TO BE FOUND WANTING

The waitress asks if I want anything else--
as if I wanted what I already had,
as if I could even remember
ever having wanted.

[Note: I probably wrote this after deciding, one day, to reward myself for having gotten nothing done by going out to dinner, then realizing, as I thought over restaurant choices, that I couldn't think of anything I really wanted to eat and that it was hard to remember when last I had really strongly wanted something. At such times, I become aware of the extent to which wants have become habits. One wants to make love because someone is there to make love with, and one is supposed to want that. One wants a piece of pie because one is supposed to want it. One enjoys it (often without paying attention to it, perhaps because one is reading the funnies because one is supposed to want to read them because they are supposed to be funny) without much tasting it.

The point is not that one should be greedy or starving, but that it's a sign of life to WANT what one wants, to have some fire in one's desires. There are those who argue that desire dooms us and that all our miseries are based on desire. Perhaps, but I'm not arguing that one should be the victim of desire or slave to one's desires. I'd distinguish between that and having the ability to CREATE desire, to decide to desire something and then really want it. In sports, the coach tries to get himself and his players to really want to win.

By the way, these days, when most of us out-live any physical attractiveness we may once have had, it's a priceless ability to be able to create desire for one another. Those who destroy their families by betraying their spouses and seeking nubile lovers don't know how to create and continue to create love and desire. They look for beautiful bodies to create it for them.

As I sat in that restaurant, I realized I was failing to create desire, substituting for it stale "supposed-to-be" desires. How many marriages go stale because husband and wife feed off these "supposed-to-be's" and fail to notice -- until it seems to be too late -- that there's no life there...because they haven't been creating any.]
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Dean Blehert
Blogs:
http://deanotations.blogspot.com (short poems)
http://dearreader08.blogspot.com (essays and longer poems)
New book (Deanotations, Volume 1) available at
http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/deanotations-volume-one/4649669
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