Whatever One Does Not Have

People are individuals and thus do not by logical necessity have to share the same personality traits or psychological habits.  One person might find what another would relate to very experientially unfamiliar even if they understand the concept perfectly as a rationalist.  However many people actually relate to it, there is the ironic possibility of someone pining after whatever they do not have, and maybe exclusively only for as long as they do not have it.  This could pertain to career options, physical possessions, or even something like spouses, and a foundation of emotionalism or a mere default personality could lurk behind it.

When they are engaged in professional labor, they might long for their paid time to be free of tasks that need to be completed, but if they find themselves unoccupied while at work, they might descend into such a boredom that they wish for the work they previously wanted to avoid.  When they are single, they might long to be married, perhaps to the extent that they feel desperate to date or marry, yet if they enter a romantic relationship, they might prefer the status of being single, which they had given up.  When they have few possessions, they might pursue more, and when they have more, they might pursue having less by selling or otherwise ridding themselves of the items they once wanted.

It is not necessarily because they assume or expect that whatever they do not have is what will bring holistic, lasting existential fulfillment, but that they are subjectively enticed by whatever their life circumstances of the aforementioned kinds do not entail.  I say of the aforementioned kinds because it is unlikely that someone, much less all people (I know from the absolute certainty of rationalistic introspection that this is not true of me), wants to suffer poverty or abuse just because it is not what they are experiencing at the present moment.  With certain things, some people simply would not discover, recall, or concentrate on what one state of being or living excludes ahead of time.

The flexibility or relative benefits of singleness might seem more appealing to them or only be considered when they are not single; the advantages of living in another location might be focused on regardless of where they choose to reside.  Someone could certainly find themselves having this psychological inclination without making assumptions and without being emotionalistic or flippant in their life decisions.  Nevertheless, one might observe many people who leap from one thing to another without anything guiding them but the passions and whims of the moment, which is an asinine thing to base one's worldview on and will on a pragmatic level only set someone up for disappointment and instability.

In some Biblical stories, the Israelites even engage in this phenomenon in passages like Exodus 16:1-3 and Numbers 14:1-4, where they complain about their life in the wilderness after the exodus from slavery in Egypt and (in the latter) say that it would be better to return there.  They exemplify how ungratefulness and stupidity can motivate a shifting desire for whatever one does not have just as much as a desire for novelty and stimulation.  For such a person, nothing will satisfy them regardless of its objective nature because they are deluded.  It is they and at best not just their circumstances that are the problem.