Longing or expecting

“What about a life without children?”  was one of the questions in the chat during an online training with people from Latvia.

After the break, I wanted to broach this topic, but I had no idea how. I had already realized that this is a major issue in Latvia, and I also heard it in Slovakia; that the current generation so often has difficulties having children, and that finding a partner is also an issue.

I started broaching this topic without knowing what I was going to tell about it. And suddenly the quote on yesterday’s tear-off calendar comes to mind:

“Is what you want based on expecting or on longing?”

I read the quote yesterday, but didn’t really think it through. And now, while talking, I realized what a huge difference it can make whether you want something from a state of longing or a state of expecting.

Longing is connected with what is not there or what you did not get.

If I am single now and I am longing for a partner, then I will try to fit an imaginary partner, or an imaginary child into my life, as I know it now. But it is an illusion to think that my life would be the same if it becomes connected to the life of a partner or of a child.

A state of longing keeps us stuck in wanting to keep life as it is.

A state of longing is also linked to the past. The longing often contains the unconscious childish illusion that we can fix the past. That may be your own past, but you can also subconsciously be obsessed about giving your grandmother a better life than the one she had.

If you continue to see such a childish illusion as your life’s task as an adult, you will feel internally conflicted when you turn to the future, as it means turning your back on your grandmother. This alone can be a systemic reason for not having a partner or not having children: you feel that the past would remain unfixed, and as long as this is an unconscious process, the price is usually too high and there is no room for a partner or child.

When you imagine that you are thinking from a state of expectation of a life with a partner or with a child, then there is probably you probably hear that nagging voice inside your head: “You cannot simply order a partner, you cannot simply order a child, that is not how it works!” And that’s right, you can’t order a future.

Expecting demands a completely different mode from you.

Going into a state of expectation means leaving desire behind.

With expecting, I know that I have to take myself into the process from here to what I want. When ‘what I want’ is reached, I myself will also be different, or should be different.

It means that you open up to growth, that you open up to the fact that you are going to change and that your life is going to change, and you have no idea how and what the result will be… It means that you are already on the journey before the possible partner or the child is there.

Then another question came from the group: “And what about demanding?”

Demanding is an expression of an adult who remains in the position of an angry child. To demand that reality be different from what it is, comes from a state of emptiness. It is an attempt to impose your own will on reality.

It is an expression of personal conscience.

Children do not make demands in such a way. When we interpret a child’s behavior as demanding, this behavior is hard at work to point out to adults that something from our system’s history still wants a place, that there is something that the adults still have to integrate.

Longing is an expression of the systemic conscience, where a child (often as an adult) believes in the illusion that the past still needs to be fixed and he therefore does not have time yet for the future.

Expecting is already going on an adventure, taking yourself as luggage, expecting something unexpected to happen. This is a state of being in which you can just be taken along by the evolutionary force that moves your life as you would never be able to move your life yourself…

Bibi Schreuder

January 12, 2021