Longing: The unsatisfied desire and the path to infinity

Source: The stab of joy: When longing itself is the answer

"I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing. It is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction."

(C.S. Lewis, "Surprised by Joy", Chapter 5, p. 74)

Explanation: Sehnsucht: Longing as a signpost to the divine

Lewis, author of Narnia and one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the twentieth century, adopted the German concept of Sehnsucht—a deep longing, nostalgia for something that perhaps never was. He argued that these moments of "Joy," which surfaced in his childhood in varied contexts—Norse tales, an autumn forest, music—were not the goal itself, but signposts pointing to something beyond, a longing for the infinite, for God.

Perspective: Longing as proof: When the need points to the purpose

Lewis turned longing from a glitch into a solution. The argument is simple and brilliant: if we feel hunger, it is because food exists. If we feel thirst, it is because water exists. And if we feel a longing for something that nothing in this world can satisfy—it is because we were made for another world. It is one of the most beautiful theological arguments: not a proof but a hint, not a demonstration but an intuition. Cynics prefer to dismiss this—perhaps longing is an evolutionary bug, a neurological glitch, or just an engine to pursue more power, money, and fame, and perhaps to seek a God who isn't really there, mere opium for the masses.

Going Deeper: The Jewish longing: From soulful cleaving to the nation's yearning

Rabbi Kook wrote: "The longing and love of the entire nation are fearsome and infinitely deep, specifically for the supreme divine perfection." (Shemonah Kevatzim 1, paragraph 9)

The Jewish counterpart to Sehnsucht is the yearning for devekut (cleaving to God)—not as a religious duty, but as an existential need of the soul. Rabbi Kook saw in every human yearning—even secular, artistic, scientific, or national—a disguised expression of this supreme longing. Many secular Jews of his day were angered by Rabbi Kook, because he claimed that the further they fled from God, the greater the longing they revealed. "From You, unto You I flee," in the words of Rabbi Judah Halevi.

Culture: The Ninth Symphony: When music meets the threshold of the infinite

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a belief spread that anyone composing his ninth symphony would be stopped by the Angel of Death. It was as though a certain entity awaits us at the Tenth Symphony, forbidding us to discover it because we are not yet ready. So it was with Gustav Mahler's Ninth Symphony (1909)—which he wrote knowing his end was near. The final movement, the Adagio, is one of the most painful pieces of music ever written—a musical longing for a life slipping away, much like Moses, who concludes the Torah with the story of his own death.