Lily could still vividly recall that first intense feeling of longing she experienced as an awkward teenager. It really weighed on her heart when she saw Jacob, the guy in her middle school, go sit with some of his friends and they started laughing together in the cafeteria.
At that very moment, she wanted him to look at her and share similar feelings as what she was feeling for him. Whether Lily was longing for a person, a love, a relationship, or a life she could not have, she never lost that desire to be something she could never be. Looking at the life that she has to lead as a young adult, she often wished to be that little girl enjoying her summer days.
Later, the longing shifted to career ambition and dreams of financial freedom.
At its core, longing stems from a deep sense of lack or incompleteness. There's something vital missing that you crave to fill the void within and find wholeness. This powerful hunger can make your heart feel like it's slowly being hollowed out. The intense wanting for someone or something you can't have in that moment is agonizing.
Yet this same longing also breathes purpose into our lives. The dreaming, hoping, and imagining of attaining that out-of-reach something kindles the motivational spark to keep pushing. Longing prods you out of settling and compels you to actively work toward your yearnings.
This combo of torment and motivation is what gives longing its profoundly bittersweet quality. Like a nagging ghost, it haunts you by highlighting the emptiness you're desperate to fill. But it simultaneously energizes you, refusing to let dreams and goals gather dust.
Sometimes the longing disappears for a while and then it returns as if it was brought back by a trigger that no one had even noticed, an odor, a lyric in a song or a glimpse that makes come back all the nostalgia and the desire of something or someone that is no longer there. However, the option of experiencing complete emotional emptiness, despair, and indifference is even more gloomy.
The bittersweet tug of longing reminds us we still have dreams worth chasing, goals worth striving for, passions still burning inside. It's a call toward ongoing growth and becoming our best selves.
Experiencing longing allows you to vividly define and visualize the object of your yearning. By letting yourself get swept up in imagining a future where the void is filled, it brings your heart's deepest desires into laser focus. This intense picturing can be torturous in its incompleteness yet equips you with intention for working toward that cherished thing.
Some are able to simply accept their circumstances with unruffled calm, never dwelling on distant, unrealized dreams. And there's validity in learning to embrace the present. But longing is an innate part of the human experience that infuses our lives with vibrant meaning. It reflects our determination to keep evolving, growing, and striving for more.
So allow yourself to long, despite the bittersweet torture it may bring. Those visceral pangs are wake-up calls from your soul, prodding you toward a life more richly lived. They won't let you stagnate or abandon your authentic desires and highest ambitions. Though incomplete, longing is also the glorious fuel for your passion and fullest potential.
Lily is now a driven career woman, still chasing new dreams fueled by that familiar longing she's felt since childhood. And honestly, she wouldn't have it any other way. That bittersweet ache of yearning has kept her vitally, vibrantly alive and moving toward her biggest aspirations.
All images are mine