Hoping and Longing for People and Things

    We all do it. We have to. If not, there is maybe not much else.

    We hope for real people, we hope for people and things that many do not consider real. But millions, billions of us do it. All the time. All our lives. Every day. Consciously and subconsciously.

    The seculars, the agnostics, the atheists, the believers: all of us. Otherwise, with no hope, we cannot live or move forward. We need it. Crave it. Subsist on it. 

    We as homo sapiens, thinking beings, have to have hopes. God or no, afterlife or no, we need hope and hopes in people, things, processes. systems, governments, institutions, principles. Principles? Yes. Fairness, justice, compensation, love, kindness; all of those positive things we call attributes and sometimes feelings, or emotions. We have many hopes based on emotions and emotional needs.

    Which leeds to the phenomenon of longing. There is an emotion to think about, or for me which I try to analyze. Longing is not as fundamentally necessary as hoping, or hope, but I believe it is normal to long for people or things, or that it occurs a lot. Longing can be, or actually is different from hoping. Longing adds elements of emotion which can be nuanced from hope, like thinking about something extensively, even obsessively, or forlornly, or sexually, like a fantasy, wistfully, or focused more in the past or as, which is now gone, or that can be a present or future hope that proves elusive as a subject or object that is not a target of real hope, but the feeling or emotion has more to do with something or someone that one cannot acquire, engage, or have, but one spends time thinking about it or them.

    I think that we understand the emotion or construct of hope much better than longing, and that hope is probably healthier for most of us than longing. I will give examples of both, perhaps comparing and contrasting. This will illustrate and help us understand these feelings and phenomena better.

    A humanist hopes for human beings to be philanthropical, generous, fair, and for humans to have rights and privileges that are better than what they have been historically for humankind.

    Longing for humanist things is less concrete, it can be less realistic; hoping for things that will not materialize or that which cannot be. A Chilean or American or German humanist hopes for things that help the human condition, and it will generally happen, because it tends to materialize over time. Perhaps a person in some places like China, or Palestine, or places without as much success of hope for some versions of humanism, but it is the longing for those things that are less realistic that may happen.

    Hope versus longing. Perhaps the difference is the thought of feeling like one can acquire and engage one thing while never being able to have the other.

    As a Christian I hope for Christ to return, I hope for my family to be united in Him, I hope for my idea or notion of Zion to come to fruition. I hope for others to accept the Savior and to follow His commandments, especially as how I like to see Him worshipped and engaged.

    Longing is different. People long for Jesus, as a Christian, but it is not the same as hope. Perhaps it is wanting something within Christianity that cannot be obtained. Like helping a person be active in church who is adamantly against it, or trying to convince a skeptic or opponent of Jesus as Christ that He is who He says that He is, the Lord of All. 

    This happens in faith or hopes and longings for all peoples, systems, institutions, etcetera. Buddhist, Hindu, atheist, scientist, businessperson, in everything. Psychiatrists and psychologists want to do the same, to help all of us be whole, as individuals and societies.

    I hope for many things, and I long for many too.

    One is healthier, usually. Longing can be sinful, to some extent or definition, if it is outside the scope or needs or defined proprieties of what is accepted.

    I have probably longed for some things (or people) that is a common threat in my life, for most of my life. And, it may never stop.

    But it is good to analyze and talk about it a bit.

    Because defining the differences and the nuances of these feelings can help us understand ourselves better, and perhaps live and feel better in our life.