Goodbye, Dublin

They said it never happened in Dublin.  The Tic-Tac-sized hail on Thursday afternoon was supposedly the closest they city would get to it.

But later that night, as I walked out of a friend’s flat, I was surprised to see snowflakes streaking sideways in the wind, across the amber sphere of glow cast by the streetlight.  I rummaged in my coat pocket for my phone, eager to call my friends and tell them to look out the window. 

The flakes gently landed on my face, almost instantaneously dissolving and seeping into my skin.  I had to turn my attention to dialling numbers, for it was proving difficult to accomplish through glove-encased fingers.

By the time I was ready to hit “Send”, the snow had stopped.  I looked back up at the bare streetlight, hopes of sharing my initial excitement deflated.

As I walked home, I thought about the snow.  How it had been instilled as an inconceivability and how many people had told me to not get my hopes up in waiting for it.  How it had caught me off-guard that night and filled me with excitement.  How I had tried to capture it and share it with friends, only to fall a few seconds short.  How in focussing on dialling numbers, I had myself missed most of its brief existence.

When I consider my time in Dublin on this second to last night, I wonder how many times a similar impulse to capture a brief moment prevented me from actually embracing the moment as it happened.  I thought about obsessive picture taking, and how I sometimes had to refrain myself from staring into the two square inch LCD than actually enjoying the breath-taking views in front of me.  I thought about going through museums with an ambition to read every word of information and description, yet forgetting to spend time viewing the artifact or painting itself.

While it is certainly important that I take some photos and read some history, I realized how much we often live through a constructed version of reality.  Life is full of so many amazing things and if we were to just appreciate such experiences in the moment – sans camera or videorecorder or diversions to capture the moment – we might find that such spontaneity will remain in our minds longer than a picture remains in a photo frame.

I’ve had a fantastic time in Dublin this semester.  Thanks to my friends from home and family for support.  Thanks to all the new friends I’ve made while I’ve been in Ireland.  I’m leaving happy and fulfilled.  And exhausted—thanks to my professors and end of term papers.  I’ve learned a lot about different cultures, a lot about my self.  I will be continuing my European adventures for three weeks: Rome, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris.  I’ll let you know how waking up in a hostel on Christmas morning goes…

As I turned onto my street, the snow began again, slowly at first, but building up to a lively frenzy of white flakes across the Dublin sky.  I reached for my phone, but thought better, and sat at the bottom of my front stairs to watch the flurries fall.