And you were given this swiftness, not for haste

Nor chiefly that you may go where you will,

But in the rush of everything to waste,

That you may have the power of standing still-

Off any still or moving thing you say.

            -Robert Frost

The weekdays are unremarkable, and this was just another Thursday night.

The evenings that I enjoy most are the ones hastily arranged: there is little premeditation, and the contents are like dice you throw into a red plastic cup then roll onto a table in your childhood home. The resultant numbers get added together and ultimately form a microcosm of how life is lived. And if I’m looking at the trends, that’s how life will continue. A collection of haphazard Yahtzees and combinations far less evident.

I’m not good at premeditating anything other than where I’ll score my next cup of respectable coffee. The other things—the big life choices, the ones that I will need to figure out soon—all these problem sets become paralyzing when I invest any energy towards mapping a tangible and forward-looking plan. What I enjoy instead is the delicate handling of internalized pipe dreams that wouldn’t last the length of an elevator pitch. Articulating what I want to anyone including myself is rather hard. Most of my elevator journeys include awkward silences.

And even now, I know that I’m not making much sense. As my counter of uniformed service starts winding down, I know that Next Life planning must be anything other than complacent. I should be excavating the ground below me to discover opportunities resident in the lands where I’d like to settle. Intellectually I know that it would be wise to plumb my brain and determine what might foster both satisfaction and salary. But I can’t do this sort of strategizing with any sense of deliberateness. I prefer imperfect programming that comes with a Thursday night.

There is much in the world that opens up when you walk a path with fluid boundaries. Many times, it allows for the company of uninvited yet welcome possibility. Last week, I found myself occupying the south end of a dark-stained table in a dimly lit pub not far from Saint Stephen’s Green. Dublin on a weeknight. We walked through the pub’s main door sometime around 9pm and came upon the ideal table. It was the only horizontal surface that remained open, but it sat vacant due to a reserved sign. We came of course, with no plan at all, nor did we have a reservation in hand. Somehow though, the reservation card was removed for us when we walked in and nodded hello to the barman.

Joining the hum of the Dublin clientele, we found it quite easy to continue our chatter that began on Grafton Street. Drinks were dropped in front of us as we’d bypassed mundane pleasantries and launched into a more interesting existential dig. There were ideas being uprooted and tossed high into the sky for better observation. In my brain, I could suddenly recognize that each one counted as something that could be interesting once I made my career shift. The talk was so unscripted, the ideas so extemporaneous—but all the same I found each idea obvious. Somewhere an obstruction had been removed.

Since defining some future job often feels so elusive, I seized upon the creeping night and fished my pen from my purse. I scribbled down words on the back of a postcard I had just picked up at the gallery. It was fine cardstock depicting a sinking of the RMS Leinster. We had just attended the opening of a gallery exhibition, and I was one of the oddities attending in a space full of creative people with whom I enjoyed interacting. I had flown over to Dublin for this opening—very much a last-minute decision that seemed right as soon as I thought of it. In reflecting on it now, this decision-making process very much resembled the events that led me to transfer to Ireland and complete my university studies exactly 20 years go.

The pub that we sat in—right down to its side street location on a Thursday night—was perfect. There was observation about how no music played to compete with the banter, a suggestion that this place catered to older clientele. I thought about how this was the very kind of pub I preferred as a college kid seeking to hear herself think. And to hear others speak. Most habits start early in life, and we seek them because they know that they will serve us.

If I haven’t done an adequate job of framing my current dilemma at the start of this piece, then I would say now that I spend a great amount of time thinking, talking and dreaming of a military afterlife. Last week I just happened to do it a bit more productively during a sliver of presence back in Dublin. The seaside-qualifying city that serves as an adopted haven for me, and the people are always good enough to take me in and help me out of my shell. It’s the place I consistently find myself returning to, finding ease in keeping pace with the tides and good company even if I’m already fatigued by the demands of my present life.

I left Dublin once again in a blink, but even as I left and bid goodbye to city, I knew that this accidental investment yielded something in the way of a future. At the moment I still can’t be sure of what this will mean, but I’m sure that it will add up to something. The chronic inability to scrutinize my life once again feels elusive. Instead everything errs on a sensory experience that passes over the wakefulness of sight to rarely yields lucid resolution. This is why I have we trusted friends, and this is why we have sacred spaces. Without them, aimlessness would be far more rampant.

I’m not sure if anything will materialize of the notes I scribbled in a pub—at least I don’t know if the words themselves will amount to anything traceable. I don’t even know if the next road will lead me to Ireland. All I know is that split-second decisions are not so split-second after all. They are a result of the people we meet, the things we say, the places we go, and the people that we have become. Deep down I know that long ago, a fuse was lit. And I’m just waiting to see what happens.