Do you dare to meet your heart's longing?

Reflection of "To Shake the Sleeping Self," by Jedediah Jenkins.

This book handed me a revelation, or rather a recollection. The reason I love stories of adventure, of creating adventures in my life, is because the act of riding a bike for thousands of miles, or running up mountains, or walking across the country, is the act of creating frames for our mirror. The mirror that we stand in front of, rather than handing over to someone else, and ask ourselves to answer the question: "What do you see?" These acts of engaging purposefully with challenge force us to face ourselves, to witness ourselves, to see ourselves. When we are finally willing and able to look at ourselves, we look at others differently as well. We see our humanity, and their own, and how they are inextricably connected.

I find as of late, I am unwilling to face my own mirror, terrified of the reflection I do not recognize. And so, I run from it into the books of other's adventures hoping they will tell me what I need to know and learn so I do not have to do the hard work of learning it myself. It's much easier to sit in the corner of the room, under the blankets, and call it learning than it is to practice, to test, to get scraped up in the true process of learning. For the lessons that truly matter are only real and true once they live in our bodies and are sewn into our skin to become the fabric of our being.

I've been very "heady" the last few years of my life. By that I mean I have been living mostly in my head. I can talk about grief, joy, mental health, etc., but I do not talk from those places. I refuse to let myself go to those places, and yet I revel in the beauty of courage and vulnerability and connection when I hear and read others go to those places. Perhaps that is why I read these books, because they are an ode to those places we go when the world cracks us open or stretches us wide in joy. When we get so deeply entrenched into our bodies that we remember that is our purest form.

This book handed me a mirror, a reminder that a life lived vicariously through others is not a life that I want to live. A life lived in the hollow hall of my head is not a life I want to live. When I look in the mirror I don't want to see sunken eyes glazed over, skin shallow from lack of sun and sweat, and a body resigned to the chair in front of the screen. I want to see my eyes ablaze with anger, passion, skin that is stretched and dirty and covered in freckles, and a body that is ready to dance in the kitchen, climb up a mountain, or run and jump into the arms of her partner. I want to live persistently, tenaciously, sweaty and dirty and spent from my body and heart. A reminder that a life lived chasing dreams creates the question "What might be possible?" for both myself and others.

This book asks me: "Will you dare to meet your heart's longing?"