Please, For Once in My Life
Let me get what I want
R, do you remember when we were walking down Church Street, Nani’s Gelato in hand, and I was trying to tell you something about the new kind of sadness I had been feeling? A “very adult sadness,” I had said, or something like it. The day was grey, warm-grey, still summer — something vaguely geothermal to the pavement. Around us shaved hipsters bared their midriffs, but with an air of impatience, as though worried their tattoos would all too soon be covered again. Bicycles, as always; the bleat of a nearby car horn; gossip from a speedwalker’s mouth. Everything was already over and we were still so young. Do you remember that?
After my recent breakup I took on a new kind of sadness, one that surprised me. The sadness was this: now, at 27, and with so many failed experiments behind me, it seemed impossible for the first time to believe that my great love could truly be around the next street corner, could be anyone. I knew too much: too much about what I liked and what I didn’t like, about what I needed in a partner, and what I could do without; about the milieus and the life circumstances that might reasonably produce such a person. For the first time, in other words, I could say with a straight face that I had “high standards.” And this fact was what made me sad.
I think, in a way, I had cherished my own naïveté up until this point. The idea that any person, any stranger on the street, any fellow shopper in the grocery store could change my life — this idea had permeated my waking hours with a kind of gauzy blissfulness, a way of seeing every moment as possibly ripe. This idea had made possible a kind of presence — nearly drunken, often over-generous — which I bestowed rather indiscriminately upon the people I met, each a possible pearl in a sea of unending sociality. Looking back, I think lived those years as though my life were a book written by a lyric poet, each word carefully chosen and placed, and not a letter in excess; if something confused me, set me back on my path, it was my job to see its hidden design. If I threw myself into my life, then, with faith and diligence, the logic of each moment would eventually make itself plain, and then the logic of the whole and then I would know -- at last, and in no uncertain terms! — that no tear had been wasted, no scrape an accident, no disaster an actual loss but rather a kind of rehearsal for this, my real life, which was to begin when things revealed themselves, at the end of all this wanting.
At 27, I have come to one end of my wanting, but not through its satisfaction; I feel I have come to its end by weeding out its strange frilly promises, and by beginning again with the dirt beneath me, wanting stubbornly the life I already have.
Wanting is a funny thing. It is what drives so much of Western narrative, to be sure — from the Hero’s Journey to Kurt Vonnegut’s classic story arc, “Man in Hole.” Wanting is so instrumental to the structure of most Western narratives that it’s difficult even to imagine a story without it, its familiar ache and thrum, its anxieties, its panics, the way it so often drives one to violence, desperation. We revere wanting so much — that is, it looms so large in our collective consciousness — that sometimes, it seems that the absolute best thing that can happen to a person, is to get exactly what they want. But is this really true?
If wanting is the engine of most Western plots, getting is their extinguishment. Sometimes this extinguishment is gleeful — the quadruple wedding at the end of Shakespeare’s As You Like It — but sometimes this extinguishment threatens to spin out of its charge, a completion that encroaches upon all other aspects of life, a kind of necrotic fulfillment — as in The Great Gatsby. Sometimes, upon getting what we want, we find that we were better off in the yearning after all: its images were pristine, our imagination merciful. Wanting can happen in the mind. Getting (and perhaps this is why so few happy films show us their own aftermath) is of dirt and flesh.
But is there a way to receive something — something wonderful — without it presaging ruin? Can we get what we want, and endure all that it means? What would that look like?
To consider this, we may need ford our way through a reedy creek, as I found myself doing one blazing summer day with my friend and canoemate, C. As we twisted and turned between the banks, moving at the pace of eager amateurs, she proceeded to regale me with the tale of her latest exploits in love.
C was in love. What’s more, C was newly in love, and in a patch of love so green it seemed to shapeshift before her eyes, appearing now like adoration, now again like fear, now like obsession, now again like the shadow of the other’s obsession for her.
The object of her love had been in her life for some time. They were in a minor sports league together, and they had always had decent chemistry on the field. (“Sure, you can play well together, but I never really read into that.”) This had been the extent of their acquaintance for a period of time so long, so regular with the thrum of everyday life, that he had become a kind of friendly fixture for that context, an extension of the game itself. Then, one evening: drinks after work. Conversation, the patter absorbing and tender, hours slipping vertiginously by — three, four… five seven eight. Eight hours. Dinner, then. Dinner and a show. A show as friends… right? (C rested her paddle on the boat as a pair of dragonflies hovered by, attached to one another.)
She liked how he spoke and what he spoke about, the tenderness with which he touched on family, masculinity, art. In their conversation there was not the excitement one might have readily assumed, for two sporting friends catching up over a drink — there was rather a deep familiarity, a kinship, almost a weddedness. As though falling back into something ancient, though the thing itself had hardly begun.
Wasn’t this good? I was thrilled for my friend. Paddling up ahead, barely suppressing a happy honk, I let my joy be known. I was fully in support of this — charmed, even! Mesmerized by her great fortune, and praying for more, even more!
But C was quiet. “I’m scared,” she said finally. (The sun blazed above, whistling as though not hearing, as though just passing by, a coincidence.)
We discussed the possible sources of her fear. Perhaps he did not care for her as he seemed to. Perhaps — a notion that seemed to me utterly absurd, and I told her so — he had merely sent their astrological compatibility chart as an intellectual exercise. Perhaps the text, “I will be thinking of you all weekend,” was one meant for a friend. I’ll be thinking of you, casual sports buddy. You and that backhand! You and those cleats! E-transfer me soon! — We laughed it off together. But what else could be the cause of her sorry knot?
Perhaps she was not yet ready for another relationship. Newly single, as I was, she had been looking forward to establishing a life of her own — to casual dates, perhaps, but mostly the careful choosing of housewares, the reading by the window, the tending of close friendships. Now, with this rather bullish contender, it seemed probable that such genteel plans would not come to pass — not unless she put him off for some unknown period of time, until she herself felt satisfied with her solitude. Was this the source of her fear? She thought for a moment. “I feel annoyed by that,” she conceded, “but not afraid.”
We paddled on. The day was cloudless, the sky an upturned bucket of blue. Around us tiny frogs peered out from their reedy perches, their eyes yellow with stubbornness. We sighed.
“It’s obvious.”
“Yes,” she said.
We looked at each other nervously, each feeling what the other had come to, because she had come to it herself.
“You’re scared because this is exactly what you want. You’re scared because this is it.”
“Yes,” she said.
My friend told me that, despite the brevity of their recent escalation, she had been plagued by a feeing of fatedness — looking into his eyes had felt like looking in the eyes of a family member. There was a kinship, she insisted, both automatic and easeful, a well of unconditional positive regard so unquestioning, it frightened her. It was as though her heart and mind were fundamentally at odds, her intuition fighting her rationality. And perhaps most terrifyingly of all, we both knew her intuition would win.
This admission was of special significance to me because it came from this friend in particular. I had not known her long, but in our brief acquaintance she had already impressed me deeply with the way she lived, both hands grabbing guiltlessly onto life. As social as a planetary system, as vivacious as a comet, this friend was in the habit of bursting things into existence: dinner parties, gatherings, academic classes, political meetings, the occasional romantic dalliance. My friend C was a verb, but I also understood that her action-based life had taken root in a keen sense of taste, and its attendant disappointments with the status quo. For her to find someone worthy, then, was more than unusual — it marked one of the rare moments in which life’s offering to her could not actually be improved upon. Blinking as though at a beauty which does not resolve itself, she was being asked, for once, to receive.
I can understand how some may read this situation — as that of a lovelorn lady, delusional over a fleeting crush — but it feels worth insisting here: I believed her. My friend was not normally prone to fits of fancy; if anything, I recognized her life until this moment as carefully constructed, beam by beam, in a thoughtful matrix of intention. If she was distressed now, it wasn’t due to some intimation of madness but rather an accurate interpretation of inconvenient fact: he probably was right for her. And ready or not, he was now in her life.
When I was in high school, I was taken one year to a concert band symposium, an event wherein a well-known conductor was to give a keynote address. I had expected his address to cover the usual topics — the virtue of diligence, the value of a musical education — but instead, the speech took a rather personal turn. He spoke briefly of his wife and children, of the lovely life he had built for himself in middle age. And then he said,
I want you to cherish this moment. This moment, right here and right now. Because right now, you don’t know who your spouse is going to be. You don’t know who your kids are going to be. I know all that now, and I will always know that. But you? You don’t know yet. I want you to enjoy that.
Was this man unhappy with his wife, his children? Hardly. If anything, it was his happiness with them that occasioned the thought — he had achieved, or was in the process of achieving, what he had always wanted. In a Western narrative, this signals the story is nearing its end.
Hearing this speech for the first time, and still now, recalling it more than a decade later, I am struck by the wisdom of the band conductor’s words, and their timeliness. I had been, then as I am now, impatient for more life, for the revelations to be over and to find myself resting beside God, as it were: looking back in perfect knowledge over each fold and tear in the fabric of my life. I thought perhaps I would be comforted in knowing, finally, where I could rest my head — in the crook of whose shoulder I could lay myself, in the hollow of whose warm hand I was to fold my own.
Instead, I was being told to wait, and to enjoy the waiting. To consider the ways in which not knowing bestows upon us a sense of timelessness like an eddy in a creek, a swirl of water so separate from the rest that one can forget, temporarily, that they are headed towards extinguishment. It can be horrid not to know what you want, yes, but also incredibly fun. Harrowing, but exhilarating: this had been my life, tossing about in a sea of unknowns. Now, emerging as an individual — one with habits, histories, preferences and predilections — I feel a bit diminished by my own knowledge, as though cheated into just being one person, into just being myself. And when I get what I want, it will be, on some level, because I recognize in it the small traces of what I have already resolved myself to find.
I think there are two deaths, hiding in desire: the first, when we are able to resolve what we want, fully, into a clear image. The second, when we receive what we want. The first death is about growing up. The second death is about joy.
The first death, as in the band conductor’s speech, is the death of possibility. To know clearly what you want is also to know what you do not want, and this knowledge involves a contraction of self that cannot be reversed. We can never be restored to the innocence of believing “anything goes,” of believing we can be expansive as the universe, welcoming of all experience without judgement. Without this innocence, without imagining that one’s own life could be hiding in the eyes of any person, it is difficult to continually love the world. (Of course, in return, we receive the ability to be in the world as who we are: to use our knowledge of self to affect others, and to make interesting things happen.)
The second death, as in C’s predicament, presages the death of the self entirely. After all, to say this is it is also to admit, I have seen to the end of my life and back, and this is as good as it gets. This is as good as I want it to get. In order to recognize a person, experience or situation as the best, as being a genuine fulfillment, we must spy in some small way the limit of our own desires, the horizon where our life and our self disappear from view.
Now that I have found you, my love, what else is there to look for? What else is there to want?
I am comforted, still, by the idea that it is only in Western narrative that the fulfillment of desire brings about the end. There is a greater world, I am assured, in which joy is attendant with all of the passions of life, in which gratitude and embeddedness and the richness of living exist hand-in-hand with the funny shadow of death. Sometimes these days, I even feel like I glimpse it, existing as I do on the edge of so many narratives I was meant to fulfill. I am unmarried — to person or career or place. Unresolved and strange, I flit from passage to passage, a glitch in a cultural system that cannot fully contain it. Am I at the end of the story, or at its beginning? Is this world already over, or is it just about to begin?
Perhaps, more keenly: what is it that can accompany me in this world beyond desire?Everything is already over, but everything goes on: the shadows on the pavement, the gifts exchanged by loving neighbours. Sometimes, I want to lie myself down in the shade of forms larger than words can contain. I want to take shelter in the existence of the world, its mere existence, and say not another word about what I want.
Discussion Questions
Feel free to reflect by yourself, with loved ones, or with other readers in the comments.
In love, or in other dimensions of life, do you feel you know exactly what you want? How has that knowledge helped or hindered you?
Have you ever received exactly what you wanted — whether from another person or from the universe — and regretted wanting it in the first place? What happened?
Does joy ever make you feel sad? What do you do, when that happens?
If you liked this post, you might like this palate cleanser about Edward Cullen, this essay about wanting and never having the love of a friend, or this essay on not wanting to be married, and how weird it is to hear pop music about love. As always, here is the complete archive of past essays.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to C and her beau for letting me share their story. As I joked to you this morning, thank you for sharing your story with me, knowing I was a writer, knowing this friendship could sometimes be the literary equivalent of dating Taylor Swift. I hope you feel I have done it justice, for I genuinely believe that the artfulness of what happened to you both belongs not to human cleverness, but to something far beyond.
Yes, yes. " beginning again with the dirt beneath " Beautiful, Michelle.
This is fantastic.