Missing someone is often dismissed as a weakness: a lingering ache that distracts from our productivity or progress, something to be suppressed in a culture that values emotional self-sufficiency. In reality, missing someone is an art form shaped by remembering the past while holding on to restraint and emotional discipline. It is performed in silent moments through carefully composed messages, through routines altered by one’s absence and in the balance between holding on and letting go. To miss someone well is not to collapse under longing, but to learn how to live meaningfully alongside these emotions.Â
Missing someone is an act of attention. The mind returns, again and again, to small details: the way a laugh softened a hard day, the familiar cadence of a voice on the phone or the shared jokes that no longer land with the same weight when repeated alone. Henry L. Roediger, an American psychologist in human learning and memory, notes that memory is not a passive recording but an active reconstruction, implying that each moment of missing subtly reshapes how the person who is missed is remembered. Over time, absence contorts memory into something more nostalgic and less precise, conserving emotion while blurring edges.Â
As our generation is defined by constant connection, missing someone has become more complicated. Technology offers the illusion of closeness through social media updates, read receipts and saved photos, while ultimately deepening this ache. Seeing moments of someone you love’s life without being able to participate in them can intensify longing rather than relieve it. A study on digital psychology, titled “Parenting and Digital Media: From the Early Web to Contemporary Digital Society,” suggests that ambient co-presence—also known as the constant connectivity within social media—sustains emotional attachment, often intensifying the experience of missing someone rather than alleviating it, requiring individuals to determine when to view their feed and when to look away.Â
The art of missing someone also involves discipline. It is the conscious choice to not reach out every time the urge arises, to not reread old messages until you become tired of them. Sociologists describe this process as emotional regulation, which is the ability to experience strong feelings without allowing them to dictate behavior. Missing someone, then, becomes less about possession and more about respect for both the other person’s autonomy and your own growth.Â
Longing carries a creative dimension. Throughout history, the theme of absence has resulted in many masterpieces in art, music and literature, relaying and appreciating emotions that are often difficult to express in words. In fact, many musicians describe missing someone as a catalyst for their creative work. In this way, longing becomes productive, redirecting emotions into artistic expression rather than abandoning them in stagnation.Â
Missing someone is not inherently noble; longing alone does not indicate emotional strength. It simply reinforces that the relationship mattered enough to leave a mark. What gives it meaning is not the depth of the longing, but the ability to carry it without letting it weigh you down. To miss someone intensely is to accept that love does not end neatly, and that absence, like presence, can instill a life with surprising depth.Â
In the end, missing someone is not a problem to be solved but something to be understood. It shows how deeply we are shaped by relationships and how absence can linger without resolutions. The art of missing someone lies in allowing longing to exist without letting it dominate and in recognizing that some connections continue, even when distance intervenes. Missing someone becomes less about the pain and more about how it shapes who we are.Â
I miss my parents, and I miss my sister Avery, because they have shaped who I am.