Learn To Miss The Right Way

Learning to miss is part of personal growth. Feeling the lingering imprint of an absence can sometimes be stressful, which is why it is necessary to learn the art of saying goodbye. Letting go is painful and sad, but in the end it is a part of life.

The concept of missing is always linked to people, but it is interesting how people are also experts at missing objects, situations and even abstract things that are impossible to define – the empty emotional and existential spaces and inner worlds that are so complex that they sometimes puts our mental health at risk.

I miss the person I was before, when I was happier and more hopeful. This idea, this sense of return that most people have probably experienced at some point, is what psychologist Robert Plutchik defined as “longing for the past,” which was also part of his famous wheel of emotion.

Living in a bubble of longing turns into a desperate longing for something we once had or were. And then this longing for vulnerability develops, and the vulnerability for fear and even the onset of depression. So before we allow ourselves to be driven away in the same way that Ofelia immersed herself in an aquatic world of sorrow, we must train ourselves in the art of saying goodbye and knowing how to miss things.

There is an invisible country, a parallel, imprecise, intangible world that we all visit sometimes, and it is called “Missing”. We turn the handle to step into it every time someone we love leaves us. We visit it when we leave a routine or activity that was significant behind us, and we live there almost permanently when we lose someone, or even when we feel dissatisfied with ourselves.

A cold wind called longing is constantly blowing in this hole. The longing for someone or something. We struggle to breathe because there is a hole in our hearts where everything falls through. The land called “Missing” is a dark and depressed maze you should NEVER stay in for too long, because the deeper you go, the more you forget the way out.

Living in permanent exile in this way will plunge you into desperation and deep dissatisfaction with the current, real world. Before you get caught up in this twilight zone, you need to be able to make smart decisions during times of emotional difficulty, so that you can get out of the maze and understand that missing is a part of life, not a way of life.

It is important to learn how to end a chapter. Instead of longing for what you were yesterday, invest in what you can do today. Learn to miss the people who are no longer with you, but let them go to a special corner of your heart as you decide to be happy again. Life is about making decisions, putting one foot in front of the other and getting out of these horrific, personal labyrinths.

Let us now reflect on some strategies you can use in these situations.

Missing something puts you at a crossroads at three powerful battlefields: longing, fear of loneliness, and emotional vulnerability. These are three smart enemies you need to get to know and learn to tame:

• Experience confusion: with longing comes immediate confusion. What should I do now? What will happen to me? You are bombarded with endless bursts of emotion. You have to experience them for a while, accept them and then release them.
• Analyze the emotional thicket you are in. To confront the pain, absence or emptiness, it is important to analyze and dissect the emotional fabric that is suffocating you.
• You can overcome longing by setting new goals in the present. The fear of loneliness can in turn be quenched by being brave and starting to enjoy your own company while seeking support from others.
• Emotional vulnerability is healed by looking to the future with more courage than fear. This can be done by investing in resilience – the kind of strength that no one learns, that you discover every day with every steady step you take. You can do it yourself, sometimes in the company of others, with the determination of someone who takes the reins for their own story.

You must be able to embark on new paths in life without letting the shadows of absence and emptiness make you doubt your decisions. People always lack things, people and pieces of exceptional history. All of these things are aspects of our lives that we hold dear, but they are just chapters in a novel that has many more in front of it – many more lines to write.