What do you want?

Today in yoga class we focused on activating the third chakra, which represents our identity and personal power. It is physically located around the solar plexus and is the root of our creative energy, ideas, and intuition. The instructor began the class by asking 'What do you want in your life?' She encouraged us not to force any answers, but to simply use the poses and energy of the class to strengthen and open the third chakra to the possibilities of this question.

This is a question I struggle with often because, paradoxically, my life is so free. I literally feel like I can/could do anything I want. I have no attachments to living in DC or any other place in the world. I don't have the responsibilities of a family rooting me to a particular place. I am going to finish my PhD but I have to attachments to staying in the field of anthropology. My family and friends are scattered around the globe, and I am fortunate to form deep friendships wherever I go, so I have no attachments to living near any particular people.

So what do I want. I don't know. I have had this unsettling feeling for a while that my life right now is too small, too routine, too centered on a narrow set of things. I'm working on a grant proposal that would fund all of my dissertation data collection, doing a lot of yoga, and involved in a new relationship. Those three things seem to take up most of my time, if not my mental energy. I don't want to say that these things are not enough, but I don't feel complete, and I think it's because my focus right now is so small and other parts of my life have fallen by the wayside.

So what do I want? I don't know. But I am feeling a strong pull to meditate and open the scope of my imagination and explore what will lead me to have more a nourishing and fulfilling life.