If you don’t ask, you don’t get. –Mahatma Gandhi
Months ago, poet Mary Oliver was giving a reading at a local university. I like Mary Oliver’s work, and in some cases, I even love it. Not like I love the poetry of some other poets—okay, just one, a man who shall remain nameless lest I be entered again into The Poet Stalker Database—but even so there are phrases and moments in Mary Oliver’s poetry that Speak To Me and Me Alone. Or perhaps not Me Alone, given the hundreds of other people who showed up at her reading. I love it when poets get rock star welcomes.
My friend Donna went with me. It turns out that Donna is a big Mary Oliver fan. We sat on the second row, waiting patiently. “I want you to meet a friend of mine,” Donna said to me as we were all waiting for the reading to start, a reading delayed by Mary Oliver’s desire to wait for her friend, Coleman Barks, to arrive. “I especially want Coleman to hear my poems about my dog,” Mary Oliver said, explaining the delay and asking our forbearance. And who could blame her? Well, my lord, if my friend were Coleman Barks and I had a new dog, I’d want to wait too, I thought to myself, so off we went to meet Donna’s friend who had just arrived.
I could barely focus on what Donna was saying to me, or her friend, either. I know I’ve written many times—and very recently!—about simplicity and not owning a lot of things and the evils of rampant materialism and how things keep us from being free and who we are—but honestly, you weren’t there. You cannot know how utterly and completely perfect that woman’s scarf was for me. My life would be complete, I knew in a hot blinding instant, if that scarf were around my neck and not hers. “That scarf is so gorgeous,” I gushed, plotting how to pull one end of it, twirl her out of it like a mummy, and then run screaming up the aisle for the exit. Screw Mary Oliver and her precious Rumi translating friend. I would run like the wind with that scarf blowing behind me, out into the dark, dark night.
“Thanks,” Scarf Woman said as she backed up the tiniest bit.
Thanks? I thought. Just thanks? Not, would you like me to take it off and give it to you since you so obviously love it?
Donna offered help. “This is Chad Alice Hagen—she’s an artist. She makes hand-felted textiles. She made that scarf.”
I fingered it lovingly. “You made this?” I asked, my eyes wide. “You made this? I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
I have whole files full of nothing but business cards and postcards from artists, people whose work I have seen and loved around the world–people I have walked miles to find again in Stockholm and Helsinki and other countries that aren’t the least bit Scandinavian–and every time I pull out those files and remember those people and their 
incredible art, I give a little thanks to the universe that there are people in the world who actually wake up every single morning and make art out of the world around them, around us all.
“Yes, I made it” she said. “I’m glad you like it. It’s felted wool.”
It was my favorite colors in the world—teal and ochre and all the shades in between. It was an outlandish scarf full of wacky holes and spear-like fringe on all sides. It was magic and funky and gorgeous and fun and absolutely totally mine. Honestly, if you had been there with me, you would have said exactly the same thing. “It looks fantastic with your prematurely (wink, wink) white hair,” you would have said. And I’m pretty sure you would have said, “Here, let me distract her with a poem about mathematical equations and boiled peanuts while you make a run for it.”
“I want it,” I said.
She blinked. Donna blinked. I blinked.
“Um…well, I do sell them,” she offered, searching for the exit herself, like I do when I fly, counting the number of seats to the nearest exit, which might be behind me, so when it’s dark and smoky in the cabin, I can count my way to the 40-pound door to freedom. I swear I could see her eyeballing the number of chairs to the lobby door.
“I’d be glad to sell you one.”
“Oh,” I said. “But I really want this one, this very one. This.” I touched the end of the scarf to punctuate which very one I meant. The colors. Ah, the colors.
“Can I buy this one?” I asked, laughing, thinking why not, she can always say no. “Sure,” she said, laughing in response, reaching up to take it off.
“Really? Really? No, no, oh, no,” I said. “It looks wonderful with your outfit. Keep it on for the reading, please. Let’s just meet in the lobby afterwards and I’ll give you a check.”
It felt like an undercover drug deal. After Mary Oliver touched our deeper selves, punctuated and phrased us to greater insight with geese and memorable foxes on our journey, I met Chad Alice Hagen in the lobby and slipped her a check while she undressed, handing me her scarf. I wear it daily.
So much of life is waiting. Wondering why people don’t understand what we need and want. Not asking. Not being specific. And then being bothered when we don’t get what we want when we haven’t asked for it.
My friends laughed once when I walked into a performance evaluation with overhead slides and a clear intention: I wanted to be made a vice president of the organization. My title at the time was Assistant Under-Secretary Deputy Dog of Nothing, which is why they laughed. I was a vice 
president within the year. I was clear about what I wanted, I put it into words, and I got it. Does it always happen that way? No, but the answer matters less than the clarity of the asking. But that’s the hard part. As Mark Twain wrote, “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.”
I dare say we don’t know what we want, not really, not often, not at our truest self. We know what we’ve been taught to want, and what we should want (and certainly what we shouldn’t want and shouldn’t ask for). But what do you want—not all those other people around you, but you?
37days Do it now Challenge
As Lily Tomlin said, “I always said I wanted to be somebody when I grew up. Now I know I should have been more specific.” Asking for what you want requires one teeny tiny prerequisite: You must know what you want. This isn’t really about scarves, but about something more, isn’t it? It isn’t about accosting a talented textile artist in a poetry reading while waiting for the Rumi translator so you can hear dog poems, but it is about being specific and about putting it out in the universe: This is what I want.
It’s not that we can’t find our voice. It’s that we don’t know what to say.
Let’s give this a try. For the next twenty-four hours, be very specific. Ask for exactly what you want. Not, “I don’t care—whatever you’d like to see,” but “I’d like to see Sweeney Todd but without the blood, just with Johnny Depp,” purely as a hypothetical. See how it feels. Can you do it without feeling demanding? See how people react. Make a note of what keeps you from asking for what you want—will people laugh? Will they think you selfish? Will they say no? Find out and move on. This is more about your action than about their reaction anyway. As is most of life.
[As you can see, Mr Brilliant is quite enamored of The Scarf as well.]
My friend Donna went with me. It turns out that Donna is a big Mary Oliver fan. We sat on the second row, waiting patiently. “I want you to meet a friend of mine,” Donna said to me as we were all waiting for the reading to start, a reading delayed by Mary Oliver’s desire to wait for her friend, Coleman Barks, to arrive. “I especially want Coleman to hear my poems about my dog,” Mary Oliver said, explaining the delay and asking our forbearance. And who could blame her? Well, my lord, if my friend were Coleman Barks and I had a new dog, I’d want to wait too, I thought to myself, so off we went to meet Donna’s friend who had just arrived.
“Thanks,” Scarf Woman said as she backed up the tiniest bit.
incredible art, I give a little thanks to the universe that there are people in the world who actually wake up every single morning and make art out of the world around them, around us all.
“Um…well, I do sell them,” she offered, searching for the exit herself, like I do when I fly, counting the number of seats to the nearest exit, which might be behind me, so when it’s dark and smoky in the cabin, I can count my way to the 40-pound door to freedom. I swear I could see her eyeballing the number of chairs to the lobby door.
It felt like an undercover drug deal. After Mary Oliver touched our deeper selves, punctuated and phrased us to greater insight with geese and memorable foxes on our journey, I met Chad Alice Hagen in the lobby and slipped her a check while she undressed, handing me her scarf. I wear it daily.
president within the year. I was clear about what I wanted, I put it into words, and I got it. Does it always happen that way? No, but the answer matters less than the clarity of the asking. But that’s the hard part. As Mark Twain wrote, “I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.”
As Lily Tomlin said, “I always said I wanted to be somebody when I grew up. Now I know I should have been more specific.” Asking for what you want requires one teeny tiny prerequisite: You must know what you want. This isn’t really about scarves, but about something more, isn’t it? It isn’t about accosting a talented textile artist in a poetry reading while waiting for the Rumi translator so you can hear dog poems, but it is about being specific and about putting it out in the universe: This is what I want. 
