I’m rigorously unprobleming my problem.
The problem is…
I am getting in my own way.
The problem is that I don’t always remember what it feels like to get in my own way.
I think it’s part of the human condition to forget at-least it’s comforting to say this so I’m not harshly judging myself for constantly forgetting.
The most empowered form of living is to know I am whole and I can source my own needs.
The solution is making it the habit of who I am.
At times, I experience a desire so intensely that it becomes a want; so feverishly the cost becomes my disconnection to compassion, understanding and love.
I get lost in the want.
I become greedy and self-serving.
Entitled.
Someone else ‘serve’ me.
And if I’m not noticing. I’m oblivious to my shadow.
There’s a huge difference and yet a very fine line between desire and want.
Desire is something I have.
There are many types of desires:
To explore intimacy, to learn, to care and feel cared for, to feel supported, have a sense of belonging, trust, to find balance, have variation, fun, joy, progress, to be heard, to be seen, self-express, experience peace…to name a few.
And the question is…
Who fulfills these desires and what does it look like?
On sexual desire.
Is it sex?
Biology sometimes makes it a fuck-all complexity—it’s relentless and I feel compelled to act.
Yet, if I sit in this being —patiently lean into my noticing — I become aware of the ways I can direct the ‘drive’ towards a more meaningful pursuit for myself.
My attention and focus is extraordinary and yet also limited; finite. I’m used to giving it away and sometimes in the pursuit of a sexual desire.
Anyone else feel the same?
And if I pay closer attention…
Sex is a strategy. It’s not a desire. And it’s not always a solution.
Sex can be powerful with clarity and intention. And it can be disabling with disillusionment about what it is actually fulfilling or filling.
To be unobstructed is to inquire.
There are many alternatives and sometimes it really does feel easier to act on the impulse to use sex as a strategy to fill a sense of incompleteness.
I want and I want it now (ok, Veruca Salt).
Reading, meditation, movement, creative writing, art, dancing, exercise, music, being fully present here and now —we all have our own flavors of what we’d like to explore and develop. These are a few of my personal favorite alternatives.