Oprah's Lifeclass: "What Do You Want?"

The second of seven questions that Oprah and Deepak Chopra encourage us to ask ourselves in developing a "soul profile" is "what do you want?" In order to pull out and discover what I yearn and ache for, I close my eyes to focus on the specific question and let the words and ideas surface and become my answer.

I want health. I want to find the right person, to find true love. I want to connect with someone, the person with whom I choose to spend my life, on the deepest possible level. I want that connection to be intimate, intelligent, emotional, and a connection of great friendship, empathy, understanding, and trust. I want to be changed. I want to see myself reflected in another. I want to live simply. I want to continue to travel. I want to let education be forever a significant part of my life.  I want to complete good works of writing, not necessarily to publish. I want to change people's lives by changing their days with my words. I want to help people live in greater self-awareness, happiness, and depth. I want more. I want to read more. I want to be more spiritual. I want to live to the point of tears quite literally and on a daily basis. I want to always see meaning in the small and seemingly insignificant as well as the big. I want to develop closer relationships to people I already consider close. I want to push myself to become an expert in something I love.

I do not want silence.

In order to answer these questions, I am finding it easiest to make a list, think simply, think deeply. I am afraid to lose my answer and get lost in fancy language, trying to make it sound in writing more than what it is.

"Dreamers of the Day"

"A true prophet sees others, not himself. He helps them define their own half-formed dreams, and puts himself at their service. He is not diminished as they become more." - Mary Doria Russell, Dreamers of the Day

Also from Dreamers of the Day...
"Usually the next war is being planned before the ink on the treaty is dry."

"All men dream...but not equally. Those who dream by night wake in the day to fnd that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible."

"It was not scandalous or sinful or dangerous to understand a different point of view...it was simply good manners and a more interesting way to live."

"Foreigners nearly always wish to simplify the Middle East, Agnes. They cannot tolerate to feel ignorant long enough to understand it."

"But the truth is that grammar is always interesting, always useful." - Francine Prose, from Reading Like a Writer, 43