Pining

Pining is a strange word. Take, for instance, its root, pinen, a Middle English word meaning to torture, torment, or inflict pain. In its origin, this word had little to do with longing, let alone love of any sort. However, today, the word aptly describes a feeling that can be because of separation, loss, or, being that human emotions are immensely complicated, a number of other things.

Opposites to pining would probably include anything that would also seem the polar opposite of love. Hate, distaste, or, perhaps, rejection would all fit as opposites. Synonyms, however, are fewer, I think. Yearning and longing seem the closest to pining, but even love and admiration are synonyms, if a tad distant.

This word aptly describes relationships in history and fiction; for instance, Antony pined after Cleopatra to the point where he abandoned his own army in order to stay with her. Anakin in the Star Wars saga pines, at first, after Padme, a well-positioned queen and then senator. His yearning for her eventually leads to the downfall of the old Republic, and eventually his own death.

"To pine," in fact, would well describe even most friendships over even short (but definitely long) distances. A friend might long strongly for a friend who is even mere blocks away. Pining, I think, is created by two things, first, a love that can be either romantic or friendly, accompanied by boundaries, varying from distance to parental command. These two factors allow for an immensely strong feeling of yearning that, like most other emotions, has the capability to overcome a person and make them make bad decisions.

Pining is, like any emotion, a powerful thing. One merely has to leave a good friend far away for even a month or so to realize this. However, few of us realize the full power of this (or any) emotion, as it could be, because we have fewer boundaries and circumstances that allow emotions to grow and prosper. The adversity that nearly any other country besides the United States would afford would doubtless provide a breeding ground much more fertile for the most potent of emotions, because the value of the life not only of oneself, but the life of any other, is so much more magnified. We cannot even take for granted our relatively impotent emotions in the comparison between the New World and the third world.

!Noah!