Geographic North & the Longitude of Longing
Discontent with the way the sound of chopping vegetables for supper was mirroring the knife-strike thoughts in my head at the end of the workday, I came across a podcast where the explorer, Ann Daniels, tells the story of the world record setting trek she made with two others in 2002 becoming the first women in recorded history to ski across both the North and South Poles. It’s a classic tale of an underdog who through the right mix of passion, perseverance, and providence finds themselves overcoming the most unlikely and impossible circumstances.
The thing that makes Ann's story so compelling to me isn't how she went on to set a world record, or how she decided what amount of frostbite per toe made sense to live with, it's the part of the story where we get to see how the desires that live in our hearts-beyond-our-hearts, our deepest longings, will co-create with the humble-bumble of our human efforts to bring our dreams alive in every realm. Ann doesn’t make explicit mention of this in her telling, but by the end, it’s all I could hear.
It turns out, the North Pole is not marked by a red and white striped pole that sits between Santa’s house and the reindeer barn, it’s kind of just this conceptual location that hovers over the north part of the planet where enormous pieces of ice float around the ocean in that general vicinity. It’s a set of coordinates dancing across surface of whatever water or ice happens to be underneath it at any given moment. The North Pole is two concepts really, the magnetic north pole and the geographic/true north pole, and if you're into the deep scientific details of such things, you will need to find a different article - they are not hard to find - but if you’re interested in an expedition across the rugged terrain of the inner workings of my mind, then let us mush on.
The North Pole place that Ann set out to find is this moveable point where the longitudinal meridians converge in the north part of the planet. For just a moment, let's think about this like a cup (the Earth) full of ice cubes (Arctic glaciers) floating in your favorite beverage (the ocean). The center of your cup (or the Geographic North Pole) is always the center of your cup, and no matter how you turn that cup the location or coordinates of that center doesn't change. However, the location of the center of the ice cubes floating around within the cup is constantly changing because the motion of the cup (the Earth) creates the motion of the beverage (the ocean), and the ice cubes (Arctic ice & glaciers) are floating in reaction to all that movement.
So when Ann and her team were skiing around up there, or swimming through open water, they weren't looking for the “Welcome to the North Pole,” billboard to plant their flag next to, they were trying to find the geographic coordinates on an earthscape that's in constant motion. Sometimes they'd go to sleep at night (in a frozen sleeping bag just straight up on the iceberg) in one place in relationship to the coordinates of the Geographic Pole, only to wake up much further away from it than when they went to sleep.
Most of us can't relate to setting a world record, or trying to find rest in a frozen sleeping bag unrolled atop a free-floating glacier, but most of us can relate to traversing an ever-changing landscape with nothing but the abstract coordinates of where our deepest longing and soul purpose meet up.
On their last day of the expedition Ann's team is only a few hours away from needing to meet their helicopter, the very last ride out of the arctic before winter, and they are still far from the coordinates they've been chasing. Exhausted, disappointed, and unsure whether to keep moving towards Geographic North or their ride home, they pause. As they stop on the ice to get their bearings and likely admit defeat, everything shifts. The Earth shifts, the ocean shifts, and the ice shifts so that suddenly the destination they have spent months chasing under some of the harshest conditions on this planet starts rushing towards them. All they needed to do - all they could do - was to watch it arrive, plant the flag, snap the photos, and celebrate!
We all come into this world with an impossible mission, allowed to take only what we can carry in our hearts, forced to add layers and layers of protection to survive as we go, and still the elements are so harsh that we end up losing pieces of ourselves along the way. We've all been lost and defeated and exhausted-beyond-our-bones on our quest towards fulfillment, manifestation, or understanding.
The coordinates of soul-longing don’t change greatly during a single lifetime, but the landscape of the human experience we travel is constantly changing the variables of our momentary desires. The expectations we form as we're taught to name it and claim it or get crystal clear on the specifics to be able to visualize and manifest with exactitude often becomes less and less about our actual desire, and more and more about quieting our fears of scarcity. There are seasons where the harsh conditions of life leave us disoriented and believing that our North Pole goal is a fixed point on a piece of land instead of a conceptual location unattached to the landscape.
Somewhere within every human spirit a compass magnetized to their Geographic North hides in plain sight, buried deep within our longing. Passion points the way, perseverance pushes us beyond our edges, and providence provides a path. It is this co-creation between our efforts in this realm and the work of the self-beyond-ourself in other realms that will create an environment where it is possible for us and our deepest longings to begin rushing towards each other. At that point, all we we will need to do - all we will be able to do - is watch it arrive, plant our flags, and celebrate!
How to eat a mango
No matter how much mango you’ve had before, and no matter how well you’re typically able to guess which ones will be sweet and which ones will be tart, you’ve never had this one before. If you let them, her nuances can arrive like an epiphany. Don’t ruin your own surprise party.
It can happen fast or slow, or a little of both by the end, so it’s good to start with an understanding of your own appetite and digestion. Turning your gaze inward, breathe deeply into your belly to center yourself. Distribute your body weight evenly beneath you. Soften your neck, shoulders, and knees. It’s normal to be unsure about whether you’re feeling anxiety or anticipation, so just keep breathing and continue at a pace that allows you to stay attuned to not only your own signals, but also the signals of your beloved mango.
Turning your gaze outward, cradle her in your non-dominant hand and caress her smooth skin. When she’s ready the stem will release with light to medium pressure. If there is no immediate release, continue holding gently without applying pressure. It might feel like it’s taking longer than you’d prefer, but you won’t actually have to wait very long to find out whether or not this is the right moment to proceed. Either way, your attentive presence will soften things. Ripeness has its own timeline, and everything ripens more quickly when you stay close enough to breathe together.
Even at peak ripeness, your mango might prefer to have some assistance undressing. There is no one right approach to this, so ask and follow her lead when it comes to how delicately to pull at her outerwear. Scrape teeth against skin. Sink into flesh all the way to the pit, leave nothing untouched. Slurp. Squish. Suck. Slide. Things are gonna get juicy - they’re supposed to - so don’t be afraid to let it drip from your mouth, your chin, your neck, fingers, arms, elbows, belly, legs, toes, little rivulets like prayers, tributaries of thanksgiving. There will be a point when neither of you can identify yourselves as animal, vegetable, mineral, ethereal, just stay attuned long enough to know you’re tumbling together.
When it’s over, satisfaction comes paradoxically. One will want eye contact; one will want sleep. One is brimming with words; one is rendered mute. One wants to get-up-clean-up; one wants to linger. This is normal. One has been supplied; one has been emptied. Euphoria allows us to happily hold the tension between complete satisfaction and the insatiable yearn for more.
Every bite is a whole feast when you eat what you love.
Wear the Pink Socks
“But they don’t match.” I heard it again, “Wear the pink socks.” The Voice is both audible and inaudible. It’s something more than a thought, its origins are lower in my body, but also somehow outside of my body. There is sensation and texture, a weight to it that is different from my usual internal chatter. Underneath a long hem and tall boots, socks are purely functional today, so I shrug and on they go. It won’t be until much later that I realize the sock instructions have nothing to do with me needing to wear a particular color and everything to do with the hydrostatic testing of my intuitive pipes.
“I want you to tell me five colors you see in the picture on the wall.” I’m cresting the crescendo of a panic attack in the fetal position on the floor of her office when my therapist interrupts with that request. In the moment I hate her and the picture on the wall and everything trying to come in between me and the false comfort of this despair. I know panic, I know anxiety, I know fight or flight, I know darkness, hopelessness, and depression intimately. The stories I tell her and myself about why I will never stop feeling this way have worn deep grooves in my neural pathways and nervous system. The pipes have ruptured, the leakage is a toxic mess. I will have to dig up the foundation and tear through bearing walls to do this repair.
“Become Raven.” Crumpled in despair on the floor of The Giant’s tent she is locked within, awaiting her demise as the main course for his supper, The Woman hears A Voice. It is both audible and inaudible. It comes from both inside and outside of her. It has texture, and a weight to it that is different than her usual internal chatter. Become Raven? But she’s a woman, how could she possibly become anything other than that what she is, and why would she even want to? “Become Raven,” The Voice says. Whether she looks up out of exasperation or interest in such a suggestion we can’t be sure, but she uncurls her body from the fetal spiral of despair to see a pair of raven wings hanging from the top rafter of her prison. She knows to listen to This Voice differently than her usual internal chatter, so in her wild desire to escape she becomes blind to anything that is not Raven wing.
“Green, brown, orange, yellow, red.” I give her five colors, but they are not from the picture on the wall, they’re from the rug on the floor. I don’t have to uncurl my limbs from my fetal spiral of despair to see the rug like I would have to do to see the picture on the wall. I will do what she says, but only if I can keep myself blind to any other perspective but my own. “Good,” my therapist says. “This is stupid. Why do I pay her for this?” I think to myself. I’m so annoyed that I’ve lost the momentum of the attempted escape into the luxury of my own well-deserved tantrum that I don’t even notice my body unfurling and stretching out as I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. She asks, “What do you feel now?” I say, “Like I can breathe.”
The Voice had said, “Become Raven,” and upon seeing the wings hanging above her, the meaning The Woman attaches to The Voice’s directive becomes literal. Climbing up to the top rafter of The Giant’s tent to reach the only object her literal interpretation will allow, she must pass many other pelts and animal skins hanging in The Hunter-Giant’s tent, but because her focus is so narrow these options and opportunities cannot register in her understanding. When the wings turn out to be impossibly ill-fitting, it’s not difficult to imagine how deliciously indulgent it is for her to gloat about the erroneous information she received from The Voice. Even if it means she’s still about to die a miserable death, at least she goes down being right about it. Only when she has given up all hope of ever being able to logic her way to another outcome for her fate as The Giant’s supper, does she have the internal bandwidth for a truly radical life change. Beauty can now catch her eye and surrendering to the joy of experiencing that beauty is what unlocks hope and possibility. Before she can even think to talk herself out of it, she grabs the most gorgeous fox pelt she’s ever seen and slips it over herself. It fits as if it were made for her alone. In this new skin it is not just her appearance that shifts, her sensibilities also follow suit. New options for escape become clear, and now she can dig herself out of the tent in a way that her human woman self could never have done.
The Voice didn’t really care what color my socks were. My therapist didn’t need to know what colors were in the painting, and it didn’t matter that I chose a different task out of spite. The Woman didn’t need to “Become Raven,” to change the course of her fate. The hydrostatic test of sock color was a direct answer to my pleading prayers that Something Greater Than My Human Woman Self would show up that day to help me through a difficult thing. Would I follow The Voice’s guidance that I’d requested no matter how little it made sense to me? The request from my therapist – the person I’d assigned as My Voice - to name the colors was a mechanism used to change my body posture and shift my focus from the darkness of the drain of despair to the many shades of potential and possibility around me. Would I take the action necessary to change direction, even if belligerently? The importance of the instruction to “Become Raven,” wasn’t meant to be literal, but rather something one could interpret more like, “Don’t give up. Look up.”
Unclenching from the outcomes we’re attached to because of what we think we know about where the information comes from is often the hardest part of our work. Was The Voice wrong to guide me towards socks that didn’t match? Was The Voice of my therapist wrong to direct me to such an inane question during a deeply troubling moment? Was The Voice wrong to tell The Woman to look towards Raven, or was The Voice doing its job to help move us back into alignment with Something Greater? Is it possible to not get so attached to our desperate self-righteous interpretations of the information – to our Ravens – so that we might notice all the other options available to us, the beautiful and joyous and simple solutions that are within arm’s reach?
“The Woman Who Became a Fox” is an old Siberian story that might be about freedom, despair, and finding our true nature. The essay above gives only a small taste of the depth and richness available for discovery in a full telling.
