Wanting

There is something I am wanting and I am yearning for it.  I am yearning for it so much I feel sick and anxious with longing.  Sickness and anxiety born of fear that perhaps I won't get it.  It is not a good feeling.  Then there came a little suggestion: what if I were to imagine I had that thing now? If I had that thing right now, how would I feel? How would I act?  This is an interesting exercise when in the agony of wanting something one does not have.

There are two possible outcomes.  One is that in imagining one already has this thing one wants so much, imagining it so vividly that one feels, moves, breathes, and looks as if one already has it, it feels fundamentally better than the way one acted or felt before.  Or, it doesn't feel any better.  And then one has a choice.

If imagining one has the thing makes one feel fundamentally better, then why not allow oneself to carry on feeling that way? Never mind that one hasn't 'actually' got it yet.  Why prevent the good feeling of possibly having it, with the bad feeling of wanting it painfully.  What does the yearning serve? In our normal conception of time, the 'having' is a future thing, it hasn't happened yet, but nor has it not happened...in a way, allowing oneself to feel the pain of not having it, is like crossing a bridge before we've got to it. 

Go with the good feeling.  And if the imagining of the having of the thing did not make one feel fundamentally better, then let go of the wanting, because having the thing won't make one feel any better than one does right now.  Either way, doesn't one feel freer? Happier?  One is no longer locked into self-imposed unhappiness and constraint...