Staying In "Want To" When You Don't Know "How To"
You don’t always have to know how to do something. Sometimes the magic is in staying with the desire—your want to—even when the solution isn’t clear.
I was walking on the beach with a friend and the tide had left a large pool in the sand with no connection to the ocean. There were six 18-inch baby sand-sharks swimming back and forth in the pool. Soon enough the pool would dry up and the sand-sharks would die.
My friend and I stopped for a moment and watched.
“If only we had a net,” we said because we knew they would die.
I tried to catch one of the sharks with my hands. No chance. There was no way to catch them.
And for a moment, we nearly walked away.
Why?
Because we didn’t know how to save them.
But what if we stayed anyway?
What if we just stood there, holding the want to, even without the how to?
So we stopped.
We stood by the pool and watched the sharks and let ourselves just not know how to help them. It wasn’t comfortable. We stood for a few minutes. Wanting to without knowing how to.
Suddenly, I noticed a three-foot stick stuck upright in the sand about 100 feet away.
I didn’t know what I would do with the stick but I went and got it. Then, I realized, I could put the stick in the water and when a sand-shark swam over it, I could flick it out of the water with the stick.
I waited for the first one to swim by. I flicked the stick and the sand-shark splashed out of the water and flew through the air and onto the sand. It worked!
My friend picked it up and carried it to the ocean. I flicked each of the other sand-sharks out and, one by one, my friend carried them to the ocean and they all lived.
We nearly walked away because we didn’t know how to.
But you don’t have to know how to. You just have to be willing to live in the tension of want to.
My Personal Experience With This Practice
And by the way, it isn’t always going to work—honestly—but at least you get to live in your truth instead of walking away from it. Isn’t that its own reward?
You have to be really brave to live in your want to—what you might call your “direction.”
At times, I’ve felt like a fool for living in my want to, not knowing how to and then failing.
But as a friend once told me:
“It’s not embarrassing. It’s beautiful.”
And honestly?
Even when the solution doesn’t come, at least you lived in your truth.
And that’s its own kind of reward.
A Reflection for You
Where in your life are you walking away from what you want because you don’t know how to get there?
What would change if you stayed with the want to a little longer?
👉 Leave a comment or hit reply—I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Love,
Colin
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P.P.S. 🎶 Here’s some music to accompany your thinking:
My friend Hunter Elizabeth does an amazing rendition of the Four Tops’ song “Baby I Need Your Loving.”
I love this lyric “it’s kind of like the light went off and now you’re dead set on giving me up” from “Thinking ‘Bout Love” by Wild Rivers.
I really love Taylor Swift singing and playing guitar and piano solo at NPR’s Tiny Desk. I cued it up to her song Lover. She is so smart and talented and I love the way she advocates for women, speaking of which, she also sings “If I Was A Man”.
Oh, ok, and one more. I really dig Marc Scibilia. Here is his song “Beautiful Life.”