I am so happy to be joining this challenge. I loved reading Sharon's first post, about a merchant in Jerusalem calling out to her "I have what you want!"

For years, a voice in my head called out to me "I want!" I suffered from panic attacks that I could never understand or heal from, until I began to meditate. I've found that I want less these days. Just a breath is what I want. One lovely, long, sweet breath, like the ones Sharon teaches us to notice in the first week of this challenge.

My wanting has lessened. I smile in recognition when I read this quote from Saul Bellow's book, Henderson The Rain King, which I copied down in a journal I kept in college 35 years ago. 

There was a disturbance in my heart, a voice that spoke there and said I want, I want, I want!

And I would ask "What do you want?"

But this was all it would ever tell me. It never said a thing except I want, I want, I want.

At times I would treat it like an ailing child whom you offer rhymes or candy. I would walk it, I would trot it, I would sing to it or read to it. No use. I would change it into overalls and go up on the ladder and spackle cracks in the ceiling; I would chop wood, go out and drive a tractor, work in the barn among the pigs. No no! Through fights and drunkenness and labor it went right on, in the country, in the city. No purchase, no matter how expensive, would lessen it...The demand came louder, I want, I want, I want, I want, I want! And I would cry, begging at last "Oh, tell me then. Tell me what you want!" and finally I'd say "Okay then, One of these days stupid. You wait!"