Happy Catch-22 Year!

Thanks to Joseph Heller’s novel of the same name, Catch-22 is typically thought of as a bad thing. We’re lodged between the rock and the hard place of wanting something and finding it impossible to have. 

In Heller’s novel, a solider seeks a psychiatric loophole to avoid a dangerous mission. But the strategy proves he’s perfectly sane and therefore fit to fly.

Then there’s the prostitute who says she’ll never marry a crazy man. But she believes any man who would marry a non-virgin is automatically crazy. Ergo: any man who’d marry her is nuts.

Life is full of such dilemmas. Most of them not-so concrete.

Conflicting desires—for both the beach and the mountains, for both love and freedom, for both solitude and a sense of belonging—make peace of mind seem impossible. Especially as we age.

We have so much and yet we constantly yearn for more. We long for what’s lasting in a world that’s always changing. But maybe that’s not a bad thing.

According to David Richo in The Five Longings: What We’ve Always Wanted and Already Have, our longings make us human. They send us on a quest. They make our lives a hero’s journey!

We long for love—to be seen and appreciated as we are by other humans. We also long to love ourselves and to give our love to others.

We long for meaning—a sense of purpose in our work, our relationships, in nature, and in how we see the world.

We long for freedom—personal autonomy and liberation from fear-based patterns and attachments. As Richo put is: We want to set our lively energy free as we would a colt from a narrow stall.

We long for happiness—which includes both lively joy and inner peace. We want to be satisfied with what we are and what we have, even when it’s not perfect or complete.

And we long for growth—for building self-esteem, forming healthy relationships, and stretching beyond our habits and constraints.

We long for all these things although we already have them. Because they can’t ever be fully resolved. We can’t love or be loved enough, once and for all, for a lifetime. Just as we’ll always will seek more meaning, more freedom, more happiness, more growth. 

Knowing this can bring us peace. Without our longings, we’d be numb. Living with paradox makes us interesting.

So my friends, Happy Catch-22 Year! 

May we heroically soldier on, and ask for help when we need it.

May we believe we are lovable, as crazy as that sounds.

And may we discover that the things we long for are never really missing at all.