Yearning

Yearning is a funny word.

It's the kind of word that makes people nervous. When they hear it in others, and when they feel it themselves.
We live in a society that defines happiness as a state of mind, a SITUATION, and therefore yearning is seen as some kind of strange cognitive dissonance. At most, it is seen as the emotional interpretation of having a lack to fill. As if our emotions are mechanical, or an "if-then" equation.

But somewhere in there, people DO yearn for things. Perhaps not "things" per se, but for authenticity, for love, for selfhood, maybe for the world as a whole.
Of course, the problem with yearning is that it ISN'T mechanical. You cannot easily fill such a lack, or even know how. Perhaps you do not even know WHAT you are yearning for (and that is that saudade word I love so much).

How does one live with yearning? How does one yearn to live?