Part 1 – What are Longings?
“To be alive is to be suffused by longing.” -John O’Donohue
Life beckons us to live. This simple yet profound call to life resonates in all of us. From our first breaths, we are drawn to what brings us to life. While this is a shared experience, we each develop a unique conception of what defines our sense of life. Over time, our longings further refine what brings us to life. What being truly alive entails is informed and supported by our unique longings. The experience of longing is a thread that connects us all, a universal language of the soul.
What Are Longings?
French philosopher Emmanuel Levinas emphasizes the transcendent nature of longing as longings invite us to go beyond ourselves, to reach further than what is currently in reach. This highlights why longings feel so profoundly personal: they extend beyond mere fulfillment and imply a journey without a final endpoint. Longings are about pursuing the things that bring the most significant meaning to our lives. They matter because they resonate deeply, pulling us toward a vision of what life could be.
Our longings provide an ever-evolving life source for cultivating a well-lived life. Consider people who long to help the planet, build a community or end conflicts. They might identify specific ways to pursue their longing; however, their longing goes beyond their initial conceptions. While they may see parts of their longing come to fruition, the longing transcends them, evolving and expanding over time. Longings have a life of their own and offer new invitations for how we might live with them. As we engage our longings, nuances of their potential emerge — they reveal new vistas of what can be. It's similar to how a personal vision grows and shifts as we pursue it.
For over 25 years, I've been captivated by the concept of longings. I'm a psychologist by background, and my beginnings with this topic started through observing the life transitions of my clients and my own. Life transitions often lead us to ask ourselves where we are and what is now possible. These transitions frequently spark a period of reflection, a time when we question our lives and consider what truly matters to us. It's a time when our longings surface and we feel the nudge to pursue them.
This is the first of a three-part series exploring the theme of longing. I'll describe what longings are, why they matter, and the benefits of bringing them center-stage in your life.
Despite our invitation to live an engaged and meaningful life, it's easy to lose touch with how we're living. It's relatively uncommon for people to track how well they are living. We can easily succumb to our everyday routines that seem to repeat year after year with little to no change. Furthermore, we're typically unaware of the everyday invitations our longings offer us to step into our lives. Our longings provide us with vital clues for what brings us to life. These yearnings shape what we want and can guide us toward a more engaged life. Whether conscious of them or not, we all carry deep-seated longings that invite us to live our lives well. As Irish philosopher John O'Donohue said, "The voices of longing keep your life alert and urgent."
Why Longings Matter and Examples
So, you might ask, "What are longings, and why should they matter to me?" Longings can take many forms, e.g. questions, hopes, ideas, etc., that draw us to dream, imagine, and create. You might long to accomplish a specific work, build a community, or enrich the sense of meaning in your life. These are just a few examples of longings. At the same time, longings can confuse and unsettle us. While longings are a fundamental part of being human, pursuing them is rarely a simple process. Longings can initially offer a profound hope for future versions of our lives. And yet, our pursuit of longed-for versions of life can quickly leave us disheartened.
Since our longings are not always fully realized, they are frequently tinged with a sense of incompletion. The Buddhist psychotherapist David Richo echoes this inability to fully realize our longings when he defines them as "…ultimately not fully attainable in any final way." Recognizing that we may never fully realize them "in a final way," it's easy to become discouraged about our longings. This notion of incompletion is why longings are sometimes described in a negative light. Also, they are often described as coming from a place of scarcity, dissatisfaction, or unrest. However, as O'Donohue and Richo point out, longings arise from a deeper place than simple discontent.
Difference Between Longing and Desire
Let's consider the concept of desire to shed additional light on longings. Desire and longing are often considered the same, but each has its particular meaning. Desire is usually defined as a strong want. For example, wanting a specific car or a trip to a particular country. Once the desire is satisfied, it wanes. By contrast, as Richo explains, "Longings are life-long," and they persist beyond immediate fulfillment; "desires come and go." In a sense, some desires can serve our longings but cannot fully satisfy them. For instance, you might long to positively impact the environment. You might start a project and see it succeed, but the more profound longing for a healthier planet continues. Longings and desires each play a role in life. Put simply, desires tend to be more specific and ease once they are satisfied, whereas longings are more enduring and emergent.
The Winding Path of Longing(s)
The pursuit of our longing(s) is rarely a straightforward path. Challenges are, inevitably, part of the journey. It’s in navigating these setbacks that we discover some of the best opportunities for bringing our longings to life. When we face too many obstacles, however, it can leave us discouraged and we can lose energy for staying the course. I've frequently observed that slow progress leads to frustration for myself and those I've worked with. This, in turn, can incite us to scramble for quick and superficial solutions. If challenges and difficulties weigh too heavily, we can potentially deem our longings burdensome and irrelevant to our daily lives. Despite the impact of any obstacles, it's essential to see these as a regular part of the walk towards our longing. Setbacks are not the end of the road, instead, they can be viewed as meaningful detours on the path to cultivating a vibrant relationship with our longings.
It's natural to jump into fix-it mode and seek "the" answer(s) that guarantee our next steps. Countless books offer three-step plans for "getting what you want.” Like many, I was drawn to these promises. I, too, found myself searching for that single, perfect piece of advice—a magic answer that would show the way forward.
Yet, over time, I realized that not every pause or slowdown is a setback, nor is every detour something to fix. Our longings rarely follow a clear, linear path. Sometimes, we step forward, only to hesitate—wondering if what we're pursuing is genuinely what we long for or if there's an inner shift needed to grow into that vision. In my experience with clients and my own life, there were many stops along the way. Sometimes, practical strategies were helpful. However, as much as we want seamless solutions, building self-awareness and understanding our challenges can be a wise step. Setbacks can provide us with fresh invitations to further develop. It can sound like a cliche, but in time, and on reflection, our periods of stagnation or bewilderment eventually allow us to see our longing from a new perspective and form a new, life-giving relationship with it.
What I've come to appreciate most is my relationship with my longings. Rather than seeing each roadblock as a problem, I began to view it as part of the dialogue—a chance to listen and learn. This insight has become one of my greatest lessons, and it's the heart of what I hope to share through these writings.
I want to return to an earlier question: Why care about longings? Like a divining rod, longings point us toward what gives us life. We care about longings because we care about life. We often recognize our longing in moments when we want a different pace of life, deeper relationships, or a greater sense of meaning. Restlessness and self-reflection usually reveal an underlying longing. Even if we can't name our longing, we can sense its influence in our lives.
Earlier, I commented that if our longing doesn't unfold as we hoped, we might begin to feel disappointed or defeated. If we experience this defeat for too long, we can grow distant from our longing, impacting our relationship with it. We may start to lose hope that our longings have a meaningful role in our lives. At the extreme, we may come to disparage our longings and view them as distractions in managing the realities of daily life. In my next two articles, I'll explore how we can cultivate a life-giving relationship with our longings, even when they seem challenging to fulfill. I'll also discuss how our relationship with our longings can support a more-lived life.
Until the next article, here are some questions to ponder:
As I reflect on what I'm drawn to in life, what might be some of my larger longings?
In what ways might my longings shape what is meaningful in my life? How might they impact my daily life?
How do I create space to listen to and understand my longings?
References:
O’Donohue, John. Eternal Echoes, Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong. HarperCollins, 1999.
Richo, David. The Five Longings. Shambala Publications, Inc., 2017.
