After reading the book “Belonging:  Remembering Ourselves Home” by Toko-pa Turner, a question she raised stayed with me.  Even now, just saying the words of the question gives me pause: “What are you most longing for?”  These words seem to touch me on a level deeper than most personal questions, as an invitation of sorts, of a more spiritual nature. I decided to do some journaling and indeed it was a rich experience I highly recommend to get in touch with what is truly important to you.  It had a great effect of differentiating what I think I want to what would truly feed me.  

We are such a goal centered society.  When you ask most people, myself included, what they think they want, most of us will say “to lose weight, to get a promotion, to go to Europe.”  We tend to think in terms of action oriented items that are controllable. So when you ask about longing, especially what you are most longing for, it feels different.  Goals tend to be from the head, while my experience of sitting with my longing seemed to come from my heart.  Longing seems to feel like an ache for something that’s missing, an essential element of life that you are missing or want more of.  

In considering what you are most longing for, you may run up against some painful truths (this is where the daily life distractions come in handy).  But so often if we can let ourselves feel our dissatisfaction and work with it, we can get to the heart of what is our truth. I must feel my loneliness to identify my longing for connection or feel my emptiness when I become aware of my longing for meaning.  And there is also some grieving that may need to happen, as well. We can’t always have what we long for, such is the truth of life and loss. But in identifying our longing and working with these feelings, we can develop an acceptance for what cannot be. It is actually through coming to terms with what is missing, that we open the doors to possibilities of what is new to discover.