Why Do You Dare?

Part Six of the Women Who Dare to Be Wild series. This post is about why you dare to be your most wild, authentic self. We will look at what motivates your actions and where motivation originates. By the end, you will be asking yourself, “What is this intense desire to be and do in the world? And how can I follow desire to enrich my life?”

As we strip away what is not sincere about your motives, ravage through the roadblocks society uses to control you, and remember truths about the world we inhabit, you will uncover deeper, more authentic desires.

First, I want you to ask yourself why your life is how it is right now? Look into the different areas of your life: your job, your relationships, where you live, what you do consistently, the communities which you reside, and inquire within for the reasons you are where you are. Look at your whys! I’m not asking for you to find definitive answers, just that you notice patterns, intentions, motives for what you choose to be in your life.

When we ask our whys, we are looking at what is motivating us. Motivation can be complex, but I like to think of it as external and internal drives.

External Drives – How You Are Controlled

External drives come from or are a response to things outside of ourselves, and they have been motivating us since we popped out of our mother’s vagina. These can be separated into reward and punishment, or spoken commonly as the carrot and the stick domestication.

I spoke a little about this in the third post, What Drove The Wild In You Down. I’ll attempt to explain briefly how we are motivated by these external sources. Society has many systems of authority with rules and regulations that enforce the particular order. If we obey we are rewarded, if not we are punished. Believing in these structural concepts, we give our power away to their ideas of what is valuable, what is worthy, and what is important.

Starhawk says, “Authority relieves us of the responsibility of independent action. Instead, we react in set and patterned ways.” It’s no wonder, so many of us feel powerless in our lives – powerless to change, to go for our dreams, to reclaim a better sense of self. Starhawk gives four responses to systems of punishment: compliance, rebellion, withdrawal, and manipulation. All of these respond to the rules, which confirm them to be true. We want to resist reacting to the system in ways that perpetuate them. At times though, these responses are necessary in a given moment or for a prolonged period of our lives. This is not bad; often to sustain ourselves and preserve our energy these responses are what keeps us alive.

“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” Audre Lorde

Resistance

So how do we resist society’s systems that control our lives? How do we consciously make choices that bring us closer to our best authentic lives?

We decide to open ourselves up and see another reality, create another reality. I believe we all have to build the communication sensors with our heart’s and soul’s desires, so we stay in alignment with our growth while living in a social world. We can never separate ourselves from societies influences. Who would really want to?

“Creation is the ultimate resistance.” Starhawk

The key is to understand how you fit into society, how the rules define/control your life, and check within your heart and soul to see where your place is within it or around it. This is where change has always occurred. Someone, somewhere, decided to challenge and resist a system they felt did not ring true in them: ranging from changing laws or starting a revolution, to raising a child different than the norm or sustaining oneself on something everyone else said couldn’t be done.

“The opposite of negative passive thinking is creative curious doing.”

So creating is the secret to living an authentic life. But not just any ‘ol creating, creation that stems from our deepest self, our truest desires. A way of living that leads us in the directions we choose to embark on, down paths that ring true to our own soul’s journey.

Internal Motivators & Drives — Allowing Desire A Seat At The Table

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.” Pascal

I believe internal motivators stem from our desires. Desire to feel alive, desire to experience something deeply, desire to feel connected to someone or something outside of oneself, desire to feel good, desire to see the world beautifully, desire to change what you do not like about something, desire to assist the underdog, desire to grow something -a garden, a child, a business.

Joseph Campbell’s idea of what we’re seeking seems to be true: “an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” (p. 5, The Power of Myth)

I believe there is a difference between “our life” and the life we are living. The first one – “our life,” is the story of our life. This can be told differently to different people, and we can even have many stories we believe to be true about our life. This is normal, and essential in our world. We tell stories to relate, to entertain, to give us meaning. The second is the life we are living with all our tribulations, failures, dreams, feelings, and fantasies. Our life is complex; there is no possible way to explain it all in stories, let alone a single account. We are experiencing life, now, here in this moment. As soon as we speak of it, it disperses. Any attempt to describe our life is not going to be entirely correct.

Once we begin uncovering and figuring out who we are, restoring our power in our choices and our perceptions, we then can reclaim our own stories. We are the narrator, instead of the many voices in our society. The stories we tell become more authentic rather than creating a fictitious character we can’t/ don’t want to live up to. The balance between how we interpret our lives and the events that occur in them is a dance we are continually jiving to. Our lives begin to feel meaningful when this dance is authentic: our experiences of life (and the stories we tell about them) match our desires for our life. Like Joseph Campbell said above, this is when we truly begin to feel alive!

Eroticism

To better grasp your own deep desires, I would like to mention Audre Lorde’s argument, or should I say realization, that since the erotic has been devalued and oppressed, recovering it can be a source of power. I’m not talking about merely physical eroticism: sensation and pleasure, which society has shortly defined. The erotic I mention stems from the Greek word eros, which is love in all its expressions. It is the chaotic drive deep within to feel and enjoy life. Once we reclaim the more extensive definition, we can let go of the stank that comes with the dirty connotation of desire.

So how can desire and the erotic be a source of power? If power is the ability to influence or change something, then these can most definitely change your life. Christianity and religion in general have, for centuries, said what is bad and what is good, what is sinful and what is appropriate. They may be well intended, but over time these rules have controlled us: shaming us, and shrinking our lives.

When the erotic is reclaimed, we filter what stays in our lives by how we feel, not by external directives. If all of us are after a life brimming with joyful experiences, then we must learn to process our feelings within and choose experiences based on that, instead of what everyone else says will give us joy.

Dare to Follow Desire

It takes practice in learning to listen to what is calling you. I say practice because you will need the courage to go up against forces in our society: standards, obligations, and pressure from others. You will have to keep showing up, day in and day out for what makes you feel alive and what gives your life meaning. It will hurt, you will feel beaten down, you will feel lost in uncharted waters but keep going. Life is meant to be an adventure, not a simple plan you follow to “succeed” and be happy.

This is why I say “DARE” because we must utilize courage to show up for our inner desires, our soul’s inclinations, and life’s tests. Pulled and pushed by these we expand our consciousness and develop meaning in our lives. In the next post, I’ll talk about this process.

“When we deny desire, we are denying life.”

Could desire be a call from our soul? Could it be whispering to us a direction to walk where we may just find a piece to our inter-webbing puzzle of meaning? I say, why not? Why can’t this be true? I am a firm believer that however big, creative, and wonderful our lives are is directly correlated with the beliefs we have about life. Not only this but with the stories and journeys we believe are available to us.

If we find the stories, the myths, the belief structures that promote and display people discovering and listening to their inner desires, this can assist us in realizing and bringing into fruition joyous lives. They may be forgotten, hidden and buried beneath structures of control and power, but those stories are recoverable. In combination with connecting to our internal compass, our deep feelings, our drives we can live lives that genuinely feel ours.

“Your Life Opens Up, When You Do.” Patrick Simondac

There is hope that we may create a world, where we all may live our best lives. It’s not always easy, but it is fun because it living.

Check out the other posts in this series.

-Kristina