10.6.25 // Beckoning vs. Wanting

Between beckoning and wanting.
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A calling towards versus a calling to.
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I began thinking about this after finally listening to Women Who Run With the Wolves. A friend had gifted me a copy years ago, but at the time, I wasn’t in a place to immerse myself. Then, through the voices of more powerful female friends, I reached for it again — this time in audiobook form. I devoured it, my soul desperate for the words Clarissa Pinkola Estés poured onto the page.
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And yet, what’s lingered with me months later — even after re-listens — is this idea of beckoning versus wanting.
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Clarissa describes it something like this:
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Imagine you’re waking up deep in the Dolomites. You’ve slept so well, your hair is mussed, your eyes still heavy with dreams. A growl of your stomach pulls you from the white bedding to an Italian breakfast spread: almond croissants, plump cherry tomatoes, golden honeycomb. Your choices are shaped by what’s placed before you. You are being beckoned.
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Now imagine waking with no spread awaiting you. Nothing is laid out. Instead, you ask yourself: what do I crave? Udon for breakfast? Chickpeas on toast (my favorite)? Delancy Pizza? Ben & Jerry's? With no one else defining the menu, your hunger points you inward. The answer isn’t about availability, but about intuition. That is wanting.
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Is it too simple an example? maybe. Yet it landed and revealed how beckoning narrows us, how quickly we let the available define the desirable. And it reminded me of the practice of wanting, of tuning back to the pull of intuition.
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Because there is power in knowing your wanting. In knowing, without anyone else telling you what you could like, what you actually love.