The Hours of Desire

It was a Sunday morning and I was walking along Grafton Street. The weather was cold. Wet and cold. There was a frost air that I considered confirmation that October had arrived.

There were many matters to be attended to. There was the college assignment, there was the research. There was the fact that I had not been to the gym or played sports of any kind in many months, and was hiding a few inches of winter weight under my three-quarter length black coat, soaked.

There were the credit card bills that would not be paid in full this month. There was the day that lay ahead, nine hours of work that were at best irrelevant. There were the words that had to be told to Significant Other. The dreaded words.

“I can’t see you tonight”.

And that was the worst part. I could deal with the rain and the sodden coat and the irrelevance of the work and the bills that would not be paid. It was the words. As the days go by, I find myself saying “next week will be better”, like an over-booked socialite. What happens in life, I had to wonder, when it is required of you to fulfil a number of different roles which are both demanding and important in some capacities.

Do you focus on being wonderful at work? Paying intricate attention to detail despite the fact that your salary is something even you sneer at? Do you pretend that it will all take care of itself and take in a double vodka Martini with your urban friends? Or do you believe that indeed the meaning of life is love and nestle with Significant Other and forget about the world, as those acknowledging it continue to run with scissors.

You have to think about it. But you also have to understand that there will be an end point for thinking and a beginning for deciding.

But it’s decisions that many of us in 20-something Dublin find ourselves incapable of making. We know what it is that we want. We want to be able to fund our social lives. And so we work. We want “guys nights out”, and we don’t want to have to explain it. We want to go on dinner dates, and to the theatre and to wonderful concerts and on mini-breaks to New York and Milan. We want to be educated and to take in the finest books and the broadest quality of music. We so badly want it all, and that is that.

And it was this that made me realise. I had made a decision. I had decided not to decide just yet. I would have a hamper-style life containing a little bit of everything that I loved and liked. And at some point I would decide to endorse one or two or three of the contained items, and to put the others aside. But for now, want was enough. The want alone, the desire. The desire to have it all and to maintain it all so beautifully and with elegance and poise was what made life “just fantastic” on a wet morning on Grafton Street.

There were the hours ahead. Of work. There were the hours ahead. Of explanation. There were the hours ahead. Of saying the words that one did not want at all to say. The were the hours ahead. Of desire. And it was this that allowed me to smile.