I hadn't listened to the radio or looked at a television the day my brother rang. The morning after Christmas was all about me.
My bad cold which had sent me to bed when I should have been out at the races. My bad luck at getting a set of coat-hooks from my beloved for Christmas when what I really wanted was, well, anything but coat-hooks really. A news text alert appeared on my mobile. Something about a tidal wave. My bad mood. I didn't even look to find out where.
"I'm alright," said Brian when he rang half-an-hour later. "I'm alive." In my ignorance my first thought was, what do you want, a medal? I knew Brian was in Auroville for Christmas as part of his latest adventures in India. We had gone there together almost exactly a year before. We swam together in the sea, spent a few nights in a beach hut on stilts, sat together in the Matrimandir, a giant sphere with a magnificent white meditation room at its core. "I'm OK," he said, shock rendering his voice unfamiliar. And then he told me how that morning he had gone out to bodysurf and survived the biggest wave of his life.
In keeping with the theme of the magazine this week, this column was supposed to be about where I think I will be in 20 years, but I can't think beyond 20 minutes at the best of times. While trying to sort out our finances recently, I was asked to plan the year ahead, which I did under protest and then found that I couldn't venture into the future beyond September. It just felt wrong. I love that cliché, "sure you could be run over by a bus tomorrow" because it reminds me that even when we try and exercise it, we really have no control over this life. You could be run over by a Luas tomorrow. You could.
I used to dread going to a former boss for a chat because he always asked the same question: "Where do you see yourself in five years' time?" The truth - that I didn't see myself anywhere because I didn't view life that way - wasn't going to improve my employment prospects, so I would make up a reasonable lie.
I try not to look back either. At a party over Christmas, a girl with an all-singing-all-dancing mobile was making short videos of people and then showing the results to them straight afterwards. Why live in the moment, the girl beside me remarked drily, when you can relive what happened a few moments ago.
For some, there is no looking back. The sight of an Irish banklink card on the front page of this newspaper, a scrap of plastic among other everyday effects of the missing, was as painful to look at as the most gruesome television pictures of recent weeks. An instantly recognisable logo bringing the human tragedy, already unspeakable in its awfulness, even closer to home.
I wonder how far 27-year-old Eilis Finnegan from Ballyfermot had planned her life beyond her post-Christmas holiday in Thailand. Had she pictured herself smiling that beautiful smile as a proud mother one day, and did she think she would still be living in Dublin? Perhaps she looked into the future with certainty, or maybe her thoughts only reached as far as New Year celebrations with her boyfriend. Did she have solid ambitions kept to herself, in case sharing them, like a birthday wish revealed, meant they would never come true? In the end it didn't matter. All she ever had was the moment. It's all any of us has. A series of heartbeats from the day we are born until the day the wave comes.
It's how well we live those moments, not how well we plan for the future, that counts. It could be putting our hands in our pockets to help our brothers and our sisters in south-east Asia or the many other troubled places in the world. It could be meditating for three minutes in silence on the vulnerability of human life.
Spending our precious moments nursing past grievances and slights is an awful waste, but we do it. Highlighting the negativity of a situation when there is always good to be found, is an awful waste, but we do that too. In each moment there are choices to be made. The biggest choice is whether we want to suffer or not to suffer. Even in the bleakest of circumstances, that choice is always there.
It could be as simple as seeing beyond your superficial desire for a big romantic gesture and appreciating something as simple as being able to hang up your coat on a proper hook. Understanding, or at least trying to understand, that being here now is all we can do. We waste so much time. There is no time to waste.
Donations to the Irish Red Cross can be made on 1850-507070 and to the Irish Sri Lanka Trust Fund with account number 04970044, sort code 931160, AIB South Richmond Street, Dublin. Tomorrow night (Sunday) a specially organised Comedy Circus at Vicar Street in Dublin, hosted by Barry Murphy, will raise money for both groups, with performances from Des Bishop, Après Match, The Camembert Quarter and Ding Dong Denny O'Reilly. Tickets. €25 from Ticketmaster