May’s Theme: Desire

What is desire?

Desire to me is the spark in my gut, my heart, that shines in a way that makes me complete. It is my inner compass and guardian angel, that points me in a direction most in line with my morals and with who I want to be. The problem is, that desire is quiet a lot of the time. It whispers and coos, and there are a lot of other voices in my head that can drown out the sound of my desire. Voices like perfectionism, like judgment, like “should,” like success, like some composite version of a “they” that doesn’t exist in real life but who I’m convinced is sitting on my shoulder and judging my every move, causing me to feel defensive every time I don’t take the path that I “should” take, that I’m “supposed to” take.

Desire is hard to identify sometimes, and it doesn’t always even make the things I want to do easy. I desire to write and share my voice, but that doesn’t mean I’ll feel like writing when I have the time set aside to write. I desire to move my body and run and explore, but that doesn’t mean I’ll feel like running when my alarm goes off. Desire, then, also needs to come with a true trust of myself, that my meta-self, the self that can see the big picture and that spark in my gut and puts “write for an hour” on the calendar, is the self to trust. Not the micro-self, who rolls over in bed, who says, “I don’t feel like it,” not because I’m truly injured or sick, but because it’s falling for the tricks of all those other voices that try to keep me safe from failure and success and rejection.

Desire means trusting that spark, that meta-self. Each time I trust, it makes it easier to trust the next time.