Yearning

Whatever your age, you want something. It may be a sunny day that smells fresh and beckons early positive thoughts. Feelings. It may be a favorite aroma that tickles the tongue for eggs, bacon, or something else. Perhaps it is a sticky bun dripping with pecan chunks buried in cinnamon and caramel goodness; warm would be good, too, especially accompanied with a pat of butter melting into the ooze.

Or, your yearning may point toward a car, maybe new, maybe an old classic, possibly sporty and loaded with special features. Or other shiny objects may be in your want column? It might be a new appliance, a kitchen makeover, or a new audio system connected to a giant screen TV.

Others yearn for a better job, a grander home, perhaps an exotic trip to a foreign land.

Yet others – still others – ache for food, fresh water, better health, a family made whole by recuperation from serious illness, or a death of a loved one. These are the basics most of us take for granted.

On Sunday we seek calm, solace, personal space, and peace. Sensing a lack of these, we go to church or some other place of worship and enlightenment. We listen for words of comfort and meaning. Words that will help us during the week to cope with what bothers us. Words that guide us and quiet our fears.

Wanting. Searching. Aching. Yearning.

Common feelings. Sensations of need? Or are they only wants?

Wanting and needing are two different things. Wanting is a sense of lack needing to be filled. So much wanting is really a sense of incompleteness, a vacuum begging to be filled. How much of this is worthwhile? How much is mostly meaningless?

In the larger world many of our wants are narrow, cheap and of little actual value. These are the things that make us feel better about ourselves or maybe feel better than other people?

In America, we are conditioned to want. That is what advertising is all about. It creates in our minds the sense of lacking, the need to fill that lacking, and the purchasing of whatever to fill the gaps in our lives. We all feel the pull of advertising. We all feel the lacks in life. But when we feel an aching large gap we mix helplessness to the mix of emotions. A crisis looms until the ache is fed a solution.

Best if the want, the yearn, is well understood. Is it vital? Is it important? How much of it is necessary, if any? Focus on the important. Train resources on the needs and get to work.

Doing this for others usually lessens the ache within ourselves. Filling the needs of others fills an invisible need of our own we did not know we had. Doing this finds peace. Feeding this purpose fills aches and yearnings.

It makes the old car seem new again. And the hungers fade away.

We can hope so.

June 15, 2021