Who do you want to become?
There’s this postcard I picked up in Amsterdam with a man and woman floating in a river—bare-shouldered with polite, disinterested faces. They seem unconcerned that the river's rushing them toward a waterfall. The dialogue printed in the air above translates to “So, what’s your story?” But what’s happening in this photo below the surface, so to speak, is not so easy to translate.
What is even happening in this photo? How would you explain your story to someone you’re meeting today for the first time?
I would love to hear your story. And until I get to hear it, here’s one interpretation. The tension in this image exposes for me how we ask new acquaintances right away what they do, as if their jobs are the whole story. There’s this inability to get below the surface with someone—to be present to not just who they are, but who they’re becoming—and that’s ultimately detrimental to my wellbeing.
Repackaged into a desire: I crave discussions with others that go below the surface to find the paradoxes and patterns below.
And the subtext of that desire? I don’t often have this conversation with myself. I find myself treading water, a little uncomfortable with the depths or the drop-offs. I bump into paradoxes I’m unprepared to unpack and prices I’m unprepared to pay.
But when I’m able to tell the story—whether that’s to my journal, during a Circle Share, or to my husband when I’m making dinner—the story’s the start. Stories mean change.
And when I’m feeling stuck, the mere possibility of change dizzies me.
“What is your relationship with change?”
My own has been...complex. I have railed at life’s inconstancies, unable to detach. Change can feel like destruction, but destruction can also obliterate fear. Change and I, we are better acquainted these days. Sometimes she lets me see that serendipitous spark of inspiration, the potential in a now-empty void.
Sometimes I can approach her with a boon. A busted pattern that needs re-weaving. And if I can wrap the right words around my desire, she’ll help me craft an intention. The mere declaration of one is a commitment to change. It is a choice: I will put energy here and not in an infinite number of other places.
An intention becomes—if I’m very lucky—a way of being. Perhaps more precisely, a way of becoming.
“What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.”
When I found the quote, I imagined Mignon writing for Vogue during the 1950s about housewife stereotypes. And when dredging this quote out of memory storage, I misremembered it. Small changes shifting the meaning entirely.
“Who I have become is the price I paid to get what I used to want.”
Where Mignon begins with a flat labeling—“what”—instead of the more curious “who,” I also converted the phrase into the first person and altered the passive “have become” into the more affirming “am.”
The original construction makes it sound as if both the desire and the changes it wrought were a thing of the past, instead of being active, living aspects of my present existence. Because they are.
Words matter.
“Which makes the essential question not so much ‘what do I want,’ but ‘who do I want to become?’”
Years after my desire for creative change inaugurates the first year-long Enrichment Project, I will have a moonlit drive with Majda where we investigate the sacred and the sacrifice.
When we desire, we own the wanting. We take accountability. We assign value. Our passion becomes sacred, and we are willing to sacrifice–time, resources, other choices–in its pursuit.
If who you are is the price you paid to get what you used to want, who do you want to become? What’s a desire where you won’t mind the journey? What wanting are you willing to own? What’s worth a sacrifice of time and energy? How would you like to grow, and what do you need to make this growth possible?
CRAFT A RADICAL RITUAL: IMAGINE IN FULL COLOR—WITH CRAYONS AND EVERY ONE OF YOUR SENSES, ACTUALLY—WHAT MIGHT BLOSSOM IF YOU NAMED THIS DESIRE OUT LOUD AND GAVE IT THE RESOURCES IT NEEDS TO GERMINATE.
In the process of naming your desire, consider what you are making sacred. Ask whether you are willing to sacrifice joyfully for it and consider your relationship with change. What’s your story and what story do you want to tell? Because by asking who you want to become, you open yourself to transformation.