Why Does Anxiety Never Disappear?On the Lack That Remains Even After Achievement

1. Introduction

We have been taught to believe the following:

If we attend a good university, our lives will become stable.
If we obtain a good job, everything will be all right.
If we become financially independent, our anxiety will diminish.

And so, we have run without rest.
We raised our grades, built our credentials, earned certifications, and continually moved toward better conditions.

Yet something is strange.
Even after reaching our goals, anxiety does not disappear.
Instead, it remains in a subtler and deeper form.

Why is that?

2. Achievement Does Not Eliminate Lack

From a psychoanalytic perspective, human beings are fundamentally beings of lack.
As Sigmund Freud suggested, we live within a structure composed of drives and desires, as well as the forces that restrain them.

Jacques Lacan later took this idea a step further, arguing that human desire can never be completely satisfied.

Desire does not disappear the moment it obtains a particular object.
It moves on to another object.
Lack is not eliminated; it merely changes its form.

For this reason, the belief that “everything will be all right once I achieve my goal” is structurally difficult to sustain.

Achievement may cover over a sense of lack, but it cannot remove it at its root.

3. What Has Education Promised Us?

For a long time, modern education has told us:

“If you endure your present anxiety, your future will be secure.”

Entrance examinations, evaluation, and competition all operate on the promise of “stability later.”

The classroom becomes a space of preparation for the future.
Present emotions are deferred.
Anxiety becomes something to be managed.

Yet an important premise is hidden within this structure:

“You are not yet enough.”

This message is not always explicit, but it is repeated without end.
You must perform better, move further ahead, and prove yourself more convincingly.

Anxiety does not disappear under these conditions.
Instead, it is transformed into a driving force.

4. Anxiety Is Not Eliminated but Organized

Anxiety is not simply an emotion that must be removed.
Psychoanalysis understands anxiety as a “signal of danger.”

Anxiety tells us:

There is a gap between who I am now and what others expect of me.

The identity to which I am holding is becoming unstable.

Love and recognition have become conditional.

Education often attempts to manage this anxiety through achievement.
It structures anxiety through grades, outcomes, and comparison.

At that moment, however, anxiety does not disappear.
It becomes incorporated into the self.

“I must perform well in order to be safe.”
“If I fail, I have no value.”

When these beliefs are internalized, anxiety continues even after achievement.

5. A Good University, a Good Job, a Stable Life—and the Emptiness That Follows

After achieving their goals, many people experience emotions they did not anticipate:

futility, emptiness, and a loss of direction.

This may be because their lives up to that point have largely been movements directed toward the expectations of others.

As Lacan suggests, we often desire the desire of the Other.

We follow the path desired by parents, teachers, and society, while postponing our own desires.

At the moment the goal is achieved, when that movement finally stops, a question emerges for the first time:

“What, then, do I want?”

In the face of this question, anxiety raises its head once again.

6.Does Education Resolve Anxiety, or Intensify It?

This is an uncomfortable question.

Education has undoubtedly served as a pathway to social mobility.
It has provided opportunities for many people.
At the same time, however, it has also functioned as a mechanism that structures anxiety.

Comparison-based evaluation

Conditional recognition

The identification of achievement with personal worth

Within this system, anxiety does not disappear.
It is merely managed in increasingly sophisticated ways.

7. Is Another Form of Education Possible?

There is no form of education that can eliminate anxiety entirely, because anxiety is part of the human condition.

It is possible, however, to create an education that does not address anxiety solely through performance.

A classroom in which emotions can be spoken

A structure in which failure does not threaten one’s identity

Messages that distinguish achievement from the value of one’s existence

An environment that permits exploration rather than comparison

Under these conditions, anxiety becomes not a threat, but a signal for exploration.

Anxiety shifts away from the pressure that says, “I must acquire more,” and toward the question, “What do I want?”

8. How to Live with Anxiety That Does Not Disappear

Anxiety does not vanish.
Yet the way we relate to it can change.

Achievement may be part of life.
It must not, however, become the foundation of our existence.

The task of education is not to eliminate anxiety completely, but to cultivate a self capable of enduring it.

The strength to explore one’s own desire.
The strength to distance oneself from the gaze of others.
A sense of self-worth that does not collapse in the face of failure.

In an age in which anxiety does not disappear, what should education promise?

Stability,
or the courage to explore oneself?

This question now stands within our classrooms.