Ohmygosh, this. Your timing, as always, Jeannine, is divine. Just this morning, I sat down and meditated on giving those parts of me that are afraid to desire the permission to let go, to stop trying to protect me and let me want the things I want. Because not wanting them, as you so aptly pointed out, points me in the opposite direction. Its' the wanting that allows us to experience that which will most fulfill us. The wanting is the north star and it must be followed or we are at odds with ourselves. I feel like this has been me my whole life until recently, as I let myself want what I want.
It's not a smooth process by any means. But a big, huge want came up on Sunday and I'm working through letting myself truly fall into wanting it.
I love this Jocelyn, I think its all to do with self-love. I've been working on self-love since the day I as born! I need to feel inside I am special and unique and all my desires and wants are from my true self wanting to be expressed, and that I deserve to have these desires and wants fulfilled so I can express and live my full potential.
“ Around an axis of ideas” really nails what I want and who I am! Like the dragon I have been writing about (around?) I feel unleashed because of my time here. The confluence of my age, discovering WITD, and the outside world is demanding I me to define and declare who I am not and what I want. I stand by my desire to bite, for my words that bite, but I want my presence to soothe and spark. I have felt like a contradiction and you know what? Who cares? That’s who I am. Thanks for keeping it, and us, real. Xoxo xoxo
I’m interested in the impact of ageing and how we get clear on our wants… … as an ovarian cancer survivor I feel a sharp sense of mortality but this kind of confuses my ‘want’. I want to stay alive so my pressuring ambitions have disappeared and I find myself allowing myself to be in my present rather than chaining myself to my desk. But there’s a tyranny in this cos without bum glue I lose the thread of my essay and just write more and more bits… and don’t ‘complete’….maybe we have different level wants
Yes, I think we do have different levels of wants. I navigate this too--the here and now of my granchildren's very fleeing childhood years, and the urgency to complete my creative projects. I think navigating this tension is part of our work and even part of the Buddhist path?
And perhaps too it’s about having clarity about our values …. I wonder if writing for an audience as you do Jeannine creates a relationship which then brings a responsibility to write and send as opposed to writing for one’s understanding and meaning making
“ bum glue”!!!!!! Perfection. I am so gladvtiu are here and I resonate wurh this issue so much. (And I am in the app so your last words cut off- I will see them soon. ) I also have tons of snippets. I am giving myself a deadline to take stock and then pick just one to finish, and if I get cheeky, I will make a list in order of things I want to develop and finish. But I am trying to consider this space and time as a way not just to develop work, but habits, a way of thinking, and a way forward that works for me with this new firehose of work and determination. I am assuming I am going to keep groping through the dark because it is working, even if I don’t understand how it is working. I am finding freedom in not needing to understand it for progress to happen. Talk about surrender. So happy to write and read with you. Bum glue- please make that a title, or a tattoo.
Emily, I have found that, as I age, I feel like a contradiction, too. There is a tension within me that sometimes I can't reconcile, but I try to sit with it and allow it to just be what it is. Yeah, not caring helps me, too. But sometimes I do care. Sometimes I ruminate. Or I care too much. It's the niggling shadows and monsters from my past trying to worm their way back into my psyche. And that's okay, too.
I love middle age, in the sense that I am able to straddle this strange space between youth and aging. I am neither of these, yet I feel I am both of them. And this is the place where I dwell and explore in my writing, too.
I love this. I can’t believe this community is only 2 years old. It is a wise 2 year old, a 2 year old with the spirit of a crone.
I have to admit that sometimes I am overwhelmed by the force of my wanting (which to be fully myself in my writing-teaching means being sociological and personal and political) given the uphill climbing, and so too, lately, often left exhausted by it. But this post reminds me of Lorde in Sister Outsider.
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.” ~ Audre Lorde
Thank you for this - and thank you for sharing the Octavia Butler poem’ish quote. I needed this today. I took this full time job and my personal laptop has been left to collect dust. And my kiddo is at daycare full time. He seems to be happy. This is a season where I need to collect some money and store it like a chipmunks nuts so we can give and celebrate the holidays and not feel stressed about it. That is my current desire and then snuggling my kiddo with every free moment. I received two rejections for an essay and a poem this past week. I cringed a little and then closed the email. I’ll get back on my writing horse next year. Xoxo
I feel all of this in my bones. I just said to Hayley that even now, at 56, I feel this tug between the hearth/home, work/finances, and creative work (which is also just part of my life source and genuinely requires my attention in order for me to thrive). This is the complicated path we traverse. It is not a straight line. Much love to you. And don't worry at all about the rejections. In fact, big congratulations to you! You are making work, finishing things, sending them out. What a huge accomplishment that is!
I hear you, Lindsey. I am doing something similar. Because this time of year is not only filled with holidays but also most of our family's birthdays, I tend to take November and December "off" from intense writing, editing, and revising. Instead, I focus on networking, playing with a few seeds of ideas, or maybe days and weeks where I write very little, except in my personal journal. I think that's good. Creativity comes in seasons and spurts, and truthfully, I thought it was adorable that you said, "I need to collect some money and store it like a chipmunk's nuts."
I love the image of you as a snuggling squirrel, Lindsey. Good for you for submitting stuff! Rejections sting, but they mean you are doing the thing, and that is huge. And your last sentence says it all - keep going. You are doing the thing! 💜
I love this … thank you. As an actress I learned about desire and tried to use it in fiction… and nonfiction. But quite literally in the scenes. You’ve given me something here that’s more ‘meta’…..but I’m wondering now about relationship between want and aboutness. I’m (still) working on an essay about reckoning with the past where I’m trying to braid the personal w the political (Australia’s voice referendum) … but because the personal has so many silencing obstacles I keep getting stuck… maybe your post reminds me that my ‘want’ is not to tell the story I can’t tell but rather to understand how others navigate this reckoning/to show how one can’t ‘bury’ the past/ how third party silencing is equally significant …. Or maybe all this is what the essay is about rather than desire? I have thought my want - and motivation for working so long and winding on this essay - is to reconcile inside myself w my past so I can live my precious present… grateful for any insights!
The way I teach, wants are *directly* tied to aboutness!! "This is a story about______ who wants _______ because ________ ...." etc etc!
As for your essay, have you tried just writing it without listening to the silencing obstacles, and just writing it the way you want, w/o worrying that anyone else will ever read it? Only when it is is finished, then you begin considering those questions about what if, should it be published, would you change, if anything?
Thanks for that reminder!…. I keep getting pulled away from the ‘write for myself’ impulse to the what if of publication. Been years of navigating this issue for publication of other essays and the memoir. I remember Stephen King: write with the door closed …
I hear you re our Voice Referendum 💛. I am the daughter of 1950’s ten pound POMs, and was absolutely gutted by the result. But I think the strength, beauty and generosity of culture of Aboriginal people is spreading like a slow “cultural burn”. The changes in awareness since I was a kid in the ‘60s are huge. My grandkids sing “Wanju, wanju” in Noongar language at their primary school assemblies, when I was a kid, only white history was ever taught. The hospital where I work is establishing strong cultural ties and educations for staff (who come from all over the world). Change is slow, but it’s coming ❤️.
Yes!!! Love your slow spread….I am awed and inspired by the generosity and love for country and past generations that I’ve heard from people like Thomas Mayo - this is how the political highlights the yukkiness of the personal thread…
I am remembering an excerpt from Lewis Hyde's book, The Gift, as I read your post today:
"...Gifts do not bring us attachment unless they move us. Manners or social pressure may oblige us to those for whom we feel no true affection, but neither obligation nor civility leads to lasting unions. It is when someone's gifts stir us that we are brought close, and what moves us, beyond the gift itself, is the promise...of transformation, friendship, and love...Gifts bespeak relationship."
Hyde wrote about eroticism and desire, too, which made me think of his concept of art as gift instead of art as transaction or commerce. That has helped me stay mindful of how and why I write what I do, because I want it to be an offering, and I imagine myself extending my open palms to an unknown recipient with the stories or insights or experiences I hope another person will receive. To consider my creative work a gift makes it more sacred to me, which helps me remain intentional and discerning when I revise and edit and eventually share my writing.
To me, that is what it means to be true to myself and allow that authenticity to be reflected in what I write.
Hmmmm - Thankyou Jeannine for giving me thought-food.
I have never considered “wanting” to be a good thing. For me, “wanting” has always seemed a demanding child, clamouring for attention that I have never had the time, money or energy to devote to. And “desire” has always been simply an unattainable carrot on an infinite stick.
I have always settled for what is. Kind of “trusting the process” of life to take me where I need to be. Aiming for quiet contentment.
I think my ADHD brain doesn’t “do” planning, or goals, or speculate on futures. I have long ago realised that I can only ever be in the moment that I am in. So maybe not “wanting” is part of that.
But I can see that it is more than that. It is tied up in my personal history. And Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There is no room for “wanting” or “desire” when you are in the red zone.
However, now that I am no longer in that zone, perhaps I can contemplate “desire”, without considering it to be a luxury for “others”.
I think many of us were taught that about wanting. But I see it as deeper, this feeling of the "north star" that Butler points to: the directive force in our lives. I also see it as very separate from goals and objectives and planning (though of course we may eventually have to do some of that to achieve certain desires). But the desire itself is more like a dream, a dream of what we want to feel in a life made exactly for us.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote in the late 1880's that "Desire is prayer." Makes sense that we would bring about what we most desire to bring about through our decisions and actions so that we may experience answered prayer. By contrast, the 23rd Psalm tells us we shall not want or be without as we travel along the shadow of death. I had not thought about it to this level before but I now think desire and wanting may be quite different. Desire may define who we become as we act to achieve our desires but wanting gives a connotation of being without that which we desire. We could say focus is prayer so maybe the distinction is desire sets us on fire to achieve that which will burn us if we do not go for it whereas wanting shows us what we are missing and we either continue to live without it or we go for it. We may not be on the path in wanting an outcome but we are on the path when we truly desire the outcome or thing. Or its just semantics. I would rather desire than want and I feel that I actually want for nothing even as I have serious desires that drive me toward outcomes.
I have been afflicted with for longing decades. Longing that aches both wet and dry; that springs tears from the deepest wellspring without warning; longing that wrings the soul until there is no moisture left. Sometimes I sit in silence and longing blooms around me like a blue flame, a fire that burns but does not consume. Marion Woodman told me to dance in those flames. The Buddha said that desire is the cause of all suffering. Moving into old age, I wonder if I should surrender desire and become still - let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps, I should become retiring rather than rising toward work at something new. But, I bet I have 25 good years left. I chose to enter the dance, suffering be damned. Aren't ascetic mythologies this-life denying at their root? I desire a more feminine, life-affirming, sexy god - a creatrix whose smile greens the earth, a personificaion of a desire Herself - a bawdy crone, cackling at a dirty joke.
I often think about desire in the context of Buddhism. I think the Buddha was speaking of a slightly different kind of desire--the kind that falls into the category of craving. I think the desire that Butler speaks of is more a highly directed life-force that fuels us toward the life meant for us. And amen to that feminine, life-affirming, sexy god, yes yes yes!
I think of it often, too, especially now. as I am taking stock of my life. I think he's saying that desire comes from the ego, and that the ego is not who you are in truth. Perhaps when the wind of desire blows through a hollow reed, we call that note love. I have expereinced ego-less-ness in the context of long silent retreats, and plant medicine ceremonies. It's beautiful. Love is a verb - the doer. But I eventually pour back into my container, filled with desire. After decades of letting go, of facing myself and embracing suffering through the willingness to feel difficult emotions rather than avoid them, I chose the middle path. I bet the Buddha might laugh and applaud. If I had a Buddha, he would be the fat, jolly one, not the skinny ascetic one.
I'm fairly new to Writing in the Dark (and trying to remember how I found it), but this landed just as I'm wide awake pre-dawn grappling with developments at the corporate day job that will make it even less compatible with my creative life and the creative life I desire... and reading this and having the little thought creeping in around the edges that the answer does not lie in finding new ways to fit myself into an ever more constricting box but instead being clear-eyed about what's not for me and turning towards the want of something very, very different. I think I've been stuck on not knowing how, hesitant because I don't know how to get from here to the life I'm imagining--but when do we ever see the whole path? Better to turn towards the desire, the call, step off in that direction, one step at a time, isn't it?
I meant to say, but was in a rush to get this morning's post out, that I have never been able to jump wholesale off the cliff of the work that keeps me secure; instead I have had to very literally move one step at a time in the direction of my creative desires. It has been slow and steady. In other areas of my life--that is, love--I made a huge leap. It was needed! And I am glad for it, despite the cost, which has been high. So, there is never one right answer, but one step at a time does lead somewhere. I can attest to that.
"In all of life—whether in writing or otherwise—it helps immeasurably to be who you actually are, to let yourself be seen and heard for your true self, and, in that way, to live and write as only you can."
This is what I have struggled and battle with since a young age.
"Being my true self" has been a lifetime journey. Like a lot of people, I really didn't touch base with my true self until I start to let go of people pleasing and living up to other peoples expectations of me. ..doing what others want to get love, and be loved and accepted, so not be squashed and put down or ridiculed because I trying to be my true self.
Now, I am on a self-discovery journey to find my private North Star and become who I truely am and it's never ending journey.
Writing has helped me in this path. As I write out and heal from past trauma, I am realising I am not my past anymore, but a evolving living entity of shedding and detaching old matter that used to be me, and discovering layer by layer a new part of myself which was hidden in a cocoon just waiting to be released.
It's quite magical to write yourself into knowing who you truely are, as you write out the truth hidden underneath the falseness I once was.
"The idea of being yourself, really and truly, simply means you will benefit from writing in your own voice and from your own unique, specialized perspective—regardless of topic—in a way that no one else ever could."...
This would be heaven to me! My big desire and want has been to be able to be my true self, in all of my glory, weirdness and eccentric ways of being, and be able to express this confidence in both writing and in the outside world.
Maybe this is my calling to explore, research and experiment ways to be my true self with confidence and joy... and to write about it. I have had my landing page up on Substack for decades collecting dust and some subscribers, 6!
You are not your past--in fact, Andre Aciman says there is no past, only versions of the past. He also says that as we write, we change not only our relationship to the past, but, on some mystical level, the past itself. That has truly been my experience. xoxo
I have heard that too, there is no past as we live in the present moment always. I agree writing has changed my relationship of my past but I love the idea that writing can change the past itself... like life is just one movie theatre where we create and live out each scene and then move on the next, leaving the last one a blur of nothingness.
Ohmygosh, this. Your timing, as always, Jeannine, is divine. Just this morning, I sat down and meditated on giving those parts of me that are afraid to desire the permission to let go, to stop trying to protect me and let me want the things I want. Because not wanting them, as you so aptly pointed out, points me in the opposite direction. Its' the wanting that allows us to experience that which will most fulfill us. The wanting is the north star and it must be followed or we are at odds with ourselves. I feel like this has been me my whole life until recently, as I let myself want what I want.
It's not a smooth process by any means. But a big, huge want came up on Sunday and I'm working through letting myself truly fall into wanting it.
As always, thank you Jeannine, thank you. xo
Amazing. Thank you, Jocelyn, for sharing this with me, and for walking this path together!
I love this Jocelyn, I think its all to do with self-love. I've been working on self-love since the day I as born! I need to feel inside I am special and unique and all my desires and wants are from my true self wanting to be expressed, and that I deserve to have these desires and wants fulfilled so I can express and live my full potential.
What a profound insight, Jocelyn: "Its' the wanting that allows us to experience that which will most fulfill us." Thank you.
i feel an entire essay coming on this subject. ;) I'm glad that line resonated. xoxox
write it, I will read it 🤩
I'd love for you to share what you come up with, Jocelyn!
Gorgeous, Jocelyn.
“ Around an axis of ideas” really nails what I want and who I am! Like the dragon I have been writing about (around?) I feel unleashed because of my time here. The confluence of my age, discovering WITD, and the outside world is demanding I me to define and declare who I am not and what I want. I stand by my desire to bite, for my words that bite, but I want my presence to soothe and spark. I have felt like a contradiction and you know what? Who cares? That’s who I am. Thanks for keeping it, and us, real. Xoxo xoxo
I too have been learning to see and love the contradiction of myself. It seems so human.
I’m interested in the impact of ageing and how we get clear on our wants… … as an ovarian cancer survivor I feel a sharp sense of mortality but this kind of confuses my ‘want’. I want to stay alive so my pressuring ambitions have disappeared and I find myself allowing myself to be in my present rather than chaining myself to my desk. But there’s a tyranny in this cos without bum glue I lose the thread of my essay and just write more and more bits… and don’t ‘complete’….maybe we have different level wants
Yes, I think we do have different levels of wants. I navigate this too--the here and now of my granchildren's very fleeing childhood years, and the urgency to complete my creative projects. I think navigating this tension is part of our work and even part of the Buddhist path?
And perhaps too it’s about having clarity about our values …. I wonder if writing for an audience as you do Jeannine creates a relationship which then brings a responsibility to write and send as opposed to writing for one’s understanding and meaning making
Yes, I think that is very true.
“ bum glue”!!!!!! Perfection. I am so gladvtiu are here and I resonate wurh this issue so much. (And I am in the app so your last words cut off- I will see them soon. ) I also have tons of snippets. I am giving myself a deadline to take stock and then pick just one to finish, and if I get cheeky, I will make a list in order of things I want to develop and finish. But I am trying to consider this space and time as a way not just to develop work, but habits, a way of thinking, and a way forward that works for me with this new firehose of work and determination. I am assuming I am going to keep groping through the dark because it is working, even if I don’t understand how it is working. I am finding freedom in not needing to understand it for progress to happen. Talk about surrender. So happy to write and read with you. Bum glue- please make that a title, or a tattoo.
Lovely! Thank you
Emily, I have found that, as I age, I feel like a contradiction, too. There is a tension within me that sometimes I can't reconcile, but I try to sit with it and allow it to just be what it is. Yeah, not caring helps me, too. But sometimes I do care. Sometimes I ruminate. Or I care too much. It's the niggling shadows and monsters from my past trying to worm their way back into my psyche. And that's okay, too.
I love middle age, in the sense that I am able to straddle this strange space between youth and aging. I am neither of these, yet I feel I am both of them. And this is the place where I dwell and explore in my writing, too.
That is lovely, Jeannie.
I love this. I can’t believe this community is only 2 years old. It is a wise 2 year old, a 2 year old with the spirit of a crone.
I have to admit that sometimes I am overwhelmed by the force of my wanting (which to be fully myself in my writing-teaching means being sociological and personal and political) given the uphill climbing, and so too, lately, often left exhausted by it. But this post reminds me of Lorde in Sister Outsider.
“The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognizing its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less of ourselves.” ~ Audre Lorde
That quote is absolute fire. Thank you!!
Oh I love this quote!
Yeah Audre Lorde was something else. #rolemodel
Thank you for this - and thank you for sharing the Octavia Butler poem’ish quote. I needed this today. I took this full time job and my personal laptop has been left to collect dust. And my kiddo is at daycare full time. He seems to be happy. This is a season where I need to collect some money and store it like a chipmunks nuts so we can give and celebrate the holidays and not feel stressed about it. That is my current desire and then snuggling my kiddo with every free moment. I received two rejections for an essay and a poem this past week. I cringed a little and then closed the email. I’ll get back on my writing horse next year. Xoxo
I feel all of this in my bones. I just said to Hayley that even now, at 56, I feel this tug between the hearth/home, work/finances, and creative work (which is also just part of my life source and genuinely requires my attention in order for me to thrive). This is the complicated path we traverse. It is not a straight line. Much love to you. And don't worry at all about the rejections. In fact, big congratulations to you! You are making work, finishing things, sending them out. What a huge accomplishment that is!
I hear you, Lindsey. I am doing something similar. Because this time of year is not only filled with holidays but also most of our family's birthdays, I tend to take November and December "off" from intense writing, editing, and revising. Instead, I focus on networking, playing with a few seeds of ideas, or maybe days and weeks where I write very little, except in my personal journal. I think that's good. Creativity comes in seasons and spurts, and truthfully, I thought it was adorable that you said, "I need to collect some money and store it like a chipmunk's nuts."
Ah yes birthday months for us too. Enjoy this season!
I love the image of you as a snuggling squirrel, Lindsey. Good for you for submitting stuff! Rejections sting, but they mean you are doing the thing, and that is huge. And your last sentence says it all - keep going. You are doing the thing! 💜
Thank you, Emily - yes! Keep going. We must never give up - just procrastinate a little ☺️
I love this … thank you. As an actress I learned about desire and tried to use it in fiction… and nonfiction. But quite literally in the scenes. You’ve given me something here that’s more ‘meta’…..but I’m wondering now about relationship between want and aboutness. I’m (still) working on an essay about reckoning with the past where I’m trying to braid the personal w the political (Australia’s voice referendum) … but because the personal has so many silencing obstacles I keep getting stuck… maybe your post reminds me that my ‘want’ is not to tell the story I can’t tell but rather to understand how others navigate this reckoning/to show how one can’t ‘bury’ the past/ how third party silencing is equally significant …. Or maybe all this is what the essay is about rather than desire? I have thought my want - and motivation for working so long and winding on this essay - is to reconcile inside myself w my past so I can live my precious present… grateful for any insights!
The way I teach, wants are *directly* tied to aboutness!! "This is a story about______ who wants _______ because ________ ...." etc etc!
As for your essay, have you tried just writing it without listening to the silencing obstacles, and just writing it the way you want, w/o worrying that anyone else will ever read it? Only when it is is finished, then you begin considering those questions about what if, should it be published, would you change, if anything?
Thanks for that reminder!…. I keep getting pulled away from the ‘write for myself’ impulse to the what if of publication. Been years of navigating this issue for publication of other essays and the memoir. I remember Stephen King: write with the door closed …
Exactly. Then, we revise and make decisions if/when we allow the door to open!
I hear you re our Voice Referendum 💛. I am the daughter of 1950’s ten pound POMs, and was absolutely gutted by the result. But I think the strength, beauty and generosity of culture of Aboriginal people is spreading like a slow “cultural burn”. The changes in awareness since I was a kid in the ‘60s are huge. My grandkids sing “Wanju, wanju” in Noongar language at their primary school assemblies, when I was a kid, only white history was ever taught. The hospital where I work is establishing strong cultural ties and educations for staff (who come from all over the world). Change is slow, but it’s coming ❤️.
Yes!!! Love your slow spread….I am awed and inspired by the generosity and love for country and past generations that I’ve heard from people like Thomas Mayo - this is how the political highlights the yukkiness of the personal thread…
I am remembering an excerpt from Lewis Hyde's book, The Gift, as I read your post today:
"...Gifts do not bring us attachment unless they move us. Manners or social pressure may oblige us to those for whom we feel no true affection, but neither obligation nor civility leads to lasting unions. It is when someone's gifts stir us that we are brought close, and what moves us, beyond the gift itself, is the promise...of transformation, friendship, and love...Gifts bespeak relationship."
Hyde wrote about eroticism and desire, too, which made me think of his concept of art as gift instead of art as transaction or commerce. That has helped me stay mindful of how and why I write what I do, because I want it to be an offering, and I imagine myself extending my open palms to an unknown recipient with the stories or insights or experiences I hope another person will receive. To consider my creative work a gift makes it more sacred to me, which helps me remain intentional and discerning when I revise and edit and eventually share my writing.
To me, that is what it means to be true to myself and allow that authenticity to be reflected in what I write.
Hmmmm - Thankyou Jeannine for giving me thought-food.
I have never considered “wanting” to be a good thing. For me, “wanting” has always seemed a demanding child, clamouring for attention that I have never had the time, money or energy to devote to. And “desire” has always been simply an unattainable carrot on an infinite stick.
I have always settled for what is. Kind of “trusting the process” of life to take me where I need to be. Aiming for quiet contentment.
I think my ADHD brain doesn’t “do” planning, or goals, or speculate on futures. I have long ago realised that I can only ever be in the moment that I am in. So maybe not “wanting” is part of that.
But I can see that it is more than that. It is tied up in my personal history. And Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There is no room for “wanting” or “desire” when you are in the red zone.
However, now that I am no longer in that zone, perhaps I can contemplate “desire”, without considering it to be a luxury for “others”.
🙏🏼💖☺️
I think many of us were taught that about wanting. But I see it as deeper, this feeling of the "north star" that Butler points to: the directive force in our lives. I also see it as very separate from goals and objectives and planning (though of course we may eventually have to do some of that to achieve certain desires). But the desire itself is more like a dream, a dream of what we want to feel in a life made exactly for us.
xoxo
Mary Baker Eddy wrote in the late 1880's that "Desire is prayer." Makes sense that we would bring about what we most desire to bring about through our decisions and actions so that we may experience answered prayer. By contrast, the 23rd Psalm tells us we shall not want or be without as we travel along the shadow of death. I had not thought about it to this level before but I now think desire and wanting may be quite different. Desire may define who we become as we act to achieve our desires but wanting gives a connotation of being without that which we desire. We could say focus is prayer so maybe the distinction is desire sets us on fire to achieve that which will burn us if we do not go for it whereas wanting shows us what we are missing and we either continue to live without it or we go for it. We may not be on the path in wanting an outcome but we are on the path when we truly desire the outcome or thing. Or its just semantics. I would rather desire than want and I feel that I actually want for nothing even as I have serious desires that drive me toward outcomes.
I love thinking about these distinctions, Penni, and I did not know that about Mary Baker Eddy. Thank you for this.
I have been afflicted with for longing decades. Longing that aches both wet and dry; that springs tears from the deepest wellspring without warning; longing that wrings the soul until there is no moisture left. Sometimes I sit in silence and longing blooms around me like a blue flame, a fire that burns but does not consume. Marion Woodman told me to dance in those flames. The Buddha said that desire is the cause of all suffering. Moving into old age, I wonder if I should surrender desire and become still - let the chips fall where they may. Perhaps, I should become retiring rather than rising toward work at something new. But, I bet I have 25 good years left. I chose to enter the dance, suffering be damned. Aren't ascetic mythologies this-life denying at their root? I desire a more feminine, life-affirming, sexy god - a creatrix whose smile greens the earth, a personificaion of a desire Herself - a bawdy crone, cackling at a dirty joke.
I often think about desire in the context of Buddhism. I think the Buddha was speaking of a slightly different kind of desire--the kind that falls into the category of craving. I think the desire that Butler speaks of is more a highly directed life-force that fuels us toward the life meant for us. And amen to that feminine, life-affirming, sexy god, yes yes yes!
I think of it often, too, especially now. as I am taking stock of my life. I think he's saying that desire comes from the ego, and that the ego is not who you are in truth. Perhaps when the wind of desire blows through a hollow reed, we call that note love. I have expereinced ego-less-ness in the context of long silent retreats, and plant medicine ceremonies. It's beautiful. Love is a verb - the doer. But I eventually pour back into my container, filled with desire. After decades of letting go, of facing myself and embracing suffering through the willingness to feel difficult emotions rather than avoid them, I chose the middle path. I bet the Buddha might laugh and applaud. If I had a Buddha, he would be the fat, jolly one, not the skinny ascetic one.
Ha, I love this. May our Buddhas be fat and jolly, yes.
I'm fairly new to Writing in the Dark (and trying to remember how I found it), but this landed just as I'm wide awake pre-dawn grappling with developments at the corporate day job that will make it even less compatible with my creative life and the creative life I desire... and reading this and having the little thought creeping in around the edges that the answer does not lie in finding new ways to fit myself into an ever more constricting box but instead being clear-eyed about what's not for me and turning towards the want of something very, very different. I think I've been stuck on not knowing how, hesitant because I don't know how to get from here to the life I'm imagining--but when do we ever see the whole path? Better to turn towards the desire, the call, step off in that direction, one step at a time, isn't it?
One step at a time, yes. That's how I do it, very much so.
I meant to say, but was in a rush to get this morning's post out, that I have never been able to jump wholesale off the cliff of the work that keeps me secure; instead I have had to very literally move one step at a time in the direction of my creative desires. It has been slow and steady. In other areas of my life--that is, love--I made a huge leap. It was needed! And I am glad for it, despite the cost, which has been high. So, there is never one right answer, but one step at a time does lead somewhere. I can attest to that.
Thank you for the article and love the final poem by Octavia that you shared. XO
You're welcome! I am glad it resonated!
"In all of life—whether in writing or otherwise—it helps immeasurably to be who you actually are, to let yourself be seen and heard for your true self, and, in that way, to live and write as only you can."
This is what I have struggled and battle with since a young age.
"Being my true self" has been a lifetime journey. Like a lot of people, I really didn't touch base with my true self until I start to let go of people pleasing and living up to other peoples expectations of me. ..doing what others want to get love, and be loved and accepted, so not be squashed and put down or ridiculed because I trying to be my true self.
Now, I am on a self-discovery journey to find my private North Star and become who I truely am and it's never ending journey.
Writing has helped me in this path. As I write out and heal from past trauma, I am realising I am not my past anymore, but a evolving living entity of shedding and detaching old matter that used to be me, and discovering layer by layer a new part of myself which was hidden in a cocoon just waiting to be released.
It's quite magical to write yourself into knowing who you truely are, as you write out the truth hidden underneath the falseness I once was.
"The idea of being yourself, really and truly, simply means you will benefit from writing in your own voice and from your own unique, specialized perspective—regardless of topic—in a way that no one else ever could."...
This would be heaven to me! My big desire and want has been to be able to be my true self, in all of my glory, weirdness and eccentric ways of being, and be able to express this confidence in both writing and in the outside world.
Maybe this is my calling to explore, research and experiment ways to be my true self with confidence and joy... and to write about it. I have had my landing page up on Substack for decades collecting dust and some subscribers, 6!
You are not your past--in fact, Andre Aciman says there is no past, only versions of the past. He also says that as we write, we change not only our relationship to the past, but, on some mystical level, the past itself. That has truly been my experience. xoxo
I have heard that too, there is no past as we live in the present moment always. I agree writing has changed my relationship of my past but I love the idea that writing can change the past itself... like life is just one movie theatre where we create and live out each scene and then move on the next, leaving the last one a blur of nothingness.