Due to some recent conversations with my mother and also a good friend of mine, I have been thinking a lot about the nature of relationships and why we feel the gamut of emotions that we do when we are falling in and out of love, getting our hearts broken, and pining for the ones that we lose. There are such extremes in these emotions, and one day we can be walking around with our heads in the clouds and the next we can have our own personal rain-clouds pouring out bad thoughts and feelings for us to think over and over again. Whether or not you have someone that you are romantically interested in, there is always a certain feeling that people have. The best way that I can describe it is longing.
In my almost 26 years, most of the heartache I've felt had to deal with longing. But longing for what? People might say that it's just a biological, animal urge that people have to find a mating partner. I don't believe that. Pure physicality does not even come close to describing the longing that I and others have felt. I did a Google Image search just typing in the word longing, and it came up with a lot of various images--none of which I thought were overtly sexual in nature. This affirmed to me what I already believed, that longing is much more than physical.
While I was thinking about these things, I remembered this animation project that I saw on YouTube last year. It's called Thought of You and it was animated by Ryan Woodward (The song is World Spins Madly On" by The Weepies, if you want to know). It is beautifully crafted and wonderful to watch. Many of the viewers have their own interpretation, but when I watch it, the feeling of longing overwhelms me. This is perfect depiction of the emotions that I feel.
The man looks for the ghostly woman who slips through his fingers at every turn. As someone who has loved and lost, my heart reaches out to the man who just cannot attain what he seeks. The beauty of this short is the bittersweet empathy we feel due to the imagery and the music. Longing is an innate attribute, and I believe it is present in every human being. If there wasn't that longing inside of every person, I don't believe that we could emotionally connect to art such as this, nor would it be able to come into existence.
When you are longing, you feel like you are not whole, that there is a part of you that is missing. I know that everyone wonders at one point in time if they will be with a person who completes them. However, there is so much more to it. There is a spiritual and emotional part which goes beyond the need for companionship. It has to do with being complete as a human being. Completeness is a strong urge in all of us. There is always the drive to get to a state where we are fulfilled and happy. It's been a strong motivation in the history of the world. In a conversation that I had with my mother, she said that "we are all creatures desperate for completion...that's what keeps us pressing forward."
Longing. It's complex; it's beautiful; it's painful; it's human; it's real.
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