\section{Modernity's Mistake}

\lettrine{M}{odernity} has largely decided that any state which doesn't resolve is a pathology. 
We have an enormous apparatus for managing unresolved states: 
medication, distraction, obsession with work, entertainment, consumption. 
Modernity's premise is that closure is always preferable to openness. 
The perpetual ``not yet'' is a problem to be fixed.

But that premise is wrong --- profoundly wrong, at least about Longing.
Some openings are not wounds to be healed but paths to be walked, endlessly. 
The person seized by Longing is not sick. 
They are oriented differently. 
And the drugs and distractions offered by modernity are, 
for them, poisons dressed as medicine. 
They close the door that the Longing opens.
