peace&niche

It was the morning of my birthday. My mom called and asked, “Your birthday is coming up, what are your plans?”

And without thinking, I said, “I want to cry. I feel guilty.”

There was a pause.

What I meant was — the older I get, the more I feel this quiet, gnawing guilt about not living the life I actually want. Not the life that looks good from the outside, but the one that feels true. My mom’s response came quickly: “You should be grateful that you are alive and well.”

She wasn’t wrong. But her words stayed with me in a way I didn’t expect. Not because they stung, but because they pointed me toward a question I’ve been sitting with ever since:

Can we hold gratitude and desire at the same time?

I think somewhere along the way, we learned that wanting more is ungrateful. That if you’re already doing okay — if you have your health, your people, a roof over your head — then longing for something beyond that is greedy, or naive, or entitled.

So we quiet the wanting. We dress it up as contentment. We tell ourselves, I should just be thankful for what I have. And we are. We genuinely are.

But the longing doesn’t go away.

And I think that’s what guilt really is, most of the time — not a sign that we want too much, but a sign that we’ve been taught to make ourselves small. To be easy. To not take up too much space with our needs and our hopes and our reaching.

Gratitude, to me, has never been about settling. It’s not a ceiling — it’s a foundation. When I practice it, I’m not telling myself this is enough and I should stop here. I’m saying, I can see what’s good right now, and I trust that more good is possible.

Those two things are not in conflict. Being thankful for where you are doesn’t mean you have to stay there forever.

The version of me that wants more…more love, more aliveness, more of the life I imagine. I’m not ungrateful. I’m just honest.

What I’ve been resisting is exactly that: the permission to want freely, without guilt trailing behind every wish.

I’m done resisting it.

Gratitude and desire can coexist. In fact, I think they’re meant to. One keeps you present, the other keeps you moving. And together, they make for a life that is both full and still becoming.

So yes, I’m grateful. Deeply, genuinely grateful.

And I want more. I’m ready to welcome it.

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A K-drama is actually what first stirred this question in me — I wrote about it in This K-Drama Wrecked Me (In the Best Way).