Yearning, a deep and often bittersweet desire for something unattainable or distant, is a pillar of the human condition that resonates through culture and time. For as long as we’ve been around, we’ve wanted what we can’t have. In psychiatry, yearning is examined as a facet of grief. In a 2020 study of bereaved Dutch, German, and English people, it is stated that, “Affectively, [yearning] is a bittersweet emotional experience, as the cognitive process of yearning may elicit both positive affect (e.g., feelings of affection towards the deceased) and negative affect (e.g., experiencing the frustration of the desire to be with the deceased)” (Eisma et. al., 2020). In Amanda McCracken’s article “How the pandemic got us addicted to longing – and why it’s bad for us” (2021), McCracken explores the addictive nature of longing for the unattainable and what people do to satisfy these feelings, from online-dating affairs to daily Amazon packages, and if or when these feelings can become harmful.

Be it desire or a perpetual state of existence, yearning manifests in various forms – love, freedom, identity, belonging. We’ve seen it in literature, art, film, popular culture – there’s even an emoji encompassing the act (“a yellow face with furrowed eyebrows, a small frown and large, puppy dog eye,” as described by Emojipedia). In media, is it perceived as cheesy or sophisticated? What does it mean to yearn? What are you yearning for?

In an effort to understand its place in the human condition, here are some of the best expressions of yearning in art and culture.

Julia Jacklin, Crushing

Australian singer-songwriter Julia Jacklin’s hit track Don’t Know How to Keep Loving You (from her album, Crushing) is one of the closest depictions of yearning in modern music. The opening lines, “I wanna want you / I want to stay here like this / I wanna feel it all every time that we kiss / I want your mother to stay friends with mine,” suffice to say the narrator is lamenting over a person, a relationship that has run its course. These lyrics coupled with the deep snare throughout the entire track captures longing and loss so well it’s hard not to add it to your crying-in-the-shower playlist.

There is no better album that captures the suffering that which yearning can bring at times – and the title “crushing” reflects this. The act of crushing is arguably the purest distillation of yearning: it’s tender, it’s dizzying, it’s naïve. Tracks like Turn me down and Body are exemplary in their depictions of the emotional condition.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Swan Lake

In Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a symphony score written for the eponymous ballet, the protagonist Odette is the embodiment of yearning. Tchaikovsky conveys a profound sense of melancholy and desire in his haunting, lyrical A-minor melody first introduced in the opening scenes, underscoring the tragic nature of Odette's plight. The theme recurs, reinterpreted or varied throughout to reflect different emotional states of love, hope and despair. Swan Lake is a classic tale of yearning for transformation, where the unattainable becomes a symbol of both hope and tragedy. Listen to these movements for moments of soul-crushing yearning: Act 1: Introduction – No. 1; Act 1: No. 6, Pas d’action; and Act 2: No. 14, Scene.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

There are few better examples of a quiet, slow-burning desire between two people than in Portrait of a Lady on Fire. Every glance and gesture is charged with unspoken longing – every moment of touch makes you want to jump out of your seat and scream at them. The impossibility of their love – aristocrat and painter, both women, and in the 18th century no less – makes their yearning all the more poignant. Yearning isn’t just for something or someone that exists but is unattainable – it is also the acknowledgment of inevitable loss. And in Portrait, this feeling is palpable a mere twenty minutes into the film, which is all the more dooming once you realise you can’t look away.

Aftersun

Put Paul Mescal in a room with anyone, add warm lighting, roll the cameras and the yearning will start.

In Aftersun, a young woman named Sophie looks back on a summer holiday she spent with her now-estranged father, Calum (played by Mescal) at a Turkish resort when she was eleven years old. The film is structured as a series of vignettes, blending past and present as adult Sophie tries to reconcile her memories of the holiday. Through her fragments, we see the close bond between Sophie and Calum, as well as the subtle signs of Calum's depression which Sophie, as a child, did not fully grasp at the time.

Aftersun intertwines the longing for connection, understanding and the elusive nature of time to remind us how complex and integral to the human condition yearning is. The blue-green pool water; the smell of sun and wind; the feeling of cold tile under warm skin. This is a film that catches you off guard and leaves you out of breath. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

At the heart of Atonement is the intense, yet tragically thwarted love between Cecilia Tallis (Keira Knightley) and Robbie Turner (James McAvoy). From the fountain scene alone – oh, the way Robbie looks at Cecilia after she emerges from the water – we know the stakes are high. What they have is pure and intense, yet constantly out of reach. This perpetual, unfulfilled yearning grows (and may elicit a fight or flight response in the viewer) as both characters cling to the hope of being together even as the world conspires to keep them apart: a wrongful imprisonment, class differences, war.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong’s auto-fic epistemology is an all-consuming detailing of a yearning for understanding and acceptance of a familial kind. Written as a letter from the perspective of Little Dog, mixed-race son to illiterate Vietnamese mother Rose, the work observes the complexities of life as Vietnamese immigrants in America, as well as Little Dog’s struggles with his own identity, particularly his sexuality and the intergenerational trauma from war and violence. Vuong’s poetic prose captures the intense longing for connection in a world that often feels alienating and hostile: “You once told me that the human eye is god's loneliest creation. How so much of the world passes through the pupil and still it holds nothing.”

Feature image: IMDb, @ocean_vuong, IMDb