Tracking My Desire
From birth many of us receive heavy religious training, societal conditioning and cultural indoctrination to dissociate from our inner guidance, including our inner most desires in the name of being a “good” boy/girl, son/daughter, student, employee, citizen, etc. There have been several pivotal moments that have awakened me to the power of paying great attention to (or tracking) my desire. One day in the late spring of 2007 was one such moment. I was sitting in my office with white boards spanning the length of each wall, working on my business plans for the future. A brother of mine walked in and asked if he could erase one of my whiteboards, because he had something he wanted to share with me. Scrawled on every inch of these boards were my precious visions, projects and plans for the future. I resisted. But he was immovable. This was an intervention. And I trusted this man. I let him erase one full whiteboard, and then he turned to me and asked, “Michael, what do you want for your life? What do you desire?” Instantly I started talking about my business visions for changing the world, and he interrupted. “No,” he said, placing his hand on my heart. And in a softer voice he asked, “What does Michael want?” I inhaled and my eyes teared up. It’s a question I hadn’t asked myself in a long time. He was making a stand for me and my happiness. Having been raised in a success-oriented culture and a religious-oriented family that so seriously emphasized focusing on the future and being “responsible,” it almost felt sacrilegious to speak the truth of what I most deeply wanted just for myself. For a moment I wondered what the other people in the room would think, people who respected me for my serious mission-based business focused on bringing forth a more beautiful world. “What does Michael want for himself?” The lump in my throat gave way as I began to speak the truth of my desires. As I did, my friend wrote them on the white board, in front of me and two other allies of mine. There was something powerful about speaking my desires, seeing them writ large on the wall, and having them be witnessed by others. There was a common theme among the thing that I found myself saying: world travel. I’d spent a month in Africa the year before–my first deep travel experience abroad. It wasn’t just a dream...
Read More
