deep dissatisfaction with ourselves.

A cold wind called longing constantly reigns in this vital hole : longing for someone or something. In fact, as the Latin root itself reveals, “ “ anhelāre ”means shortness of breath, we find it difficult to breathe because in our heart there is a hole through which life escapes little by little.

Living in this permanent exile plunges us into despair and deep dissatisfaction towards the present, towards the real world. Before remaining anchored in this vital twilight, people have to be able to make intelligent decisions in these moments of emotional complexity to get out of this labyrinth, understanding that missing is part of life, not a way of life.

Training your emotions in the art of goodbye

You have to learn to close cycles. To not yearn for what we were yesterday, but to invest in what we can become today. We must learn to miss those who are no longer by our side, but letting them go to a precious corner of our hearts, while our being makes the firm resolution to be happy again.

Life is, after all, making decisions, putting one foot in front of the other to get out of those personal labyrinths where it is not good to be trapped. Let us now reflect on what strategies could help us in these situations.

Finding your way out in the midst of emotional complexity

Missing puts us in the middle of three powerful workhorses: longing, fear of loneliness, and emotional vulnerability. They are three sagacious enemies that must be known, controlled and learned to tame.

• Live the confusion. With longing and the lack of something or someone, confusion comes immediately. What am I going to do now? What will become of me?  Endless sensations and emotions rush over us. For a time, we have to live them, assume them and unburden them.

• Analyze the emotional tangle. To face the mourning for that absence or that void that occurs in the midst of mourning, it is essential to analyze and break down that emotional tissue that suffocates and dominates us.

• Longing, for example, is overcome with new goals in the present. The fear of loneliness, on the other hand, is extinguished with the courage of those who begin to enjoy their own company while seeking, in turn, the support of others.

• Emotional vulnerability is remedied with the courage of those who look to tomorrow with more courage than fear. It does so by investing in resilience, in that strength that no one teaches us and that we are discovering every day with firm steps. Alone at times and in company at others, with the resolution of someone who returns to take the leading role in their own story.

We must be able to undertake new directions in this life without the shadow of that lack, that absence or that void putting our decisions in doubt. The human being will always miss things, people, scraps of an exceptional past. They are pages of our life that we treasure with great affection, but they are chapters of a past that precede a novel where there are still many, many lines to write.