On Longings, Resolution, & Fundamental Human Experiences
May 15th, 2024 — Written by Charlotte Askew for The Artist’s Lens Collection
On Yearnings
What do you crave? At a deep, embodied level, what do you yearn for?
This concept of longing is such a fundamental part of the human condition. Such a desperate and distinct experience. We want so much.
I used to catch myself wondering if there’d ever be a time when I was satisfied. If I pictured it, I always landed somewhere in the future—after I graduated from university, after I got a job, and then after I got a better-paying job.
Those elusive goalposts kept shifting, somehow making their way to a more distant place, and I wonder now if that was because I never really knew what I was chasing.
Written by Charlotte Askew
(click here to read about Charlotte)
Article 04 of The Artist’s Lens collection.
What we are covering in this article:
*click below to navigate directly to the section you wish to read, or continue with the story as you were
1. On goalposts (quelling the tide of emotions)
2. The reunion within (healing the subconscious, revealing our wholeness)
3. Discovering your longings (fundamental human experiences)
4. Longings from birth (the bedrock upon which we build relationships and orient ourselves to the world)
5. Article Break (developing a community element in this space)
6. We can fulfil our longings (self-transparency)
7. The excavation process (an exercise of insight: beginning with the bodily feeling—simply, meticulously)
8. Why would it be so bad…and what would that mean for us? (questions of provocation and the lust for validation)
9. The desire to matter (an ancient feeling; this could not be a mistake)
10. The intimacy of significance (to matter)
11. A valiant search for meaning (offerings to self; our words are our most powerful creative tool)
12. Our Bookshop (shop our ever-growing selection of books for creatives)
13. The resources we deliver at Casey Jacque (essays on whole body health, creative career building, creative direction, intentional travel, sustainable living, love and relating, and more)
On goalposts:
quelling the tide of emotions.
Objectively, achieving the job or the salary seemed to be the outcome, and yet, when I reached both of those feats at alternate times (for the sake of our metaphor, effectively kick the goal), I felt elated only for a little while. Gradually, I’d start looking for the next thing to quell the tide of emotions I couldn’t quite describe inside of me.
The longing would seep back in.
The reunion within:
healing the subconscious, revealing our wholeness.
I’ve been meditating on this concept for the past few weeks, peeling back the layers of my longings, and it’s been such a painful process of exposure. In equal measure, grueling and liberating.
Perhaps the most arduous part, or certainly the most irritating, is that I’ve done this work before. I’ve gone into and sat with these pains. Reflected and poured out of (and into) myself. But I suppose it is false to assume that after doing some work in this space, we are absolved of further visits to our subconscious.
In reality, there are so many facets to what we experience and store within ourselves, and the world will continue to present people and circumstances that rub afresh against the old wounds, no matter how healed they may be.
Each time we lay bare our longings, go within, and excavate these aspects of ourselves, we find fertile ground for self-growth.
Discovering your longings:
fundamental human experiences.
To discover your longings is to discover the parts of you that desire and deserve to be tended and cared for. The facets of your person that have, for whatever reasons, experienced wounding along this journey we call life.
The things we long for can usually be placed within one of a few fundamental human experiences:
The need to be loved.
The need to matter/the need for significance.
The need to be enough.
The more materialistic pursuits, I would argue, almost always draw back to these deeper longings.
Longings from birth:
the bedrock upon which we build relationships and orient ourselves to the world.
We are born with the innate need to love and be loved. To find community and connection with others. We are born with the inherent need to seek and reveal purpose. To contribute and act in service to the world. And we are born with the need to feel fulfilled and worthy as we are for the person we are.
Naturally, these needs develop over time based on how people respond to us, and the flow-on effect deeply influences the iteration of our soul that prevails.
As we receive love and connection from a primary caregiver, we develop a fundamental sense of trust in the world that gives life to a belief in possibility. Hopefulness. A secure understanding that our needs will be met.
You might be given pause to wonder what happens if a primary caregiver doesn't meet our needs—if we don’t receive a response to our longings. The answer is: It depends. There can be a tendency to lean into mistrust, giving way to a narrower view of the world, and a fear that our needs will not be met.
Unwittingly, we take these perspectives with us, and they become the bedrock upon which we build relationships and orient ourselves to the world. Naturally, they take shape over time and become further embedded as we experience people and places that alight on their tender points.
Article Break:
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We can fulfil our longings:
where we begin.
Eventually, when we develop a level of insight sufficient to hold a mirror to ourselves, we can notice that something in us is unresolved. Something we can’t touch or point to and, most times, can’t even label, even when it feels excruciatingly present. Such persistent yearnings underpin our decisions—from the micro-moments where we snap at our partners, family, or friends, to the nuanced ways we treat and speak to ourselves.
While we often can’t even identify the longing, it is not a fundamental characteristic or truth of who we are. By that, I mean we are malleable, moveable, moldable. Even longings that were embedded at birth can find resolution. In fact, once a longing is located, we can provide this very resolution.
self-transparency.
Ultimately, asking ourselves about our longings is asking ourselves what it is we are not offering to ourselves.
And those things that we can’t manifest alone—the delicious connection that comes from a relationship with others—will strengthen and prosper when we fulfil the longings that we can gift ourselves. This is the work of loving ourselves, to love others, and to receive love from others.
So, where do we begin?
The excavation process:
beginning with the bodily feeling—simply, meticulously.
The excavation of our longings is an exercise of insight, and we begin with the persistent underlying feeling.
You may not be able to label it, but that’s okay. Your job to begin with is just to notice. As an exercise, choose a day to be extra conscious and aware for as much of the day as you can. Every time you pick up your phone, post something on social media, or engage in a conversation with someone else, notice what comes up for you. (Additionally, try to keep a meticulous eye on each of the thoughts that float into your mind before, during, and after you do each of these tasks.)
a torturous source of insight for me.
Social media has been a torturous source of insight for me lately. It has initiated this deep dive back into the excavation of my longings. Perhaps it is the ease with which I can find myself going unconscious as I use it. If I’m not careful and forget to maintain my awareness as I operate the various apps and platforms, I can find myself sinking into them. Sinking into the world within them that is of our world but also conceivably not our world at the same time. Sometimes, it feels as though my soul switches off.
And with so much uncertainty in my life lately, it’s been easy to reach for my phone to distract from the discomfort. To lean into that world in the unconscious lust to satisfy the longings within. Recognizing this, I started to pay attention when I used it and when I went to post.
I began inquiring:
What was I choosing to engage with?
What kind of posts drew me in?
Why was I wanting to express and share these particular facets of my life?
Whom did I intend to reach?
What was I seeking?
And back to our original question—how did I feel?
What I found was somewhat glaring: I felt small. Unnoticed. Unconnected. Unimportant.
Why would it be so bad…and what would that mean for us?:
questions of provocation.
And so, the next step is to ask ourselves one of the most insight-provoking questions we can ask: why would that be so bad? Why would it be so bad to be small, unnoticed, unconnected, unimportant? What would that mean?
Predictably, in some form or another, validation emerged as the resounding answer at the end of my enquiry. I was seeking to be seen. But perhaps not as expectedly, I didn’t find it drew back to the need to be enough.
the lust for validation.
Validation is just the surface. We must go deeper, further than just the lust for validation. What is beneath that? Again, why would it be so bad if I did not receive validation for who I am? What would that mean?
I found the answer: It would feel as though I didn’t matter.
And I longed to matter.
We all long to matter.
The desire to matter:
an ancient feeling; this could not be a mistake.
It’s an ancient feeling born of the need to fend off pointlessness. Just look around the world (imagine me panning my hand across the space between us). This could not be a mistake. The fact that if gravity were even the most minute of measurements different, the world would collapse on itself—that is no accident. And on a deep, visceral level, we know that.
primal knowledge.
The desire to matter is the primal knowledge that we are purposeful creatures. That we exist in a meaningful way. We are all born with the longing to live in a meaningful way.
I’ve quarried this mine before, but more roots have upturned in the recent uncertainty that has permeated my life. I have found myself longing to be seen and, in that way, found significant by others. Not in the sense of being noticed by many but being found essential by a few.
The intimacy of significance:
to truly matter.
To be seen as significant in this world where—especially on social media—we’re often left feeling as though we do not exist in the way we perceive we should is the antidote to a deep pain.
But our significance cannot be gifted, no matter how hard we try. We may search for it in others, in success and achievement, in parenthood, and even in death.
and yet.
To matter is to find for ourselves the meaning with which our life has been imbued from birth. To know who and what we have always been. To articulate this externally is to express what is already within.
A valiant search for meaning:
the offerings to self.
And so, there are two things we can do for ourselves to clean and dress this wound.
The first is offering to ourselves what we yearn for. Our words are our law. Your voice is your foremost creative tool. Begin to affirm with it repetitively, obsessively: I matter. I am important. I am significant. I am lovable. I have innate gifts to share with the world.
The second is uncovering our purpose, which begins with a journey into the question: What would I do if I were not afraid and money were no object?
Remember, healing is far from a linear process. As our soul is expressed in its multiple iterations across our lifetime, we journey through the pieces of ourselves that we are ready (and willing) to uncover. This, if we allow it, is the essence of what it is to be human. To bear witness to the facets of our being made known to us as we experience the world and others is the honour that is life here on Earth.
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Article Written by Charlotte Jade Askew, In-House Writer at Casey Jacque
Charlotte is a Writer, Play Therapist, and Energetic Psychology Coach living in rural Texas. Born and raised on the rugged West Australian Coastline, she is a holistic practitioner, working with the conscious and subconscious mind to cocreate transformative, mindbody healing. Her affinity for being out-of-doors rather than in, means it’s likely that when she’s not with clients or writing, you’ll find her with her horses or barefoot, sipping organic coffee.
Let’s Connect! Instagram: @inner_chatter
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