Trusting the Impulse

Follow your dreams and longings to honor them as living things that demand to engage with life and not because you believe whatever you achieve or attain will bring you anything you do not already have.

I hope you enjoy this 8-minute read in your favorite cozy spot. Or let me read it to you via the audio recording at the top of the webpage.

I was recently visited by a strong urge to return to Portland. It’s been seven years since I left – or fled – depending on how I choose to tell the story. A friend of mine told me I was running away – not that it was wrong to do so – but that it meant something in me would remain unresolved. It has.

Portland – or the idea of it – has become an almost mythological presence in my life: “the one who got away”. If I had only done this or said that, I would still be there feeling more settled and fulfilled than I do now. Or at the very least facing the challenges of life together with something that feels like home.

In my imagination, I’m back in Portland holding the slender limbs of the baby alder in the marsh between my fingers, only now it’s large enough for an embrace. I’m shedding tears for all the winters and springs I’ve missed. I’m walking the neighborhoods marveling at the architecture and gardens, and fuming over all the condos and chain businesses that have sprung up between them. I’m revisiting the bridges and bike paths and cursing the traffic. I’m feeling the camaraderie with old friends and grieving how much we’ve grown in different directions and how many years have been lost that will never be recovered. An absence can never be undone. It leaves a scar of abandonment that can never be fully healed.

In this bittersweet, inescapable fantasy, I forget all the reasons I left – the gentrification, the sky-rocketing prices, my longing for rest, relief, and new opportunities. Those barriers become incidental. “True love,” I tell myself, “can – and should – conquer all obstacles.” It’s a pretty dream, but one I cannot believe with the fullness of my being. It stunts forgiveness and acceptance, and denies the complexity of who I am. There are parts of me that value adventure, growth, and a clean slate – yes – and those that value community, ease, and a solid foundation. Those are the parts that have learned, through all the times I’ve chosen to leave, how to value staying. They are the ones that remind me that what I find, given enough time, always ends up very closely resembling what I left.

But the longing, the images are so persistent and convincing, in large part because I think I know what they mean: that I will never feel whole or at peace unless I somehow resurrect and redeem the past, unless I can revisit and reconstruct the place where my life got off-track. While I’ve learned to honor anything with a strong presence in my inner world, I’ve gotten better at being skeptical about the meaning. So instead of announcing a trip and booking an Air BnB, I got quiet and curious, felt deeper and observed. And, as so often happens, the initial impulse shifted and deepened.

Fall is a time of harvest, of deepening – a time when our daily desires and concerns intermingle with echoes from a shadowy place of mysterious intent. Memories and dreams that arise may be literal, but are more likely metaphorical. They may point to a basic human need or to something more soulfully aligned with lifetimes. What surfaces is just as likely an invitation to shed as to build, as much about opening as closing. It is something that pierces the fabric of consensus reality so something more fundamental can pull through from the other side into our awareness and reckoning.

I want to know what my longings are about – why some wounds won’t heal and some dreams won’t rest. But I’m coming to accept that I don’t – and likely can’t – understand their meaning or direction with my mind. What arises demands to be lived – to experience and manifest something in the world. Discerning whether it’s an egoic desire or a soulful longing – and charting a right path – is far less important than simply engaging; moving in the direction I feel pulled – or pushed – in ways that are simple enough to provide space to explore, assess, and pivot as needed.

What’s crucial is letting that longing unfold and following its lead, while not losing touch with the part of me that understands the true goal. I follow the instinct and impulse to honor it as a living thing – as the vitality of my own amphibious nature borne of earth and spirit – and not because I believe whatever I achieve or attain will bring me anything I do not already have. I follow the longing because I’m alive, because the gift and burden of having a body is its insistence in engaging with the world. But I simultaneously recognize I am responsible for remembering that my true home, my ultimate source of sustenance and belonging, where I can return to rest and digest as all things in the world decay and fade, is beyond all the things of this world.

I reach out into the world like some strange sea creature – trawling the tides with its tentacles and then reeling itself back in to centered stillness and feasting on what’s been gathered. I trust in the abundance of life, not clinging to any particular place or person or vehicle for my gifts and longings, but as an endless succession of opportunities to manifest what I am, serve how I can, and harvest what’s given. What is honored – what is deepened and trusted in the process – is the flow of Life itself.

The longing for Portland has deepened and transformed into a longing for more community, belonging, and connection. When there’s no way to change the past, I acknowledge what it’s telling me about the present: about the mistakes I shouldn’t repeat – like taking community for granted – and the deeper needs asking to be met – like being more deeply known.

So I reach out to people I know and risk being a bit more vulnerable, more seen. I reach out to new friends through activities I’m genuinely interested in. I remind myself not to overlook all the seeds I’ve planted that won’t be there if I start over from scratch. And I remember that my ultimate friend, parent, home, and place of fulfillment is the silence within and the journey I walk between lifetimes with forces unseen.

Sometimes I’m scanning the room for the face that might be my next portal into another realm or warm body to cuddle up with on a chill night. I’m fantasizing about the next treat I can indulge in that will delight, distract, and dull my senses. I’m dreaming of the next project that will fulfill my creative drive and share inspiration. Longing and curiosity push us past the borders of fear and complacency into the land of experience and sustenance and transformation.

I never find what I’m expecting. But the experience is always valuable. It deepens my faith in being led, in not knowing, in recovery and resilience, in the often disappointing and exhausting experience of being alive, and in the sweet relief of coming back to what I’ve always been and seeing it with new eyes. We do this because that’s what it is to be human and being human is what we’re here for.

Nancy