Longing, it seems to me, is one of the givens of a human life.

What we long for changes – somewhere else to live, a walk in the mountains, fulfilling work, a friend, or a lover, family, peace, the return of someone or something we lost, a place where we can be home. But longing itself is a constant, born of our capacity to imagine and dream better futures for ourselves and those around us.

It’s a mistake, then, to long for a life in which longing itself is absent. Better, instead, to live fully in the knowledge that longing and life are inseparable.

And although longing, and its tender sadness, is inescapable, it can be softened by gratitude – for the life we’ve been given, for the people around us, for the air we breathe, for the opportunity to think and talk and question and strive, for the possibility of longing itself.

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