Want what you have

Want what you have

This phrase has been rolling around in my head for a few days now. It has a habit of popping into my head every few years and staying awhile, perhaps when I am in the throes of some particularly want-y sort of thing. Such as wanting to be pregnant. Such as wanting to have a child. Such as right now.

Want what you have – it’s a quote from a book called “I Am That” by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, who lived all his life in Bombay and died in 1981, never having left that city. He was a teacher of eternal truths as simple as this. Want what you have.

And how hard is that? My colleague who is unhappy in her marriage envies me my “freedom”, and until I discovered she wasn’t happy, I wanted her life – or what I thought it was.

Want what you have. I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. But I don’t want that. Not right now. I want to be tied down, to a baby who needs feeding and comforting and love. I want to be in a relationship, and to have to check in and see if “we” have anything planned tonight.

I live in a beautiful city, and in a great part of that beautiful city.

I have a good job, and earn good money.

I am resourceful, and know how to look after myself.

I have lovely friends.

I have a good, sound roof over my head, and it’s filled with nice things.

I eat nourishing and delicious food every day.

I have a good family, despite what I wrote the other day, and in their own way are caring and loving, and infinitely better than a lot of other units out there passing as families.

But. There are so many “buts” I could add to each one of those sentences, but I won’t because I keep coming back to  “want what you have”. And when I think about it like that it seems unbelievably ungrateful to say, yes, I have all those things, and yet I want more.

But I do. I want all those things to contain a child, and I really don’t think I am pregnant. I don’t know if I am imagining it or not, but I think I feel a vague heavy feeling in my belly, like my period may be about to start. And that devastates me. But there is a corner of my being that believes I am. Even through my sobbing (of which there has been plenty), there is a part of me that believes.

But the other night just before I switched off the light to go to sleep, I picked up a Deepak Chopra book that has been sitting on my bedside table for months now called “The Book of Secrets“. This book is obviously calling out my name, demanding to be read, because I bought this copy a few months ago, only to realise I had another edition of the same book sitting unread on my bookshelf, bought when I went to see Deepak speak in Sydney some years back.

I opened a random page, and two phrases jumped out at me.

The first was, “Nothing is random – my life is full of signs and symbols.”

The second was, “Whatever I pay attention to will grow.”

So, if nothing is random, and I have been placing a lifetime’s worth of attention into this moment, perhaps my period won’t arrive tomorrow, and perhaps that blood test on Monday will give me the sign I want to see.

I went to yoga this evening, and revelled in my strong body. Breathing and stretching and just being with my breath and body made me feel elated, almost euphoric. Not that the dark, and light, thoughts didn’t intrude, because they did. But my body and breath were at the forefront and my chattering, worrying mind got a bit of a break.

Cover of I Am That: Talks with Sri Nisargadatta