Insufficiency of the Attainable

Ronald Rohlheiser

"In the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we come to understand that here, in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished.” 

Karl Rahner wrote those words and not to understand them is to risk letting restlessness become a cancer in our lives. What does it mean to be tormented by the insufficiency of everything attainable? …We all experience this daily. In fact, for all but a few  privileged, peaceful times, this torment is like an undertow to everything we experience: Beauty makes us restless when it should give us peace, the love we experience with our spouse does not fulfil our longings, the relationships we have within our families seem too petty and domestic to be fulfilling, our job is hopelessly inadequate to the dreams we have for our ourselves, the place we live seems boring and lifeless in comparison to other places, and we are too restless to sit peacefully at our own tables, sleep peacefully in our own beds, and be at ease within our own skins. We are tormented by the insufficiency of everything attainable when our lives are too small for us and we live them in such a way that we are always waiting, waiting for something or somebody to come along and change things so that our real lives, as we imagine them, might begin.

The first and deep reason for this torment is that we are congenitally over-charged and over-built for this earth, infinite spirits living in a finite situation, hearts made for union with everything and everybody meeting only mortal persons and things. Small wonder we have problems with insatiability, daydreams, loneliness, and restlessness! We are Grand Canyons without a bottom. Nothing, short of union with All That Is, can ever fill in that void. To be tormented by restlessness is to be human.

Holy Longing