I don’t remember where I first saw this beautiful piece of writing. Probably many of you are already familiar with it, but it holds within it the wishes I have for all of us as we move into a new year, so I wanted to share it with you today.
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief or despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
— Oriah Mountain Dreamer (who now goes by Oriah)
Wishing us all the joy of self-discovery in 2011.
HAPPY, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
BEAUTIFUL:)
It is, isn’t it!
I am right there feeling every word. What a challenge and how beautifully put! Go Oriah Mountain Dreamer. Do you know more about him/her? Very insightful. Can you tell I love it?
She’s a woman who just goes by Oriah now. Apparently she went to a party and was dismayed by the shallow experience. She was taking a poetry workshop with David Whyte at the time and he’d given an exercise to begin a series of sentences with the phrases, “It doesn’t interest me,” and “I want to know,” so she got home from the party and wrote this piece. It changed her life. You should google her. She’s written several books now.