\section{The Changing Relationship}

\lettrine[lraise=0.1]{W}{hat} changes over time, 
for the person who follows their Longing faithfully, 
is not the Longing itself but their relationship to it. 

Early, Longing can feel like torment 
--- the sense of incompletion, the insistence, the refusal to let one settle. 
It feels like hunger that cannot be fed, thirst that cannot be quenched, 
a note that will not sound. 
It can look indistinguishable from suffering.

Later, for those who learn to inhabit it rather than flee it, 
Longing becomes something more like a compass. Not comfortable, but trustworthy.

The perpetual ``not yet'' stops feeling like deprivation and starts feeling like direction. 
The person who follows their Longing eventually 
stops waiting for it to end and learns, instead, to trust the direction it shows. 
Not blindly. Not without cost. 
But with a kind of confidence that comes from having been led somewhere real, 
repeatedly, however much it cost to follow.

%Desire is about arriving Home. Longing is about an eternal Quest.
