Working definition. Yearning is desire stretched across distance. It senses an unmet possibility before that possibility has become a plan.
Inherited meaning
Poetry, spirituality, political movements, and intimate life all treat yearning as a force that reveals absence. It can open a horizon beyond present arrangements, but it can also attach itself to an imagined past or an object expected to resolve every lack.
Meaning in the imagination economy
AI can instantly give desire a polished image, creating the illusion that yearning has been answered because it has been visualised. In the imagination economy, yearning is earlier and deeper than a prompt. It is material for inquiry: what future is trying to become thinkable through this feeling, and whose life would it change?
What changes in practice
Stay with the longing before selecting its artifact. Translate it into needs, relationships, and conditions. Test whether the imagined answer enlarges life or merely decorates the absence.