What Do You Want?

“Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.”
― Milan Kundera

I love when someone else orders my food, decides on the wine, picks the movie, or even tells me what they think I should wear. I’m tired of deciding things.

Being a mom and owning a business keeps my brain, and my time, gloriously full. Every moment requires choice and each choice has impact and meaning beyond just myself. On some occasions, the weight of responsibility feels like a crushing burden. While other times my obligations are wonderful and give my life purpose.

I have learned to fit my needs in the spaces between all of the beautiful and stressful things swirling around me. Most of the time, I can find a couple minutes to quietly sit in the sun and close my eyes, or lay on the ground and take a few deep breaths, or take an evening walk and steal glances into people’s windows while I pass by.

Beyond a handful of moments to myself, it’s hard to picture what I want.

Everyday I get up and long to stop worshiping in the church of productivity while I make a to do list. By most measures, I’m getting quite a bit done and having a good time doing it. Where I’m failing is in my inability to articulate a picture of the future. When I look ahead, I see only a great, heavy fog.

Lately, it’s felt worth trying to know what I hope for myself because I want to see if I can weave that together with the complicated wants and needs of someone else. Saying that, knowing that and typing that for you, dear reader, feels strange as I’d almost delightedly come to terms with the idea of myself alone. My resolve in my solitude was so strong that I even bought a twin sized bed as an insurance policy against having someone join me in it in any meaningful way.

Knowing that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in a tiny bed reminiscent of a bird cage and keeping myself at arm’s length from real intimacy and connection, what do I do? What is the next step to understanding what I want? Vaguely, I know the feelings of what I don’t want rather than coveting a clear set of circumstances, experiences or things.

The only thing I know for sure is that I want to have a good answer when someone I love, someone who actually cares to hear and understand my reply, asks “What do you want?”.