What Do You Long For?

The busyness of our day-to-day lives and the constant distractions of the world around us make it easy for us to push aside, or forget entirely, our most important longings. Each one of us is born with an intense desire for something, a yearning toward something. It pushes, pulls and nudges us through life, changing shape, form or destination. Rarely, however, do we take the time to get to know what lies beneath this pressing forward. Is it truly what we think it is?

Are we yearning toward something, someone, some achievement? If so, why? Chances are we’ve reached a desired destination, at least a few times in our lives. Sometimes we’re satisfied us for a time, but soon we find we are restless once again and begin reaching again for something more. This striving leads us on so many journeys in the course of a lifetime and we learn much from each one of them.

Just as often that yearning is, shoved aside, or in some way denied by us or the world. We never get the promotion we worked so hard to obtain, we never have the means or the opportunity to own our dream home or see the faraway place we dreamed of visiting as a child; we are childless when all we wanted was a dozen children, we are husband-less when all we wanted was love. Dreams big or small are shattered.

Those things we yearn toward can never satisfy our longing entirely, even in the best of circumstances, providing only fleeting, temporary satisfaction. Perhaps it is the journey itself that holds the real value. Not the destination. “Hunger is holy”, Sarah ban Breathnach reminds us. Our hunger will always lead us in the direction that we are meant to travel. We were born to embrace the journey. Perhaps it is time to let go of the outcome and to instead live in the hunger, to detach from the idea that the destination is what is important. Then we may begin to understand the value of yearning.