Never underestimate the power of storytelling.

Make a morning wish

What do you want?

A very mundane question. Often marking the beginning of negotiations before an exchange of some kind.

What do you want?

Or maybe not. No exchange. Not always. In other times it is more of a billboard question looming over you. The question only a message, not expecting an answer.

What do you want?

I can want, I probably should want... something. There's always something to want, or is there not?

I recently discovered that my daily commute has a certain routine inside my own mind. For clarification: I commute alone (except for, you saw it coming, George of course) and over the years, we seemed to have developed a dance of thoughts.
I wonder who you think is leading.

First beat (a slight step to the side): leaving the house. I get settled into the morning and subtly start checking myself: am I tired, energised, at ease?
After all, we have to know what to work with. Any curve can harbour a surprise but one can only stand on solid feet or dodge with ready muscles.

Second beat (three strong steps forward): envisioning the day. Surprises or not, there is a list of tasks in my mind. A meeting here, a mail there, tasks to do.
Or more precisely: to get done. Are you looking forward to actually do them or are you looking forward to have them done?
After all, that's not the same, is it? Enjoying the actual action or the end of it. Is the journey truly the destination all along or only the means to its end?

Third beat (a sudden pause): while weighing the personal significance of a – maybe – mundane task list before coffee #1 (!):

What do you want?

Not every day but any day.
Not big, complicated, long words but four syllables.
Not threatening but waiting.

What do you want?

And what do you want? Your answers were inconsistent at best. And rather humble, I admit
Before coffee #1, I ask for peace. I hope to get to my list of tasks without interruptions or dramatic (!) surprising disruptions.
Meetings and messages which are more gardening than firefighting, if you get what I mean!

And so I go. The statements above sound like Tuesday to Thursday and not like Monday or Friday. And why?

Since What do you want? is – in this dance – more reply than question, really.

As open a question as open can go, but based on what state I am in:
On Mondays, coming from a weekend going towards a week of work; On Fridays, coming from a week of work going towards a weekend; then the questions sound bigger.
And still you try to dodge them. I find this moment when we are alone, when we haven't had a coffee and the chance to erect our walls and deflections. Now this is the moment. And you dodge it. Again and again.

And here we see the ambush. What do you have me do? I am commuting, I just entered the treadmill. That's hardly the moment to stop and turn around, is it? Hardly the moment to plan?
I give you a chance again and again.

And by doing so, your chance becomes part of the treadmill. Woven into the mundane as part of the dance. And we dance until the music stops. It was maybe Orwell's cruellest idea for the system to write the book of resistance. Any action is merely a stream ignoring pebbles.

But just because the question is wired into the system doesn't spoil its validity. It simply needs a better time on fertile soil. Not a worn-out commute in the evening, not a busy Saturday evening.

George, would you take a walk with me? What do you want?

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