We learn the game of pursuit very early in life: we pursue education, friendships, opportunities, career, success. And we learn that the harder we pursue the higher our chances of attaining what we’re looking for. But often we find that the more we get the more we want.
And so we amass various things—titles, accomplishments, memberships, cars, hobbies, divorces, broken dreams—but still we find ourselves empty and lacking.
So, then we pursue other things, more things—peace, meaningful career, new skills, better cars, bigger houses—but we still find ourselves lacking.
We then decide that we must be the problem and start blaming it all on ourselves—on how demanding we are, on our inability to just be at peace, on our age, our partner or lack of partner, on a life crisis, and all the wrong decisions we’ve made.
And so we make a major pivot in life—we quit our job, sell the house, go travelling, get a therapist, shave our head, try Ayahuasca, start meditating, join a band. And yet still—the void.
This only calcifies our assumption that we indeed are the problem, and so at that point, we either resign to never getting there and we quit, or if we’re the relentless type we continue looking because surely since we’re the problem we must be the solution, too.
Whether it’s the pursuit of a meaningful life, a fulfilling career, or an enjoyable hobby, we all have our own experience of chasing and never getting there. And not just not getting there, but somehow the more we chase the father away we are.
And this, perhaps, is our clue. Because as can never reach the horizon, we can never get enough of what we’re not really looking for. Pursuit is insidious because we can never catch an illusion.
We can consider that the reason why our accomplishments never fulfil us is not because we haven’t yet gotten what we wanted—but because we already have it. In other words, it’s not that we haven’t attained the right thing—it’s because what we’re really pursuing doesn’t need pursuing.
We are taught early in life that what we want is a) external to us, b) absent, c) in the future. But perhaps all three are misconceptions. Perhaps the degree to which we can consider and explore that what we really are looking for—peace, happiness, love—is a) not outside of us, but within in us, b) not absent but present, c) not in the future, but here and now, is the degree to which we can realign our pursuit. Because as we can’t find the right answers by asking the wrong questions, we can’t catch that what we aren’t seeking to catch.