A Longing

When I started this blog, I promised myself this would not be an angst-ridden, teenage outlet for my woes. I know how dreadful and boring it is to just read misery that has no goal or point. But with this post, I hope there is a deeper meaning. I write to express, but I also write to affect. The goal of my blog is to question your thinking, to raise insight, and to leave an impact. If even just one person experiences a change in thought after reading one of my pieces, that will be the success of this blog. So with this piece, as any other, I express, but I also seek to challenge. This post is for myself, as well as all those that are longing for something or someone.

Last night, I attended the Pentatonix concert. At one point, Avi brought the pace of the show down for their peacefully melancholic original song, Run To You (I highly recommend this song. I've posted it above as I feel it would be fitting to listen to it whilst you read the rest of this post, if you wish to do so). He introduced the piece as a song of longing, and explained that everyone longs for something in life. He then directed the crowd to close their eyes, and to imagine the one thing or one person we each longed for. Without closing mine, I saw the person in my mind's eye right in front of me, and I continued to see and sense her throughout the performance.

There is something I dislike about the word 'longing'. Longing implies a sense of helplessness and hopelessness. To long for something is lonely, desperate and endless. It's a long distance run you can't finish. It's the long wait for an unanswered question. It's a drawn out and long ordeal of agony. I instead prefer other words, such as to seek, or to chase, or to reach. See, if you seek, you can find; if you chase, you can catch; if you reach, you can obtain. But when you long, you only continue to yearn.

And yet, I still long. I wilfully climb the insurmountable mountain. But why? Perhaps it is my human condition to sadistically desire the forbidden and the impossible. But I rather think that we long because the object of longing is a symbol of perfection. Nothing is perfect in this world, except for what we perceive. We choose what we wish to see as perfection. And perhaps, I long because I've witnessed my personal perfection. I believe in my heart the object of my longing is someone worth longing for and the inevitable torment that entails, even when the odds are stacked against me, and it seems the end is ever further. But it is crucial to remember that to long for something is a choice and a concious decision, just as it is to personify someone as perfect. I have no one to blame for my predicament but myself. And so I seek, I chase, I reach because I don't want to long any more.

But I am running a race I have lost before I even started. I may be the fastest, but there is no finish line I can cross. It is a never-ending marathon, destined never to amount to anything. Yet I ran and I ran and I ran. Run To You provokes heartfelt emotions, but it is not the song that reflects best how I feel. I don't like posting songs or lyrics on my Facebook as a way to tell everyone how I feel. Not only does it feel cryptically attention-seeking, it feels stagnant. As much as I do listen to particular songs to match my mood, there is something hopelessly defeating and depressing about listening to a song as an expression of misery, because the song never changes. The lyrics never alter to show signs of progress or the hope of a happy ending. And just like the sense of longing, it only drags on and repeats the same inescapable chords. 

However, today, as I listen to Run To You, I realised the opposite of longing: to accept; to succumb; to surrender. I accept my fate, I succumb to the pain of the unending chase, and I surrender to my defeat. 

My antonym of to long is to stop.