On Longing - a fragment…

Another little dispatch from the theme of longing....an excerpt about our longings for one another.

“If I lay here

If I just lay here

would you lie with me and just forget the world?”

― Snow Patrol

There is something beautiful and essential in our need for each other. From birth, there are needs we cannot meet ourselves, things we need others for, and so we long for human others to respond to us in ways that soothe us. James Hillman expresses a form of this when he speaks of the ‘basic cry’ buried within all humans. This cry he speaks of is almost a pre-verbal mantra that loops inside us always - a plea for something needed, for something we cannot give ourselves:

Here's Hillman:

‘it is as if there were a basic cry in persons that gives direct voice to the abandoned content. For some persons it is: ‘Help, please help me” others say, “take me, just as I am, take me, all of me without choice among my traits….” or ‘Take me, without my having to do something, to be someone. Another cry may be ‘hold me, ‘or ‘don’t’ go away; never leave me alone.” We may also hear the content saying simply, “Love me” or we can hear, “teach me, show me what to do, tell me how.” Or, “carry me, keep me.” Or the cry from the bottom may say, “let me alone, all alone; just let me be.”

James Hillman, A Blue Fire

Longing is one of eight 'deep themes' we explore in The Art of Wanting, next offered in January 2021. It is a wonderful theme, and a much neglected aspect of many of our lives - how to engage longing in ways that serve and deepen us…