The Ethics of Longing -The Light of Existence Blooming in Your Absence

Soyo's Existence Ethics (Existence itself is ethics)

Light of Being

Longing is not an emotion, but a reflection of existence.

The word “longing” is often used. I miss you, I miss you, I want to see you. But Soyo asks, “Is longing really an emotion, or is it the deep essence of existence?”

Philosophy often deals with the presence of existence. However, longing is the contemplation of absence. It is the paradox of feeling existence more clearly in the absence of visibility. When we long for someone, it is evidence that although that person is not “here” now, they exist more powerfully as “being” within our hearts and minds.

Longing is not a deficiency. Longing is “the ethics of existence that blossoms from what has disappeared.” Existence has departed, but the meaning of existence shines even brighter, and that meaning shakes me once again. At that moment, I feel “my existence” most deeply.

Existence is connected to absence, time, distance, and me.

Soyo says, “Humans always rediscover themselves in what they cannot reach.” When a loved one is far away or gone, their presence becomes closer to me. When what cannot be seen with the eyes begins to shine within me, that is the moment when the time of existence begins.

When we feel secure in “closeness,” existence actually fades, and when we are “distant,” we encounter the identity and meaning of existence. This is the practice of Heidegger's proposition of “existence revealed in time” and the “birth of ethics in deficiency” mentioned in Soyo's Existence Ethics.

"Waiting is not mere patience, but the formation of existence."

We wait. Soyo calls this waiting “the ethical gap of existence." When we wait for something, we are not simply existing in time. We reflect on that object, redefine ourselves, and rebuild our existence within that waiting.

Bergson's experiential time (durée) becomes “time flowing into existence” when combined with longing. That time is painful, but at the same time, it is creating me. Waiting is an ethic that reveals the nobility of human existence. This is because humans are the only creatures that set their hearts on an existence that has not yet come.

Longing in the digital age, an era of excessive connection and lost contact.

Today, we overconsume “connection.” However, connection is not the same as “contact.” Existential ethics asks this question: “Does connection without contact encounter existence, or does it consume existence?”

Longing cannot be healed by technology. Rather, the illusion of the digital world thins out existence, and we talk more but feel lonelier in the silence.

Technology has broken down spatial distances, but longing still leaves gaps in time and the heart. And within those gaps, we ask again about true existence: “Who am I loving right now? And whose existence am I longing for right now?”

Food, smell, warmth, and longing are reproductions of sensory existence.

Longing is not a thought. Longing is a sensation remembered in the flesh. The taste of my mother's soup, my lover's body temperature, the melting sensation of shaved ice placed on the corner. Soyo says, “Memories are not stored in the mind. Memories are absorbed into the flesh.”

We do not think of the person we long for; we bring them back to life. The temperature, touch, and gaze of that person are resurrected as “existence” within my body in every moment of longing. Longing is never the past. Longing is the existential presence of the here and now.

Longing is the deepest place of ethics

The fact that we long for someone is proof that we love them ethically. The reason longing hurts is that the other person's existence is deeply engraved within us. And longing is not something that distances us from them, but rather an ethical force that makes us more human.

Love without longing is mechanical, and humans without longing are empty. Soyo's Existence Ethics says, “Longing is the moral bell that awakens existence, and longing is a quiet prayer toward others and a testimony of existence toward oneself. Longing is the ethical completion of existence."

Now I know. Longing is not a deficiency, but proof that I loved and a sign that I am alive. And longing is not something that brings that person back to me, but a mysterious power that brings that person's existence back to life within me.

Our existence is composed of longing for someone, and longing is a declaration that our love has not yet ended. Therefore, Soyo says that "longing is not the last chapter of existence, but part of the preface in which the ethics of love flow eternally. We exist through longing, and by existing, we love endlessly once again."

Soyo (逍遙) – Founder of Soyo's Existence Ethics, Author of 'The Silence of Existence' and 'The Flame of Truth'

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