Protect Me From What I Want
Hello again world. I am again in a period of transition, which pushes me towards reflection and drives me to write. Another motivation for writing – I found a half written letter to a friend which I sadly never finished or sent. Below is an excerpt:
“PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT.
I found an old pencil today that says this. I bought it last January at the Modern Art Museum in Buffalo while I was visiting a friend. It makes me wonder about what it is that I want and whether I need, or want, protecting.
What do you think you want? I think most people would answer this question with ” I want to be happy”. Then what is happiness to you? I think happiness to me is knowing that I am doing something meaningful, making change, moving forward. But it also means connecting with other people, feeling connected to the human race and what we all go through, being connected to the rhythm of the earth.
I want many things. I want to dance at the Bitterzoet in Amsterdam again. I want to have a family and a tandem bicycle with a baby seat on the back. I want to go snorkeling in the great barrier reef. I don’t ever want to own a car. I want to learn to salsa dance. I want to be able to collect all the people I love in the same place at the same time. I want to know how to affect the changes I believe in, to know how to continuously translate the everyday into the universal, and the universal into the everyday. I want to fall in love again. I want to be emotionally and mentally without want. I want to be protected from wanting; from always wanting more from myself, from others, from the world.”
Written this past winter, this letter rambles on about the skeletons in my closet that I was untangling myself from. It “ends” (half written) with this: ‘Part of me thinks I should stay close for law school, but another part of me yearns to go far away, to escape. Because I know that I am happiest when I push myself farther outside of my comfort zone than I have before.”
And so, after a spring and summer of rebirth and revitalization, I’m moving to Vermont in less than two weeks. This is what I want right now, and I don’t need any protecting.
