You may recall that I had dinner with my intuition recently. She got me thinking about all the times I have confused impulse with intuition. Rather than meet with Impulse and risk adventures for which I was unprepared I decided to write her a letter:

Dear Impulse,

I have been thinking a lot about you. I catch glimpeses of you all time- usually from the back as I either chase after you or hang back and watch you whiz by. You have an incredible color sense. You never fail to catch my eye and make my heart skip a beat as I imagine having the courage to dress like you! 

I was going to write a letter in which I declared my need for some space and distance from you. But the more I thought I about it, the more I realized that is not exactly what I want. I am incredibly grateful to you. If not for you there are good friends I might never have approached, jobs I might never have applied for and adventures I might never have had. (Remember that time when we followed a complete stranger off a bus in the middle of nowhere? He showed us this gorgeous waterfall that no one had discovered. We got really lucky that he was a good and trustworthy person.) 

But we do need to renegotiate our relationship a little. 

You must realize that I make comittments to myself to change in some small and big ways. I want to eat less sugar. I want to take more time to do shiva nata. I want to slow down. And yet, you are not very respectful of those comittments. You start your incessant lobbying for abandoning the effort and before I know it you have pulled me away into some other activity or shoved a plate of something tempting in front of me. I imagine you mean well. You want me to have more fun. You want me to feel unconstrained. You are just being true to yourself. But I feel like I lose myself in you and that is not a good feeling. 

Here is what I need.

I need you to tell me what you want. And then... I need you to ask me what I want.or at least hold a beat while tell you what I want.  We are not always going to want the same things. And that's okay, right?  Friends don't have to want all the same things. I will respect your chocies if you respect mine. 

Can we try that and see if it works? I hope so. I still want you in my life 

with love and gratitude, 

pearl