In this piece, I examine the aspect of Longing.  Longing without risk leads to a life of unrealized dreams and misplaced possibilities.  How much you want something is proportionate to the risk you are willing to take to achieve it. Risk is so different for each of us.  For one it may be hosting a dinner party, for another, a change in career. For another it is saying I love you, for someone else, it is saying I don’t.  Risk is being All-In, saying Yes!.  It is Stretching – emotionally, spiritually, physically or intellectually.  Longing is the road map that leads to Risk; it is essential.

Longing….the defenseless inner secret that frightens and emboldens, humiliates and beckons.  A lifetime’s journey living deep inside at some unknown area, set adrift in the tide, gripped and lifted by a passing hand.  Longing has its own secret destination and emergence… put into relationship leading us back, indifferent to our wills.  With its dangerous edge we are here to risk ourselves in the world.  A form of invitation to others, a rite of passage to ourselves. Pilgrims, moving through life in the blink of an eye, made real through contact.  The courageous life equal to the unceasing tide and strangely beneath all….stillness.  The destination is inside us and beyond us.  We give ourselves into vulnerability and arrival. The memory of then, the experience of now and the hardly possible just about to happen. – David Whyte