Desire

It’s hard for me to say what my current relationship to desire is: sometimes I think I’ve just woken up from the cycle of demand and I’m trying to escape it and other times I think it’s just difficult to view yourself clearly in the present.

I took the Intro to Ashtanga class a year ago.

I came to yoga with friends, Josh and Carl.

I remember saying to them shortly after I started: there has to be some kind of return on this investment. It’s not helping my body, I’m still a fall down stressful mess and I am barely able to walk. I’m sore from the time I leave class to the next week when I return. At the time, I had neglected my friends and family for my job and Carl and I hadn’t spoken in 6 months. I choose to attend yoga with Josh in an attempt to mend our relationship more than some interest in yoga. And maybe the scheduled class would force me to leave my dew once a week.

I guess coming to class every week eventually made the space I needed to see clearly through my work fog. I picked up more and more classes and they became my lifeline when work became worse. When my brother moved to Guatemala on a whim to learn Spanish, I was completely dumbfounded and in awe of his decision. It was so contrary to the set path I’d always followed. So I went to Guatemala. And then to Honduras.

I was sitting on the beach in Honduras talking to our guide, Starla. The rest of our group was frenetically combing the island for overpriced souvenirs, but Starla and I ditched the group and walked the length of the island in our bear feet and found a secluded beach. After traversing Honduras via raft, foot and zip line for 10 days, I finally voiced what had been tumbling through my head for months: “I chased what I thought I was supposed to, and then all of a sudden I realized it would never be what I wanted. I guess now i have to decide what it is i want.” 

I fear that yoga will just become my latest obsession. I’m afraid I’ve just substituted one more activity that I can perfect to a fault. I don’t know what I’m doing about my job; I don’t know what I want to do about it.

So there we go, I’ve spent most of my life furiously working towards one benchmark or another, and now I’m trying to figure out how to redefine my relationship to drive, to desire.