the vulnerability of wanting

learning and owning the nature of my desire

The magnitude of my dreams used to be too heavy for me to hold so I cast them off, waiting to feel ready. I thought that one day, even without practice, I might suddenly become big enough or brave enough. I’m learning that it requires courage and confidence to call our desires by their names - and that it’s okay to start small, to start literally anywhere, whispering them in safe spaces or shouting them loudly into the void, so you can ultimately voice them to the exact people who can hold your hand while you cross the threshold of your dreams. It sounds woo-woo but the universe is listening. It helps to remember that it is conspiring in your favor.

I am currently intimately familiar with the vulnerability of wanting, actively looking over the cavernous canyon of my desires toward the horizon of my dream life. Two things must happen on this journey: small steps forward on the path that unfolds as we walk it and giant leaps of faith. The former requires trust. The latter requires activation energy. My friend, Tayler, described it physically, drawing a graph in the air of jumps and plateaus of success. I reached out to her because I was contemplating how we can cultivate reserves of enthusiasm to carry us, especially, through fear-filled moments.¹

To backtrack: Preet was the first person who ever asked me what I really wanted, more than just within the confines of what I believed to be possible based on circumstance. When I first got to Selina in Paros, the woman at the front desk added me to a community group chat. Shortly after, I received a text with details for a New Moon guided meditation. It gave me the distinct feeling that I was exactly where I was meant to be, that the universe was holding me sweetly with this offering. When Preet introduced himself later, out on the deck overlooking the midday sun-drenched sea, I remembered that his was the name signed at the bottom of the message. I told him how meaningful it was for me to receive. I didn’t explain how badly I needed it, how much pain I was in. I only told him that I had been out in the world, alone on an empty island, how I’d been looking for community and found it.

We gathered for meditation that evening, a group of us sitting on the deck overlooking the strait between Paros and Antiparos. The water reflected the rich orange and pink that the clouds held, vestige of the setting sun. Afterward, I told Preet how vivid the meditation felt, how uncommon that was.

“I also guide people in breathwork,” he said. I can’t remember if I even knew what breathwork was at the time. I’d never done it before but, after the power of that meditation, I felt open and trusting.

“Let’s do it,” I said.

He gave me homework. “Write down all of the obstacles that you feel like you’re facing in your life. We can meet tomorrow at 2.”

I took my homework more seriously than I’d ever taken homework before in my life. I was unstudious as a child, and this felt more meaningful, like a step on the path to self-realization. I saw that, even then: a moment that was significant even as it was unfolding.

When I met him at 2:00 the next day, Preet invited me to share my list. I started and he paused to ask, “What are these obstacles to? What is it that you want?”

I had never been asked that before. It was an uncomfortable question. To want might signal lack, that we do not have (or ourselves are not) enough. A month prior, in the heat of a painful break up, my boyfriend looked at me across a table in Porto and said, “You want too much. You’ll never be satisfied.”

It’s possible that he was right. I think that is the thing that we (I) need to hold. He was right and wrong at the same time. We are allowed to want - a lot, big things. In fact, I encourage it! But is the desire meant to be a balm for a wound? Is it meant to convince you of your worth? Are you resting your happiness on the shoulders of some future self, still yet to be realized? That wanting is endless. He was right that that would have been a bottomless pit of desire. The self that sat across from him wanted hungrily, unfairly, because she was desperate to fill an unfillable void, to soothe the part of herself that felt incapable and unworthy of love. I say this affectionately now, with a desire to hold her and say the things my ex-boyfriend couldn’t have said - because he didn’t want to and also because I am the only one, actually, with the power to say them to any real effect.

Like how, for years, I wanted to have an orgasm and it finally became real when I learned that it could only come from me.

“I see you,” I can offer her, while she sits, sobbing, at that small round table, begging for the man she loves to look at her and really see her. “I know your heart.”

I think it would be easy, and really satisfying, to vilify my ex-boyfriend in that moment, to imagine a perfect world in which he looked at me and said “I see you and I hear you. I know you are a good person and you strive to soothe the people around you, to hold everything together in your flimsy little heart.” but, with that alone, I might not have been able to get to a place where I could really want, and have those desires be branches and roots instead of band-aids, things that are sturdy and expansive, not emptinesses that I was trying to fill.

In doing that for myself, I can recognize that my desires are coming from a different place now. Even some of my travels were born from a need to run, to be anywhere but here. I was searching. I still needed to be far away from the city that held the energy of my last relationship and of my parents’ sadness that was unresolved by my presence. This year, I challenged myself to confront it. I learned to love the place my feet are planted. I turned New York City into a village and allowed my roots to seek soil, finally. Now, firmly planted, my branches are aching to move and expand. My travels are taking me toward something instead of away, and that feels really full. It’s subtle, indiscernible to the untrained eye, but I am moving differently. I can feel it.

The truth is that I do want really big things. I want to publish my book and I want it to change the way we, as a society, talk about pleasure and intimacy. I want it to stay on the New York Times best seller list for months. As I write this, I can feel the tremendous power required to take ownership of these desires and I know that I am ready to say it with my whole chest, to move toward that reality with alacrity, to get up again when I stumble. “What if I fail?” is so much less scary than “What if I never try?”

I remember, one day, when I was feeling down about my writing, and how long it’s taking, I spoke to a dear friend. “What?” he said, “Did you think it would be easy?” I whined that I did, at least easier than this. At least not impossible.

But he was right. In the moments when there are pitfalls, when looking at myself and baring my bones feels uncomfortable, when words become muddy, I can get back up. Because I know, in my heart, that this desire is my lighthouse. It is the thing that guides me home. It is the path unfolding before me, nudging me toward myself.

I’m reading How to Manifest, by Lacy Phillips.² Phillips breaks manifestation down into three steps: expanding, unblocking, and taking aligned action. I created a list of expanders, people who have (in part or in full) actualized dreams similar to mine. Tayler Carraway, co-founder of Happy Medium and recently published author³, is someone I admire and ~fortunately~ also someone I know. She is an artist in a true sense of the word, bringing formlessness into form and inspiring others to do the same. When you want big things, how do you become big enough to hold them? I wanted to ask her. How do you cultivate the courage to go all in on your dreams?

I applied to work at Happy Medium with the thought that sincerely supporting other people on their creative paths might plant good seeds of creativity in my own garden. It’s been a silent and steady process. Turns out, being surrounded by art supplies DOES in fact encourage you to make more art!! Bearing witness to people’s creative efforts DOES in fact inspire your own! Reminding people to be brave enough to be terrible reminds you that YOU can be brave in that very same way. Service erodes the barrier between self and other. You speak to a mirror in that way. I’m even thinking about the watercolor plates that we prepare at Art Cafe. I suck at this task, always over- or underestimating how much of each color we can fit on the palette. It’s shown me the importance of showing up poorly with enthusiasm, how that’s better than not showing up at all; of having places and people that encourage you to risk imperfection. It is, in fact, inevitable, and the expense of not trying is far too steep.

All of that to say, I can recognize the way spending time at Happy Medium is fortifying me, preparing me to hold a big life. Still, there was something extra special about sitting down with Tayler, personally, to hear her story. “How do you cultivate the confidence?” I had the pleasure of asking. She is a self-proclaimed queen of not caring what anybody thinks about her. There’s an undeniable secret sauce in that. It quiets the external voices that become our subconscious self-limiting beliefs. “Knowing that you definitely have something here, and it’s more a matter of marketing it and not a question of, ‘is it actually good or not?’” Tayler generously says that, “Almost everybody has an amazing idea. It’s just, do enough people know about it, and do the right people know about it?”

When it takes a long time to get what we want, it might feel safest to shrink ourselves, to tell us that what we want is actually something different, smaller, more easily attainable - when, in fact, it is an invitation to grow, to connect more deeply with the force of our desire. I write to give myself what I need, as a reminder that by offering it to others, the light of it isn’t diminished but multiplied. The strength of it compounds. I write books because I am looking for answers, and I know that they exist within myself. I pull them out for me and for you. With big love!

1. initial thoughts: joy, play, supportive community. connecting deeply with our desires. looking under the hood of them and asking, why do I want what I want?

2. Magically, I began reading it and was immediately invited to Penguin Random House. Books are portals and you can’t tell me nothing!

3. Go buy Tayler’s Guided Creativity Journal! Think, Artists Way for the casual artist or the busy creative.