Through a mixture of addiction and temporary boredom, I periodically find myself reading people’s walls on facebook. On many of these sightseeing trips I come across the same ubiquitous phrase: “I miss you.” These words are frequently uttered by friends and family who have not seen one another recently, heard from each other in a long time, or hung out together as frequently as they once did or would like to. People tend to express their displeasure with this lack of contact by saying “I miss you,” and when loved ones meet in person after a long separation, it is common to hear something similar to “oh, I’m so happy to see you, I really missed you.” The latter statement seems to imply that being happy and missing someone are antithetical to each other, and indeed, missing someone carries a connotation of sadness with it. Moreover, the saying “I miss you” suggests permanency or longevity of condition. If someone only missed their friend at a particular moment, then they would say “hey I missed you at ___,” or “I was just thinking about you,” etc.  The lack of time specification in “I miss you” makes the sentiment appear timeless and ever-present. Because I do not, and do not want to, travel through life in the perpetual robe of melancholy, I refuse to clothe myself and my speech with the phrase “I miss you.”

Webster’s dictionary defines “miss” as “to feel the absence of,” and this definition illuminates the real problem associated with missing people. Often, someone uses the phrase “I miss you” with the impression that their nostalgia is caused by a particular individual’s absence, but the real issue is the fact that the speaker feels this absence. For instance, imagine someone who had been stanching hunger with macaroni and cheese for his/her whole life. If he or she runs out of macaroni and cheese, and has nothing else to eat, then the person may erroneously attribute their hunger pains, from the biological need for food, to the absence of macaroni and cheese. However, we know that when we are hungry we may choose to satisfy this hunger in any number of ways: if we choose to gorge on rice and peas, then we will still be full, and we will not physically feel the absence of macaroni and cheese. So it is with people. We feel the absence of a person when there are no other people to perform the jobs that the original person performed for us. All of us have certain social needs and roles fulfilled by our loved ones, and without someone completing these different tasks there is a sense of longing, loneliness, and emptiness. The long lasting, ever present feeling of “missing someone” inheres in an unmet need or role in our life, not the absence of a particular person, in the same way hunger pains inhere in an unmet need in our body, not the absence of a particular food.

Speaking of food, saying “I miss you” is like eating the wrong food. For example, if a person has scurvy then giving them peanuts might help a little, but giving them an orange would be much better. Likewise, if one is truly suffering from unquenched desires, then it may be appropriate to say “I miss you,” but it is even more appropriate to focus one’s efforts on trying to correct this social poverty. Conversely, for people who are generally happy with, well adapted to, and fulfilled by their current situation in life, saying “I miss you” is inappropriate: it is like a lactose intolerant person drinking a giant glass of milk. Overall, content individuals like their way of living both the way it is now and the way it was when the person they miss was a more prominent part of it. This scene is like a student comparing his or her time in college to his or her time in junior high—the student may be have enjoyed both periods but he or she probably did not have the same circle of friends. Such differing circles might result from the fact that different circumstances often unite one with different groups of people. When an alteration in circumstances brings one from a good social environment to another good environment, an appreciative attitude should be espoused because missing someone implies sadness due to the changes that removed intensive contact with said individual. However, to be sad about these changes is to be sad about the very things that brought one his/her current, likable place in life, and this is a contradiction. In light of the fact that everything which is experienced now cannot coexist with everything which was experienced before, a person whose needs have been met at both stages of life should be thankful for what they did have and happy about what they do have.

Since I am largely satisfied with my life, or will be working diligently to correct any dissatisfactions, I will not be saying “I miss you.” Instead, to all those people who I no longer have the privilege of seeing face to face and those people who I no longer talk to as much as before, I would like you to know:

that I don’t miss the times we spent together,

but I cherish them as some of my best investments;

that I am not sad that I don’t see you much now,

but I am happy I got to see you as much as I did;

that I do not count it a detriment that our best moments may be in the past,

but I count it a present that we had good experiences while they could last;

that I do not mourn the death of our era

but I rejoice in the life that came from it;

that I don’t miss what was

but I am pleased that it was.

I acknowledge and am grateful for the things and people of antiquity; I appreciate the gifts and pleasures of modernity; and I fully expect to find contentment and joy in futurity. Hopefully there will be more meetings between us in times to come, but if not—then please, please don’t miss me.

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” —Dr. Seuss

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