At 19 I fell in love with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. She also wrote my other favorite, The Fountainhead, in which one of her characters, at the end of his journey, beaten and undone says the thing I have never forgotten:
"It is a big responsibility to want something. Not like to get my name in the papers or sleep with some woman, but to really want something."
Today the quote is returning like a roller coaster on its track, round and round and round. I'm thinking about due process, let's call it. Due process of desire.
I want things passionately. I have been known to sink my teeth into a desire like a dog on a bone, and shake it into submission. But in the course of my life, my wanter has been in varying degrees of malfunction. At some point, I repressed my desires to the point of not knowing what they were. Then I went looking for them. Found them. Didn't know what to do with them. So I started a personal campaign. How do I dance with these things?
What trips me up is the heat of my desire. Have you ever noticed that when you really really really really want something, goddammit, somehow you just have to wait a teeny bit longer than you thought you should? You really really really really want a job. You show that to the people hiring, and they're like, whooee what's up with Desperado over there? She's a little too clingy to fit our company. Or the guy (or woman) you think is dreamy. Come on too strong, showing the weight of what you want and kiss that dream goodbye.
It occurs to me that that measuring act of emotional balance around a desire is part of the responsibility of wanting. You can't just throw your passion or drive into someone's lap and expect them to sort it out. You have to measure it.
This points to two things: 1) detachment 2) patience
WHAT?? LET GO OF WHAT I WANT?? BUT I WANT IT!! WAAAII-IITT? I HAVE TO WAIT??
Remind you of any two-year-olds in your life? It reminds me of me and I'm 36.
Desire unleashes all these powerful, empowering emotions, and sometimes it's more than I can muster to chill out and let it follow its due process...It's a wave. It'll accumulate, rise and crash on my shore, then recede. (Ahh, can you hear the tape from my quiet place saying, "breathe"?)
...Now that I'm all Zenned out, that concept, due process, or unfolding, is a kinder one that "responsibility." I'm going to go with that one. But thanks, Ayn Rand, for getting me there.
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I stumbled across your blog after browsing the latest happenings at backfencepdx..
ReplyDelete..and read all the way back to this post.
When I got here, I realized this post was the reason I spent (a ridiculous amount of) time on the internet today.
See, I woke up smiling on Sunday after spending some PG-13 time with an old friend on Saturday night. Let me repeat myself: Woke. Up. Smiling.
And I've trying to zone out and NOT text him because normal me would DEFINITELY text him, but I'm trying to just be cool and it's really hard.
So now I'm going to zone in on that ocean imagery and just feel it and if I get too close to texting, I'll just throw my phone across the fucking room.
Hi Kates,
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading all the way back to last year. S'a lot of reading. Must have been SOME PG-13 time. :) Hope your phone made it through the night unscathed.
Pema