On Yearning

I grew up sheltered and religious. I didn’t go to clubs, got drunk, or had stupid teenage rebellions. I was proper. At first because I believed, then because I was caged. I'm not that religious anymore but still live with my parents. I already feel the tension. I'm an adult now and receive neither the freedom nor trust of one, only the expectation of behaving maturely. Making my own total choices is still frowned upon. Even my wish to move out is met with eyebrow wrinkles, a hardening glance and a softening voice followed with "why do you want to move out though?" They want me to conform to their lifestyle and while I've tried as hard as I could, I just can't force myself to believe again. Their advice isn’t garbage. It’s just only logical to adopt it if I want to replicate their life. Which I don’t.

After a while, I followed that proper lifestyle earnestly. I made the correct, grown-up choices out of my own accord. Long-term pleasure was superior to short-term one. The impulsive action is what the main character in a YA novel or show would do and that’s only caused drama. I didn’t want drama… I overshot there. In the marshmallow test it’s only good to wait if you truly stop after a time. If you resist the one marshmallow in front of you while never finishing the test and just sit in eternity, you don’t get extra candy. You just receive nothing. Delaying gratification is useless if this process goes on indefinitely.

Currently I’m young, healthy, full of energy and empty of obligations. This is one of the best times to create memories. I don’t want to be 80 without any stories to tell. While I enjoy self-improvement immensely, after a time it’s just… boring. It’s a pleasant, content boring, don’t get me wrong. If I’d die in year, I would keep doing 99% of what I’m currently doing because it genuinely makes me happy. That one percent change tough would be having more crazy experiences. Life is there to be lived, so why not enjoy its full richness? Why not engage in every high and low? Why not experience holiness and baseness, triumph and disaster? Because loosening up is fun. Breaking the rules is fun. Breaking out of my proper, repressed self is fun. And it's fun I might be unable to do when I’m older, when I might regret not having more dumb stories to tell.

Maybe such a wish only comes from someone who was never allowed to fail. I don’t want to be completely irresponsible. I just want to stop being a pure goody-two-shoes. I want to be a good girl with an edge, in essence. Make mistakes sometimes. I won’t overdo it. There’s a small threshold between a misstep that's dumb and fun and one that can wreck your life. Just some normal teenage ones. The type of blunders that turn into nostalgic memories later on. Which kind of is what I’m doing this year.

I slowly want to change my life, get more independent, do some stuff my parents would disapprove of. I guess I partly want to fit in. My whole life, all the people I knew didn't really do anything like that. Which is good when you're underage. I'm not recommending a 14 year old to be besties with somebody who smokes weed and drinks a six pack of beers everyday. But at 18, it's another thing. You can resist peer pressure better and have a more formed self. Despite this, I’ve noticed that a wish to try has materialized since getting into new social circles. I had blurry longings before, but only now did I say them out loud. Peer pressure isn’t really a group of people bullying you if you don’t comply. It’s more that via interacting with people who behave in certain ways, you develop curiosity and it becomes harder to resist the temptation.

There’s this assumption that I do all this grown up stuff. And if I’m actually not, I feel dysfunctional. Like I’m a fake adult. I know I have the capability for it and the desire, but somehow I keep blocking myself.

Recklessness

This all arises due to me being repressed. I am afraid of being improper. I am afraid of acting based on feelings. I am scared of loving and living recklessly while I yearn for it. I don't trust my intuitions and instincts because I don't even feel them. But there is a reason we have system 1 and 2 thinking, feelings and thoughts. Both are useful, just in different contexts. And maybe sometimes, always using the latter only results in analysis paralysis because it's a decision your heart must make. Sadly, I suck at this.

One of my most core beliefs was that I’m rational. That system 2 thinking is always better. That I’m superior to these other irrational, fallacy-infested people. In my head, I admitted that all of us are irrational and guided by emotions sometimes. But I never allowed myself to actually be this way. I’m speaking to all the people who never did brat summer but secretly listened to the whole album. I’m speaking to all the people who’d never re-enact challengers but watched it three times. Some people don't need more thinking and analysis. Some need more feelings and recklessness.

My repressed self is partly caused by me being more of a head person. Related to sexuality, it's got more to do with my christian upbringing. I can only be sexual in a very proper, repressed way. I’m afraid guys will think I’m a slut and woman will think I’m a creep. So I can confess finding a man hot, if I’ll only act on it in a relationship. And I feel guilty at the mere thought of finding a woman sexy. I don’t mean objectifying somebody. Acknowledging sexual attractiveness means acknowledging an extra dimension to their being. It doesn't justify reducing them to it. The truth is that I yearn for love and that's basic af. I want to kiss somebody hard, want to cuddle at night, I want to fuck. I want to hold hands, I want to give cute little gifts and receive cute little gifts. I want to write love letters to somebody who won't cringe at me for doing so. I got a small sliver of that with my ex-boyfriend but that relationship didn't hold long. I ate the first crumbs and they tasted delicious but now I’m hungry.

Obsession is yearning you act upon. Both requires letting your feelings, desires and body take over. I want this. I want to crave somebody or something so much that I go crazy over it, that I hunger and thirst, that my heart will ache if I will have to miss this. I want to loose myself in passion. Be that work, be that an activity, be that a person, but I want to loose myself in something. I want to not be able to think.

I want an object of desire because that is what’s needed for yearning and obsession. Obsession or yearning might be portrayed as a solitary pursuit but there always exists a counterpart, what is sought after. Yearning in German means "Sehnsucht" so yearning addiction basically. It shows the self-destructive potential of longing, of fulfilling your desire but also failing to secure it, like the suicide of Goethe’s Werther. Simultaneously, the terms asserts its importance. When you yearn, you're totally honest with yourself about what you want and that is the first step towards actually getting it. Instead of letting it be the cause that makes you fall, you can transform it into your North Star.

It just depends on what you do. All greats in their fields had an obsession. Many writers have the compulsive need to write, press out the stories inside them. Like the words themselves yearn to be laid on the page, to be brought to life.

On Eros

In short, I want to be possessed by Eros. In greek mythology, Eros is the god of love and the son of Aphrodite, who’s the goddess of beauty. He’s married to Psyche, who was once a human and through her courageous and devoted acts of love was made a god. Psyche is the god of the soul.¹ What’s interesting is that Eros always existed as a god, psyche became one through love. It subtly implies that our soul isn't some inherent right of ours but a consequence of loving.

Eros is greatly explored in the book ‘Eros the bittersweet’ by Anne Carson. Eros is a reach, the space between desire and its fulfillment. It’s a three-entity structure between the lover, the beloved and the desire or obstacle in between. It is tension and a paradox. You desire and suffer because of its absence but destroy your want with its fulfillment. In Anne Carson’s essay she compares Eros to an ice cube that is constantly melting without ever fully dissolving into water. It's wanting to freeze time while living into eternity.

That is why flirting is inherently ambiguous. Eros is the plunge before jumping into water. When you're standing on the platform, gut filled with fear, anxiety in your stomach, but assert that you will jump. The moment before the kiss is like that too. The kiss itself once you land underwater. How suddenly everything around you mutes and all your thoughts evaporate until the only thing that’s left, that’s noticed, felt is somebody else’s chapped, soft lips on yours, the stubble of their beard scratching your jaw, the taste of cigarettes on your tongue, their hands outlining your hips.

In oral culture, you spoke via words, gestures and mimic. Communication was always improvised, feelings something that flowed through you and let out via the vehicles of storytelling. It was okay to be moved by your emotions because being impacted was the whole point. Where the written word reigns, you have to concentrate and stay still in order to write down your thoughts. It confined storytelling to verbal communication, which meant more rules and a stricter form of expression. How we communicate love also influences our experience of it. In a literate society, love and Eros imposes upon you, catches and ravishes you precisely because of the frame we have of it. The novel showcases Eros perfectly. When we're reading a book, we want the characters to have a happy ending but not know it beforehand. We want to read on, to find out how it ends while demanding the story to stretch out into eternity. We want a paradox.

The book also draws parallels between Eros and knowledge. Which makes perfect sense considering philosophy means love of wisdom and in Ancient Greece philosophy also included modern psychology and science. In ancient Greek the verb "to know" is the same as "to love", which already shows they saw it as the same process. Pursuing knowledge is like Eros a reach between what is actual and possible. It's wanting to know something for which the desire ceases once you find out.

We can also look at the creation myth of Adam and Eve. The first woman gets seduced by the serpent Satan to eat the fruit of knowledge of good and evil. Adam then gets seduced by Eve. Seduction already implies Eros. We commonly picture the fruit as an apple (it's not mentioned though) and in Ancient Greek the apple was a common symbol of fertility, sexuality and knowledge. Throwing it at somebody was considered a confession of love and catching it a symbol of acceptance and reciprocation. Satan seduced her via rhetoric, so a form of knowledge. Once they both have eaten, they recognize their nakedness. Which also links knowledge and sexuality with each other.

Eros and curiosity both seek their own annihilation while demanding immortality. Like a Phoenix, they want to turn into ashes but still be reborn every time. A phoenix is a paradox too. It's also a symbol of hope because even though it burns down, it continues on. And Eros and curiosity both imply hope. Without the possibility of ever having your love returned, of ever gaining that missing piece of knowledge, they wouldn't exist. For two core components of what makes us human, hope is essential.

The problem is that the now of love, the falling in love, always hurts us. It makes us crazy, addicted and inevitably will always disappoint us. The now of Eros is unsustainable. So we try to protect ourselves, deny our wants for connection, to somehow skip to the safe, trust-based companionship. However, by trying to skip Eros, we miss out on a fundamental part of love. Eros is a glimpse of the gods, of beauty and our potential. It makes sense that the serpent told Eve she’d become more like god if she tasted the fruit. In a way, she did. And maybe that reach is good. Maybe Eros and curiosity and hope is good even it’s a paradox and utter madness, because it’s a beautiful madness, a madness we need and a mistake we must make.

Best wishes,

Somebody

1. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amor_und_Psyche