On longing
Among the breadth of emotional states available to us, that of longing is one of our most basic. Longing points poignantly to our collective past, nested figuratively and literally in the Cenozoic Period over 200 million years ago when the first inklings of mammalian species announced their presence in a chorus of vocalizations inspired by the desire to be tended.
Simply, longing makes us mammals
The semblance between the words 'mammal’ and ‘mammary’ is no fluke—one of the key distinctions between mammals and other animals in the Kingdom of Animalia is the presence of mammary glands and the supporting inbuilt drive to care for offspring not yet capable of sustainable independence.
And among our species, longing is a far richer reality than the lever-like response to the cries of needful young expressed by the world’s first Mammalia members. For Homo Sapiens—us humans, that is—longing extends well beyond the bond linking children to mothers, touching nearly every relationship we form in one way or another; longing becomes the emotional link that ties one to many, and one to one.
Details matter:
Mammals are vertebrate animals characterized by the presence of fur or hair, mammary glands—producing milk in females—as well a neocortical region in the brain and three middle ear bones.
This is how we choose love
Longing is the foundation for the most powerful human realities, including grief, lust, and the unmatchable burst of joy possible in long-awaited reconnection—all expressions of love and each compelled by the desire to be in the presence of a defined other; we seek to close the spaces between us in shared care and commitment—to affirm, “Being near you is better than not”—necessarily redefining parts of our person and life to answer a universal mammalian call. This is how we choose love.
Better together
We connect, and reconnect, and reconnect—and in this repetition we form communities centered in common interests and bound by shared longing for the realities we create together; we craft clubs and events to fortify our sense of tribal oneness. And in this commitment to one another we take on goals, seeing objectives to fruition, driven by one of our deepest emotional forces. So, beautifully and ever-so-organically, as we placate our pang for closeness we are ultimately ensuring our success as a species.
