Tell You What I Want, What I Really, Really Want.

Two of my dearest friends and I had the good fortune and pleasure to spend a weekend in the mountains together recently. I have known them both for years but it was the first time they had met. It was one of those too rare 48 hours where you find yourselves feeling utterly connected to nature, to the earth, to each other and where the conversation and wine flow and souls are bared.

One friend is just a few months back from a year’s tour du monde with his family, a gap year for the three of them, his wife and daughter included. Finally we had the time together to really talk of how they as a family found their way to this year together and of the treasured moments they discovered within it.

Most striking to me was how they decided and planned this gap year. Decided on the back of a conversation about what they and their friends all really thought about various life issues, and planned by asking each other what do you really want?

What do you really want? Boy does this question stick with me.

When was the last time I had asked myself that question and answered honestly? I’m pretty good at asking but as soon as I go to reply the answer actually becomes “this is what I think is possible” or “this is what I think I should do for my career” or “this is what my friends and family want.”

It’s hard not to let our conditioning and society’s pressures answer the question for us.

What in my heart of hearts do I really want? What does my soul long for? What will satisfy the deep yearning inside of me?

I think the only way to answer this question is to do it spontaneously. So here’s what I really want, written in no particular order but with spontaneity and fervor.

I want to sleep in for a month with no reason to get up, no place to be and nothing to do.

I want to wake up every morning and gasp at the incredible and beautiful views that surround me.

I want to ease my way into the day with long cups of Earl Grey, good books and quietness.

I want to experiment with my yoga practice for hours at a time, falling, giggling, and conquering.

I want to feel space inside every part of my body and all around me.

I want to fall deeply in love in a way that feels warm and secure and crazy and passionate all at once.

I want to teach all kinds of yoga to all kinds of people and bask in the pleasure of practicing together.

I want to watch the entire collection of Star Wars movies back to back on a cold rainy day, snuggled on the most comfortable sofa in the world. Then the next day I want to do the same with all the Godfather films.

I want to blog my heart out, putting it all out there in the hope that someone feels just the same.

I want to cook beautiful fresh food and feed my body with so much prana it starts to glow.

I want to listen every day to deep silence where all I can hear is the beat of own my heart and my long slow breathing.

I want to ski so madly I can barely breathe.

I want to feel deeply, deeply connected to everything and everyone around me.

I want to feel breathless every day because I am so overwhelmed by what nature has to offer.

I want to hike to such high remote places that I become terrified and exhilarated by the power of the mountains and Mother Nature.

I want to love myself completely every single day.

For so long I have not defined what I really want. When I look at this list above it hardly seems impossible, in fact it almost seems as if the list is full of simple things.

They say good things come in threes. We were three that weekend in the mountains, one with his tour du monde to stimulate the thinking, me to think about what do I really want, and the third I’m still to mention.

As luck, or the universe would have it, the third friend in that weekend medley is one who believes in possibility. A belief that in fact means we do not know from second to second what is possible. There are possibilities out there every day that we have not even thought of.

So I write my list of what I really want with the conviction that anything and everything is possible and the belief that just because I do not know all the possibilities does not mean they could not happen.

And so as we all slide or slink into 2013, I make this my year of pleasure, prana and most importantly possibility.

And I choose to believe that all the things I really want will come true.

And I dare you, to write your own list of what you really want and to believe that it is all possible. I mean seriously, how hard can it be to spend a day watching Star Wars?

Donna Williams, (also known as Donnapranahanumanasana to her closest friends), is an Australian wannabe yogi living in Switzerland, learning and teaching yoga at the hippest studio in Geneva.  She spends her days listening to people talk about “life saving stuff” in her “very important job” for a humanitarian organization whilst harboring a secret desire to become a recluse in the Swiss alps and teach mountain people yoga.

 Like elephant journal on Facebook.

Ed: Apprentice Feingold/ Lynn Hasselberger