want what you have
you are already in the Inner Ring
C.S. Lewis has this piece of writing called the Inner Ring that I think about often. The core concept is that in any arena of life, at any stage, you will always sense that there is some in-group you are not quite in—a slightly-higher-status, intangible upper tier that you feel just on the cusp of. We vie to belong to it, making significant sacrifices to get inside this Inner Ring. But as soon as we get in, a new one appears. It’s like the Russian dolls that multiply each time you crack one open, or in Lewis’ words: “it is like piercing through the skins of an onion.”
To me, the Inner Ring is the ultimate symbol of desire: an encapsulation of all the little things that take us out of the moment. Our mind telling us that we are not good enough, hot enough, smart enough, cool enough to be where we are. Some voice in our head wondering if the people we’re around like us, if we should act differently, stand this way or that way, ask our question or stay quiet. This desperation to be inside the Inner Ring manifests as us giving our power away to the environment, externalizing our energy, robbing ourselves of the opportunity to enjoy where we are. We are too busy gazing in at our lives from the outside, evaluating our worthiness from the eyes of whomever is at the center of the Ring we want to break into.
But what if we inverted this perspective, discarded the notion that we needed to claw at this all-powerful, ever-alluring Inner Ring, and instead decided that the center of the Inner Ring is wherever we are right now?
what if you’ve already arrived?
What if we treated ourselves—the seat of our consciousness—as the center-point that all the onion layers flow from, as the complete doll nested inside all the Russian dolls. The source of the rings outside of it. In other words: what if there was nowhere to go, no ring to penetrate? What if we pointed all the energy that typically flows towards seeking, and instead directed it towards stewing in the moment?
Recently it has felt like everyone around me is constantly thinking of the next city they want to live in, move to, visit. They have so thoroughly gone through all the reasons why their city is not the place to be. At the same time, swaths of people flood to their city for exactly the reasons they want to leave. This is not uncommon: this constant itch to be somewhere that we aren’t. But what if we allowed ourselves to love where we are as much as we suspect we will love the next place we want to go? What if we didn’t obsess over all that isn’t right about where we are and instead fell in love with what exists now? What if we worshipped the present like we dream of the future and yearn for the past? Can we trade nostalgia for presence, desire for acceptance? Can we relate to where we already are, what we already have, as the end—just for a moment? What would it mean if we have already arrived? If we’ve been here the whole time, if what we have been searching for everywhere has always been contained in the Now?
fitting in
Much of maturity is this slow, burning realization that the Inner Ring is never quite as glamorous, sparkly, or magical as you think it will be—and noticing that what you already have is pretty damn good. You go somewhere beautiful and glamorous, but feel relieved to come back home to the people you love. You move somewhere to make new friends, but are eager to come back to those who know you deeply already. Maturing is this process of realizing that where you are, the people you’re around, the blessings you have, the city you live in—contain so much abundance that you could hardly behold it if you were to pause and feel it fully.
There will always be something shiny, glossy and new that stirs desire in you. This is the world we live in: we are mimetically inducing desires into each other constantly—a phenomenon that was happening long before we had coined the label ‘influencers’. Since the beginning of time, we have been imitating those at the top of the hierarchy, desiring the objects and symbols possessed by those inside the Inner Ring.
And hey, don’t get me wrong: desires can be fun. Striving, pursuing, attaining are all natural aspects of being human. But we don’t always need to be in pursuit, yearning for more. We can build resilience to this constant onslaught of desire. There is a way to pause and float above it all, to be where you are, to enjoy what you already have.
want what you already have
We typically say things like ‘be grateful’ or ‘show appreciation’ to point at this concept, but I like this clear, instructive phrasing: want what you have. It is like a metaphorical slap in the face, that says: hey, you! stop looking around at all the people that aren’t you and wishing for the things you don’t have. Be where you are. Love the people you’re around. Feel the power within you that you can tap into any moment you become conscious of it.
Want what you have is a reminder that sometimes we don’t need bigger, better, shinier. Sometimes (often) what we need is to reflect on the amplitude of abundance contained in what we already have. To sink into it. To not be in pursuit of something else. To find home within ourselves, in this moment, without requiring (or seeking) permission from anyone else. And when we do that, abundance flows towards us. The future we are so worried about controlling begins to unfold smoothly, in a way it cannot when we are operating with such tension—always reaching, seeking, pursuing, resisting—instead of being, receiving, and allowing.
Presence does not equate to complacency. Presence means trying hard when life calls upon you to try hard and relaxing when it asks you to be at ease. It means being exactly where you are and responding to that moment consciously. When you do that, life starts to seem euphoric and angelic even in its mundanity. Every day can feel ecstatic if you wake up and believe that where you are is the place to be. That there is not something outside of yourself that you need to seek out to be cool, beautiful, valuable, Worthy. That you are already at the center of the Inner Ring.
Importantly though: this does not work if you start with the end in mind. You canot white knuckle this whole be-where-you-are thing and say to yourself, “OKAY I AM GOING TO LOVE THE PRESENT MOMENT SO MUCH AND THEN THE FUTURE WILL BE PERFECT AND EVERYONE WILL LOVE ME AND I WILL BE OKAY.” It doesn’t work like that. You can’t love the present moment for the sake of some other end-game-desire. You need to want to be where you are, not for any reason but for the actual feeling of presence itself.
love the body you’re in
I had a sort of awakening recently, after hearing a voice in my head tell me all the ways that my body is imperfect for probably the several thousandth time. I never hated my body, but I always wished it was just a little more of this, a little less of that. I don’t remember ever being truly at peace with it, ever really wanting the body that I had. Even when I was at my most ‘desirable’ by the standards I would measure myself by at the time, I still didn’t want what I had. Many times after that, I would look back and wish for what I had then—which I didn’t want when I had it! Life is just one giant loop of that though, isn’t it? Looking back at what we had and wondering why we didn’t love it deeper, appreciate it more, sink into it fully when we were in it. They say that we don’t know what we have until it is gone. And I believe them! We want what we don’t have until we get it, and then it just becomes another thing we have that we don’t really want.
Changing this pattern is a conscious choice. The shift doesn’t happen when you get the next thing you are striving for—an object, partner, achievement, home, friend group. It happens when you change your attitude towards what you already have. It happens when you treat what you have as you expect you will treat the things that you are striving for when you get them—with the same admiration, yearning, awe, love. This shift happens when you decide to worship what you already have in the same way you worship what you don’t have.
So, this is more or less what I began to do with my body. As this all started to click into place, I turned to my body and inquired: What if I already have what I want? What if my body is perfect as it is? What if it always has been and there has never been anything to change? What if taking the best possible care of this vessel in a loving way is all there ever was to strive for? Because if all that I desire is feeling safe, loved, and accepted, I can grant myself those feelings right now by wanting to be who I am, in the skin I am in, in the form I already occupy. I can simply decide to want what I have and relieve the pressure created by wanting to become something different.
While the epiphany might sound simple, the actual experience of realizing it was quite profound. It felt like something shifted within me immediately: I felt this deep, almost maternal urge to care for my body as if it was something I was responsible for protecting. I felt the urge to speak to it in a way that was gentle, kind, appreciative, affirming. Like I would speak to something that I wanted to re-enforce, fortify, keep around, love. This didn’t change much about the decisions I was making (I was already exercising, sleeping well, eating well), but it changed the inner dialogue that lead to those decisions. I always intellectually understood how I should treat my body: what I should do, what I should not do. But now, I understood viscerally—I felt—why I wanted to do those things. The knowledge went from being cerebral to visceral. The desire to take the best possible care of my body had become part of me. I was embodying the wisdom, living the philosophy—not from a place of ‘should’, but from a place of deep inner knowing, from a place of respect, reverence and love for my vessel.
firsts
As an experiment, I’ve begun treating things I’ve done many times before like it is the first time I am doing them. Things as simple as getting my usual order at a café, having dinner with someone I love, hugging my parents, writing an essay. I am exploring this question of: how does my attitude change when I treat these things like it is my first time doing them, and better yet: like I have been yearning deeply for them for a very long time?
Today, I walked outside and imagined it was the first time I was experiencing a snowfall. I became immersed in the wonder of large, fluffy chunks of magical fairy-dust falling from the sky, landing on my tongue. I let the snowflakes hit my face and float on my hair. Is this real? I thought to myself. I felt like a child looking at something for the first time—eyes glowing with wonder and delight as I watched these sheets of icy cotton land gracefully on the ground in front of me. I asked myself if snow has always been this magical.
I was able to tap into this freshness—this deep, ecstatic sense of presence that we tend to lose as adults because our experiences begin to feel stale. We want bigger, better, new, more. But what if the path to feeling deeply does not lie in novelty and excess, but in learning to sink into and appreciate what we already have?
adjust your lens
The next time you find yourself bored or down, try putting on this new lens of ‘this is the first time I’m experiencing this, and it might be the last time I experience this’. Then notice: how does your mood change? In my experience, the shift is rather deep: you are no longer complaining about details, nit-picking things that aren’t satisfying. Things feel less grey, boring, repetitive. Because they are! Because each moment is 1/1. Each call with your friends, each journal entry, each fresh snow, each day you wake up is one you will never get again. That precise moment is non-fungible. But we get so caught up wondering about where we could be that we miss out on where we are, only to repeat the pattern when we get to the next thing. Wanting what you have breaks this cycle. Loving where you are liberates you from the chronic sense of lack, the incessant yearning for something outside of yourself, the unrelenting desire to get inside the Inner Ring.
Now, this doesn’t mean: don’t desire, don’t strive, don’t have ambitions. You can have all those things (I certainly do!), but we need to fuse them with the present. To make sure that we are not striving because we cannot sit still. To act whole-heartedly in the present to bring about the future.
It’s an art. And it’s hard: to want what you have while yearning for more. But this is the duality of being human: be present does not mean be complacent and disengaged. It means: harness the moment, meet it fully and trust that in doing so, your future is unfolding as it is meant to. It means: believe that getting what you want starts with being where you are.
If you want what you already have, then nothing can steal your peace (and to give you a little shortcut on that one, the whole notion of having conditions for peace is a near-sure way to never feel at peace). And isn’t that the ultimate victory? To not care about what everyone else is coiled up in tension over. To develop the feelings internally that everyone looks outside of themselves for. To celebrate what is here and what is yet to come, equally. To not pay so much attention to the future that you miss out on the present. To know that what you have and where you are is plenty. And to know that through embodying this philosophy, you will capture all that is trying to come your way because you are paying attention to where you are. You are softening into the moment, receiving it with wonder, warmth and curiosity, as though it is the first moment like it that you have ever experienced—because it is! :)
Related essays you might enjoy: life as a classroom, embodying over appearing, let yourself be loved, find novelty through commitment, growing pains. I also post my thoughts daily on Twitter/X — feel free to say hi over there if this resonated!
Work with me 1-1: I work with individuals who want to tune into their inner wisdom, tap into their creativity, and close the gap between their actions and their values. If you resonate with my writing and want to explore working together, send an email to isabel@mindmine.school or DM me on Twitter for more details.
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Gorgeous post. I’ve been thinking a lot about this because of a book I read recently called What Alice Forgot. The writing is eh but the story is about inverting the onion -- Alice can’t remember why she’s getting divorced from the man she loved so deeply at 28. She has amnesia because she hits her head. And she starts treating him like she did when they first met. She starts to want the life she’s got instead of looking for an upgrade. It was so familiar and your essay brings home the theme in a poignant way. Thank you
Lovely essay Isabel (: so much goodness
Had in my head the paradox between thinking we’re just outside some inner ring, like our real lives are always just about to start, yet also thinking we exist at the centre of the universe (like DFW talks about in This Is Water)
Anyways - thank you for sharing this. I think the world is a little more beautiful because of it.