This is What I Pray for, More Than Anything: The Courage to Decline

Today’s my birthday!

And on my birthday, I pray. (Which is hilarious to imagine, if you know me.)

I pray for my well-being, and I pray for bliss; I pray for fulfillment, and I pray for rapture.

I pray for meaning and I pray for pleasure; I pray for substance and I pray for intellect.

I pray that every day I’ll yearn for the world more, not less, and that every choice I make will make me cutthroat ravenous. How do I decide on a project? A path? A direction?

Savage ambition.

Do you smell it? Crave it? Need it, like a bloodthirsty wolf? And, more importantly: if you don’t, do you have the courage to let it go?

This is what I pray for, more than anything: the courage to decline. It is never easy to murder your comforts, but it is necessary. A comfortable life is an irrelevant goal; only a fool would want to live life as she pleases.

I want the fight.

It is an insult, to any human alive, to have life turn you away as if you're not worth the effort. Why bother getting in the ring if you know it’s going to be an automatic knockout?

I pray that life will keep on respecting me enough to give me the situations I need to grow—as a fighter, as a creator, as a writer, as a woman. I pray that I will not live a comfortable life, but a full one. I want a permanent license on audacity—and I don’t want there to be any take backs.

I want to take no mercy when it comes to my own fulfillment, my own satisfaction, my own legacy.

Which means that after I’m done praying?

I get to work.

Life is but one ruthless murder after another, if you’re doing it right.