The Thing Itself: C.S. Lewis on What We Long for in Our Existential Longing

“…only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

Nothing kidnaps our capacity for presence more cruelly than longing. And yet longing is also the most powerful creative force we know: Out of our longing for meaning came all of art; out of our longing for truth all of science; out of our longing for love the very fact of life. We may give this undertone of being different names — Susan Cain calls it “the bittersweet...