Longing: The door that opens from the inside

Source: Knocking on an inner door

I lived on the edge of madness, seeking to know reasons, knocking on a door.

It opens. I knocked from the inside.

(Jalal al-Din Rumi, from the "Masnavi"; Persia, 13th century; AI image in Persian style)

Explanation: Longing as a path to discovery

Rumi, the great Sufi poet, describes the tragedy of the search for God—the longing that brings a person to the edge of madness. And when he knocks on the doors of God in the hope of finding, of knowing and not merely longing, he discovers that God is revealed in the longing itself, in the very world you fled from to look for God.

Perspective: The door that isn't there

Rumi turned longing from a problem into an answer. If you knock on a door from the inside—you are already home. The mistake is not the longing itself, but the direction. People search for wholeness in relationships, career, money, success—and discover that nothing works. Rumi would say: because the door isn't there. Mystics across all traditions arrived at a similar realization: what you are seeking is already within you. Augustine wrote, "I entered into myself and found You there"; the Zohar and Hasidism speak of the divine spark embedded in the soul. The trouble is, that's an answer that is very difficult to live with. It is much easier to knock on outside doors.

Going Deeper: The treasure beneath the doorstep

The tales of One Thousand and One Nights were collected over centuries. One of them, found across human cultures, tells of someone searching for something—perhaps longing for his father (in Midrash Lamentations Rabbah), perhaps chasing his dreams (in the Hasidic tale), seeking wealth or happiness, and on and on—only to discover in the end that the treasure was never under some distant bridge, but was there all along; it only took longing to find it.

Culture: Aviv Geffen's nostalgia

Anyone who follows Aviv Geffen, one of Israel's most prominent artists, can see a man of longing. The upheavals of his life, his music, his capacity to change, to come close, to pull away, and above all to keep searching, have made him beloved by many different audiences. Here is the song "Nostalgia," written by Geffen:

I knew you would come / lurking as evening falls / holding me in an old embrace / nostalgia. / What I forgot, she'll remember / washing my memory in light / taking me back a little while / nostalgia / to beautiful days / when there was still somewhere to go. / We watched the sunset / promised we wouldn't change / time has passed since then / and time had other plans / looking back and remembering / I knew you would come / precisely when it's empty, when no one is here / stroking my hair / nostalgia. / Wasn't it more beautiful / or is it just the present / looking so pale / nostalgia.