Redeeming a Longing Part 3 of 3 - Returning to the Longing Path
Longings Lost, Longings Found
In Part 1 of this series, we explored what it means to live with unlived longings and how we respond when they seem lost. In Part 2, we met Alice, whose longing to be truly known by her parents could no longer be fulfilled after their deaths — and who, by staying with the longing, uncovered a deeper one beneath it. This final part considers practices for returning to the longing path.
Alice’s story leaves us with a couple of practical questions:
How might we loosen our grip on everything we have already decided about a longing and stay open to what it might invite us to explore?
What might help us return to the longing path when a longing feels lost to us?
1. The first thing to honour is that we may need to grieve the loss of a particular path toward a longing before anything new can open.
Alice was grieving not only her parents but also the closeness she had hoped for with them, and grief of that kind cannot be hurried; we have to give ourselves time to walk through it before a new path can emerge. That means naming, honestly, the precise form of the longing that is no longer possible to live into. Only as we loosen our hold on that one vision do other ways of carrying the longing begin to appear — and often it is the disappointment and grief themselves that soften the heart enough to see them.
There are places in the heart that do not yet exist; suffering has to enter in for them to come to be. Leon Bloy
2. When you feel ready, sit with your longing from a place of openness, love, hope, and curiosity, and let a few gentle questions deepen your sense of it.
You might ask:
What does this longing awaken in me?
What else might this longing invite me to explore?
In what ways might my longing still show up in my life?
What might be some of the ways this longing invites me to engage with life?
What other ways could I imagine this longing unfolding in my life?
Say my longing for community has not unfolded as I had planned — I had hoped it would take root in a particular place, but it has not. Might it still be lived in another form? A few more questions can open the way:
Could I look at other types of community or form a community differently?
In what ways might I bring my longing for community into my interactions with others?
How might my longing help me better recognize aspects and moments of community in my life?
How might I use my longing for community to support others’ visions of community?
Questions like these are not meant to fix anything; they are meant only to begin a conversation with the longing and to keep us in its company as it unfolds in new ways.
3. It also helps to speak with someone close to you, someone you trust.
Those who know us well can often see what we cannot and offer the encouragement we need to take a step forward. So much of what we need help with is simply this: noticing how easily we get lost in the present moment and stop imagining anything beyond our current reality. A trusted friend can help us consider other perspectives and carry hope for our longing when we have temporarily mislaid our own.
Hope involves re-imagining life with and through another person. Michael Paul Gallagher
4. Finally, consider how you might honour the longing.
In my experience, this is tender ground that calls for honesty about what we long for, so it is best approached gently. You might set aside time for it — a long walk, an hour in a place you love — and then sit with questions like these:
Why did this longing matter to me?
What was I hoping for from this particular longing?
What do I need to move through this space?
Can I acknowledge the ways I’ve listened to this longing?
Is there a way this longing could remain alive in my life?
You can refer to the article: Creating a Shelter for Your Longings
Remind yourself, as often as needed, that honouring a longing can open the way to what is still possible. Let the longing stand on its own terms, even when it feels unapproachable. As a longing evolves, it often looks quite different from what you first imagined, and we are not always ready for how far it has travelled from our expectations. Understanding our longings on their own terms requires a radical curiosity — the hardest kind to hold on to precisely when a longing becomes uncomfortable to feel.
It is the most natural thing in the world for a longing not to unfold as we hoped — and, as I have tried to say, it is not the end of the story. Redeeming a longing is slow, tender work that asks to be held with patience and love. We do not cure or solve such a longing, nor do we fully keep it; instead, we learn to live at the right distance from it — close enough to feel its pull toward the horizon, far enough that it does not consume us. Held that way, over time and with the help of good questions and trusted company, even a longing we can never satisfy quietly continues to give us life.
