On existential longing, the good enough life, and learning to inhabit what is here
15 May – written by Katrin Kemmerzehl – Blog
Many people spend years striving towards a future version of life. A better relationship or friendship. More certainty. More success. A stronger sense of belonging. The hope that one day things will finally feel settled and complete.
But at some point, we often begin to realise that the life we imagined and the life we are living are not entirely the same thing.
Sometimes this recognition arrives through a breakup, burnout, loneliness, disappointment, illness, a life transition, or relational fatigue. Other times, we gradually notice that life remains imperfect even after we have tried very hard to make it otherwise.
And often, our questions begin to change.
From: How do I finally live the life I imagined for myself?
To: How do I learn to live peacefully with the life I actually have?
Many of us carry an internal image of the person we thought we would become. More socially connected. More certain. More successful. Living in the right home, in the right area, surrounded by the right people. Alongside this imagined self often sits an imagined emotional life: the sense that one day we will be happy and things will finally feel settled, meaningful, complete.
Modern culture reinforces this fantasy everywhere. We are encouraged to optimise ourselves constantly, to become more productive, more healed, more attractive, more emotionally successful. Even rest can begin to feel like another form of self-improvement.
But for many people, there comes a moment when endless striving no longer feels inspiring. It can feel exhausting.
The grief of the unlived life
Part of adulthood involves grieving not only what happened, but also what did not happen.
The easier version of oneself. The relationship that remained complicated. The career that unfolded differently than expected. The friendship group that never fully formed. The hoped-for feeling of belonging that never entirely arrived.
This grief can feel strangely difficult to speak about because life may still contain many good things. People often feel guilty for their sadness, particularly when their lives appear “fine” from the outside.
Yet grief and gratitude can exist together.
The existential psychiatrist Irvin D. Yalom wrote that human beings inevitably confront certain existential realities, including mortality, isolation, freedom, uncertainty, and the search for meaning (Yalom, 1980).
Much suffering comes not only from these realities themselves, but from believing we should somehow escape them completely.
Without realizing, many people live with the belief that peace exists just beyond the next achievement, relationship, or reinvention:
I’ll feel okay once…
I’ll finally relax when…
Life will begin after…
But the destination keeps moving.
A journey to Holland
The therapist and writer Lori Gottlieb often explores the tension between the life we imagined and the life we actually find ourselves living (Gottlieb, 2019). Much of emotional growth involves grieving fantasies of certainty, perfection, or imagined futures that never fully arrived.
There is a well-known metaphor, originally written by Emily Perl Kingsley, about preparing for a long-awaited trip to Italy only to find yourself unexpectedly landing in Holland instead (Kingsley, 1987).
At first, the traveller feels devastated. This was not the destination they had hoped for. The life they imagined is gone. But slowly, over time, they begin to notice that Holland has its own beauty. Different landscapes. Different rhythms. Different possibilities for meaning.
Perhaps part of maturity involves recognising that grief and appreciation can coexist. We can mourn the life we imagined while still learning to inhabit the life that is here.
This does not mean pretending disappointment does not exist. It means allowing ourselves to stop living entirely in comparison to an imagined alternative version of life.
Living slightly out of step
Some people move through the world with a subtle sense of being out of sync with others.
This may include neurodivergent people, highly sensitive people, introverted people, or those who have felt different for much of their lives. Some people experience relationships deeply while also finding them tiring. Others struggle with the unspoken rules of social groups or the pressure to appear socially effortless.
Many become highly skilled at masking or adapting. They learn how to appear emotionally available, socially fluent, easy-going, and capable. They become the person who understands, accommodates, smooths things over, reaches out first, or carries the emotional weight of relationships.
Over time, this kind of chronic self-adjustment can create relational fatigue.
At some point, many people begin asking:
What happens if I stop trying so hard?
This question can feel frightening because it often reveals how many relationships depended upon over-functioning rather than mutuality.
The pressure to become someone else
The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre believed that human beings often live in what he called bad faith, shaping themselves around external expectations rather than living authentically (Sartre, 1943/2003).
Someone might become the endlessly easy-going person because conflict feels frightening. Another person may spend years trying to appear successful enough, attractive enough, or emotionally useful enough to finally feel secure. Someone else might stay in relationships or friendships that no longer feel reciprocal because letting go feels too painful.
Over time, many people begin to wonder whether the life they are living genuinely feels like their own.
They may start questioning how much of their life has been built around who they thought they needed to be to feel loved, accepted, or secure.
Therapy sometimes begins here. Not necessarily by helping someone transform into a completely different person, but by creating space to reflect on what feels meaningful, sustainable, and true to them.
Enoughness as a philosophical practice
The ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus believed that much human suffering comes from becoming trapped in endless desires for things that do not truly nourish us (Epicurus, 2012).
Central to his concept of a good life were friendship, reflection, modest pleasures, freedom from unnecessary distress, and inner calm.
Many people live with a persistent sense that their current life is insufficient. Not enough success. Not enough closeness. Not enough certainty. Not enough achievement. There is often an unspoken belief that peace exists somewhere beyond the present moment.
But what if the endless pursuit of “more” is itself part of the suffering?
This does not mean ambition is wrong or that people should stop wanting things altogether. Rather, it involves asking a different question:
What actually leaves me feeling nourished rather than depleted?
For some people, the answer may look surprisingly ordinary: a calm morning, a cup of tea or coffee, meaningful work, time with the dog or cat, being in nature, a family member’s steady presence, a few reciprocal relationships rather than many performative ones, books, walks, rest, and space to think.
A life can appear small from the outside and still feel deeply alive from within.
Perhaps this is what a good enough life sometimes looks like: not perfect or endlessly impressive, but emotionally inhabitable.
Worth beyond usefulness
The philosopher Immanuel Kant believed that human beings possess dignity because they are human, not because of their status, productivity, or usefulness (Kant, 1785/2012).
This idea can feel surprisingly difficult to absorb in a culture that constantly encourages people to prove their worth.
Many people find themselves organising their lives around gaining acceptance and trying to be successful, attractive, accomplished, emotionally supportive, or needed by others. Over time, it can begin to feel as though their worth depends on how helpful, understanding, easy-going, or emotionally available they are to everyone around them.
Someone may notice they are always the one adapting, checking in, keeping the peace, or holding things together, while feeling exhausted, unseen, or unsure whether there is space for their own needs too.
Over time, always making space for others can begin to feel emotionally one-sided, leaving someone lonely even within relationships.
Kant’s philosophy offers a more stable idea: our worth is not something that has to be endlessly earned.
This does not mean giving up ambition or longing. But it may soften the belief that something has gone wrong just because our lives turned out smaller, quieter, or more ordinary than we once imagined.
The fantasy of the perfect life
The philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote about how easily people can become caught up in ideas about what a meaningful or successful life is supposed to look like (Heidegger, 1927/1962).
Many of us carry these expectations without fully noticing them:
I should own more by now.
I should have the perfect family.
I should have more friends.
I should feel happier.
I should be doing life better than this.
Sometimes suffering comes not only from life itself, but from constantly comparing our real lives to imagined versions of how life was supposed to be.
This can feel especially painful in a culture filled with carefully curated images of success, happiness, connection, and certainty. Other people’s lives can begin to look complete, as though everyone else has somehow figured out how to live well.
Yet underneath many outwardly polished lives are the same human experiences: uncertainty, loneliness, disappointment, longing, and limitation.
No relationship, career, lifestyle, or version of success fully removes uncertainty or difficulty from human life. But perhaps a meaningful life is not about escaping these experiences, but learning how to live alongside them with more awareness and compassion.
Becoming more fully oneself
Friedrich Nietzsche questioned whether people were truly living according to their own values or simply adapting themselves to gain social approval (Nietzsche, 1883/2006). His work can be understood not as a celebration of relentless ambition, but as an invitation toward self-authorship.
For some people, becoming more fully themselves does not mean becoming louder, more successful, or more socially impressive. It may mean something quieter: less performance, more honesty, and less willingness to abandon themselves in order to belong.
Simone de Beauvoir similarly emphasised that meaningful relationships depend on mutual recognition, meaning two people can remain fully themselves, rather than one person gradually disappearing into the other (de Beauvoir, 1949/2011).
Many people discover, often painfully, that connection becomes difficult to sustain when it requires ongoing self-abandonment.
In therapy, as Carl Rogers suggested, many people gradually move away from trying to become an “ideal” version of themselves (Rogers, 1961). They often begin to relate to themselves with more acceptance and self-compassion.
Learning to inhabit the good enough life
Many of us spend a lot of time hoping life will eventually feel more complete than it does. We imagine a point where things finally come together and there is less uncertainty, less longing, more of a sense that we have arrived in some way.
But life rarely really does that. There is still usually a sense that things are not fully resolved. Relationships remain imperfect. We are still becoming who we are. Some hopes unfold differently than we imagined, and others do not unfold at all.
The philosopher Albert Camus wrote about this very honestly, describing how human beings long for clarity, certainty, and resolution, while life itself does not offer final answers or a completed picture.
And yet he did not treat this as something to despair over. Instead, he pointed back to the ordinary things that are still here: sunlight, conversation, humour, nature, love, and the small, everyday moments that make up a life (Camus, 1942/2013).
That feels important here because it shows us that meaning and fulfilment can be found in ordinary life and in the here-and-now, even if life never arrives in a finished or complete form. And within that unfinishedness, there can still be warmth, connection, aliveness, moments of peace, and small experiences that feel enough.
Maybe peace is not about finally getting everything right. Maybe it is more about becoming more accepting of the life we are already living, and realising there is still something good here, even now.
A space to explore these questions
Therapy can also become a space to explore deeper existential questions around meaning, identity, connection, belonging, and the experience of being human.
Often, these questions do not have quick or simple answers. Learning to live more peacefully with ourselves may involve grief, honesty, reflection, and slowly letting go of older ideas about who we thought we needed to be. For some people, this may also include reflecting on neurodiversity and how they experience moving through the world.
Therapy can offer a thoughtful and compassionate way to explore all of this at your own pace, and to consider what it might mean to live in a way that feels more authentic, sustainable, and aligned with who you are.
If any of this resonates with you, you are very welcome to get in touch.
References
- Camus, A. (2013). The myth of Sisyphus. Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1942)
- de Beauvoir, S. (2011). The second sex. Vintage Books. (Original work published 1949)
- Epicurus. (2012). The art of happiness. Penguin Classics.
- Gottlieb, L. (2019). Maybe you should talk to someone: A therapist, Her therapist, and our lives revealed. Scribe Publications.
- Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time. Blackwell Publishing. (Original work published 1927)
- Kant, I. (2012). Groundwork of the metaphysics of morals. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1785)
- Kingsley, E. P. (1987). Welcome to Holland.
- Nietzsche, F. (2006). Thus spoke Zarathustra. Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1883)
- Rogers, C. R. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist’s view of psychotherapy. Houghton Mifflin.
- Sartre, J.-P. (2003). Being and nothingness. Routledge. (Original work published 1943)
- Yalom, I. D. (1980). Existential psychotherapy. Basic Books.
Katrin Kemmerzehl
I am a qualified psychotherapeutic counsellor in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Please get in touch if you’re interested in arranging a consultation.