Tell me:
What do you need to pay the rent?
What do you need to feel healthy?
What do you need to laugh again?
What do you need to take care of your family/community/self?
What do you need in order to create?
What do you need to survive?
What do you need to thrive?
Take a breath. Feel your toes. Your fingers. Your heartbeat. Take another breath.
Now tell me:
What do you want?
Do you want new soles for boots that have run down at the heel?
Do you want food that satisfies your body?
Do you want a safe place for your children to play?
Do you want love?
Accountability?
Justice?
Joy?
Take another breath. Feel the vibration of your inhalation and exhalation. Feel the vibration of ever sound around you, right now, wherever you are.
Then tell me:
What do you desire?
A former student of mine once articulated that desire is the place where want meets need.
Desire is the place where all our parts can dance. Our hopes. Our fears. Our failures. Our successes. Our willingness to act.
Desire is the tugging at both heart and soul.
To desire, it is said, is to follow a star.
So, tell me:
What do you desire?
To fall in love?
To live in strength?
To become honorable?
To be of service?
To paint?
To write?
To dance?
To sing?
To teach?
To heal?
Then tell me:
How will you honor and uphold your desire?
We can be in relationship with want, need, and desire in every moment, if we choose to be.
Whether life feels easy or difficult right now, take another breath. Feel what you need. Feel what you want. Feel what you desire.
Find where they root in your body and your mind.
Take another breath, and –just for this moment– set them free.
Breathe in spaciousness. Breathe out time. Breathe in possibility. Breathe out time.
Open.
Breathe some more.
Then ask again:
“What do I need?”
“What do I want?”
“What do I desire?”
Desire is one of the seeds of creation. Can you make space for it? What will help you clear the way?
Though this is a new essay, for this time, this work is also expanded upon in my book, “Make Magic of Your Life”.
This is reader funded writing. I thank all of my Patreon supporters for making it possible for me to provide one free essay and short story every month. Most of this writing would not exist without these people. They all rock.
Want to join my Patreon crew? You get advance copies of essays and stories before they hit the web, plus a chance for free books once or so a year.
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