I commented previously that one of the aspects of life that is responsible for a great deal of the poopiness of existence is the distance between the longings of our hearts and our actual achievements and capabilities as human beings. We yearn to be infinite, but find ourselves to be mortal. We dream of flying above our troubles but find ourselves living lives like grubby caterpillars. I would like to expand upon this thought as there is but a very thin line between those aspects of our life that ennoble our existence and those that are full of tragedy and frustration. Indeed, it seems that the dissatisfaction that our longings give within us is often a spur for us to do things that we might otherwise lack the motivation to do. Far from longings being a source of poopiness that we would do well to kill to make our existence easier to cope with, longings give us the motivation and the energy to change and to grow, and as I have repeatedly suggested, personal growth and change are a major aspect of why we exist as beings at all. That which frustrates us is ultimately that which goads us to be better, and we need to get better if we are to become what we should be.

The Christian philosopher C.S. Lewis stated–I paraphrase here–that there was no longing that, properly understood and directed, did not have its origin in our creation and that was not capable of being fulfilled in our existence. This may, at first, seem to be a trivial and obvious fact. We hunger and thirst, and we have bodies that are capable of eating and drinking to answer these longings. We desire intimacy, and find that there are (often, if not always) people who are willing to be with us, at least for a little while. (That some people find it difficult to find and maintain relationships is one of the more frequent causes of dissatisfaction and disappointment with life, but just because a longing is not fulfilled does not mean it cannot be.) One can look at many of the hungers and desires that people have and find that in general, they can be fulfilled. Sometimes those desires take a great deal of work, and frequently they require the approval and assistance of others, but they are generally capable of being fulfilled, at least, in the life that we have.

There are, though, desires and longings that we have which seem impossible to be fulfilled in this life, at least by our own strength. We wish and fervently long to go back, to undo our mistakes, to achieve a state of innocence combined with the wisdom we have gained from suffering. This longing is indeed real, and quite common, but it is impossible for us to do. If we trust what scientists say about the nature of astrophysics, it is impossible to go back in time and undo the past. There are all kinds of concerns about the possible paradoxes that result from interfering with the past when one has a knowledge of the future, and these paradoxes and complexities have been explored by many creative and artistic people who are fascinated by the idea of trying to redo history and get a second chance at our existence. Similarly, we often intensely long for an existence where the ravages of time, pain, suffering, and death do not affect us. This longing is reflected in the widespread belief (which I do not happen to share) in mankind possessing some sort of immortality already, as well as the belief (which I do share) that mankind is capable of receiving immortality as a gift from our Creator, as a reward for those who live a godly life. The larger point, though, is that if C.S. Lewis is correct, even these difficult and complicated longings can be fulfilled, but they require a lot more to happen than we can do on our own.

Often, though, our longings are the source of a great deal of poopiness in our existence. We long, for example, for justice, and see a world around us that is terribly unjust. This sort of thing bothers a lot of people, who think (wrongly) that if they were in charge of the nations of the world that they would be able to force justice upon the recalcitrant and reactionary forces of white patriarchy that prevent justice from springing up. This is patently ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with having a longing for justice, and indeed, having a longing for justice, so long as it also motivates someone to be just in one’s dealings, can be a force for incredible good in a world where justice is often rare. The problem is that a great many people see themselves as the victims of life and of history and view their own vengeance against others as justice while not properly examining the injustice within their own hearts. All too often, people who claim to support justice also engage in word games to try to define away their obligations for justice to others, saying, for example, that one cannot be racist against ‘white people’ or sexist against men, rather than recognizing that any hostility to someone because of their identity is an example of bigotry, and if we think poorly of people or act poorly towards people by virtue of their identity, we are unjust in so thinking, so speaking, and so doing.

Our longings in life are frequently tied up to the poopy parts of our existence in complicated ways. For example, the junior Senator of Ohio, J.D. Vance, was chosen to be the vice presidential nominee of the Republican party for the 2024 election campaign, and in his speech accepting that nomination, he spoke about how it was he had confronted the messiness and difficulties of his traumatic early life while building a relationship with the woman who became his wife. He spoke about his college debts, his Appalachian background (which I share) as well as his difficult childhood, and how he felt blessed to have someone willing to help him deal with all of his personal baggage as he sought to be a better man despite such difficulties. We may have a longing for a happy marriage and family but find that this longing runs into the difficulties of our own tragic pasts. This should not lead us into despair, but it does remind us that fulfilling our longings can sometimes be incredibly difficult work where we wrestle with our memories and our fears and overcome weaknesses and shortcomings in order to become better people than we otherwise would be if we simply wallowed in our victimhood.

Frequently, however, our longings get us into trouble. We self-medicate ourselves with food, drugs, and alcohol, and find our health drastically harmed, and sometimes even our relationships with others. We seek easy answers to deep-seated problems and find we have not built the resources of resilience and discipline to obtain that which we desire. We heedlessly pursue relationships seeking to fill the void that comes from being lonely and find ourselves dealing with angry relatives, people whom we have tied ourselves to who are less than reliable and frequently behave in ways that irritate and frustrate us, and sometimes with complications like children and diseases that we did not want nor expect. These situations ought to remind us that longings are never as simple as we would like them to be. They may spur us to do things that we might otherwise not do, but our longings are shaped by our experiences, by our fears, and even by the social context in which we grow up and live. We learn a lot from those around us, and sometimes we learn bad things, and those bad things can make life more difficult for us and increase our stress and unhappiness because our longings lead us into more trouble than we were trying to escape from in the first place. That which we seek to cope with the struggles of our existence often only complicate it further.