What are you LONGING for?
Longing. You know the feeling. It’s that ache of sensing that something vital is missing from your life; a deep thirst for more. More meaning, more connection, more energy — more something. Longing is that feeling that courses through your body just before you decide that you’re restless, lonely, or unhappy.
Longing like this is not just another mental state. It’s deeply physical. Your body craves some essential nutrient that it’s not getting, yet you can’t quite put your finger on what it is. Sometimes you can numb this ache with a deep dive into work, gossip, television, or gaming. More often than not, though, these and other attempts to fill the aching void are merely temporary distractions. The longing doesn’t let up. It trails you like a shadow, insistently, making distractions all the more appealing. And distractions abound — that second or third glass of wine, that stream of texts and calls, that couch and remote control.
Odds are, food is abundant in your life. And clean drinking water is as close as the nearest faucet and virtually limitless. You have access to reasonably clean air and adequate shelter. Those basic needs have long been met. What you long for now is far more intangible.
What you long for is love. Whether you’re single or not, whether you spend your days largely in isolation or steadily surrounded by the buzz of conversation, love is the essential nutrient that your cells crave: true positivity-charged connection with other living beings.
Love, as it turns out, nourishes your body the way the right balance of sunlight, nutrient-rich soil, and water nourishes plants and allows them to flourish. The more you experience it, the more you open up and grow, becoming wiser and more attuned, more resilient and effective, happier and healthier. Just as your body was designed to extract oxygen from the earth’s atmosphere, and nutrients from the foods you ingest, your body was designed to love. Love — like taking a deep breath or eating an orange when you’re depleted and thirsty — not only feels great but is also life-giving, an indispensable source of energy, sustenance, and health.
When I compare love to oxygen and food, I’m not just taking poetic license. I’m drawing on science: new science that illuminates for the first time how love, and its absence, fundamentally alters the biochemicals in which your body is steeped. They, in turn, can alter the very ways your DNA gets expressed within your cells. The love you do or do not experience today may quite literally change key aspects of your cellular architecture next season and next year — cells that affect your physical health, your vitality, and your overall well-being.
In these ways and more, just as your supplies of clean air and nutritious food forecast how long you’ll walk this earth — and whether you’ll thrive or just get by — so does your supply of love.
To absorb what the new science of love has to offer, you’ll need to step back from “love” as you may now know it. Forget about the love that you typically hear on the love songs, the one you see in the movies, the one you read in the novels, that’s centered on desire and yearns for touch from a new squeeze. Set aside the take on love your family might have offered you, one that requires that you love your relatives unconditionally, regardless of whether their actions disturb you, or their aloofness leaves you cold. I’m even asking you to set aside your view of love as a special bond or relationship, be it with your spouse, partner, or soul mate. And if you’ve come to view love as a commitment, promise, or pledge, through marriage or any other loyalty ritual, prepare for an about-face.
I need you to step back from all of your preconceptions and consider an upgrade. Once you have a definition or two — offering a different perspective — your own perspective — I’m all ears.