Yearning

This is why I will always die on the hill of defending yearning, even in its clumsy, excessive, or misdirected forms. To want is to be porous to the world and to ache is to admit that life still has its hooks in you. Desire embarrasses us sometimes, God yes, but it also animates us, cracks us open and remakes us.

Desire is a blueprint for expansion, a tug toward something that doesn’t yet exist but might. If we never desired, we would never build, never leave, never create. Imagine the opposite: a world where no one wanted more. No bridges, no love songs, no rebellions, no symphonies. Just flatness.

It’s strange that yearning, one of the most basic forces of being human, has become countercultural. That to want openly is now seen as naïve, inefficient, or embarrassing.