Finding Wisdom

I decided to call this blog ‘Finding Wisdom’, but more often it’s the other way around: wisdom has a habit of finding us. The first time I saw Michael Harding on TV I thought here is a man who’s brimful of it. It being the magic ingredient that comes with knowing. Michael has lived, loved and lost parts of himself along the road of life, but in doing so he has stumbled on so much more. The filter was well and truly off. I could have listened to him all day, his gentle drawl drawing me into his world. He spoke with a compassion that appears to be largely absent in modern Ireland. Instead Michael spoke of the goodness inside all of us and encouraged us to do better. That’s why people like Michael are so important. They make us feel that every little thing is going to be all right. That’s the thing about wisdom; it has a way of getting into the cracks. Quiet and unassuming, never in your face, it never needs to shout. It breathes deep in the river valleys and on the highest mountain tops and everywhere in between.   

As a young boy I loved listening to my grandfather’s stories about his time as a merchant seaman when he came to stay with us at Christmas, even if they had a habit of interrupting whatever film we happened to be watching at the time. The wisdom of my elders has always been a rich seam, the quality of having experience, knowledge and good judgment, of being wise. Like its closest cousin, common sense, it’s a rare and valuable commodity, but thankfully my mother and father were also full of it. I grew up in a house constructed with an absence of ego, anchored with a respect for those who got on with things quietly, did their best and didn’t feel the need to make a fuss to get noticed. It didn’t necessarily mean keeping your head down, just that if you were going to shout about something then you needed to be able to back it up. They were drawn to people who threw something different into the mix, football men like the Kevin Heffernan, Mick O’Dwyer and Jack Charlton, or the gentle nature of former Taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald who was about as far as one could get from the rough edges of Charles Haughey and his cronies in Fianna Fáil.

I’ve always loved listening to older people; they have so much to pass on. It might be a delicate turn of phrase or a small tale from the long and winding road of a life lived. I miss the chats I had with my father; nevertheless the lessons he taught me still sustain me. He had that canny ability of getting me to do the right thing without telling me to do it. He’d plant the seed and let it grow at its own pace. Often he would even let me think that I was the one who had come up with the idea in the first place. My father presented me with the freedom to float among the grey areas. Black and white has never been my breathing space. It’s too linear, too scientific and too bland. I prefer to live in the part of the imagination where I can throw things around before I decide what it is I want to do. It doesn’t mean I get it right all the time, God knows I’ve fucked up more than a few times along the way, but that’s life. I’ve done my best to learn from my mistakes and forgive the ones made by others and move on.

It seems today’s world is dominated by white noise and ironically here I am adding to it. Twitter. Facebook. Tik Tok. Instagram. Whatsapp. Whatever. It seems that everyone’s an expert on everything. It feels so black and white, so empty. Wear a mask. Don’t wear a mask. Vote. Don’t vote. No room for discussion. No floating in the grey areas. No in-between. No respect for alternative views. No time to think. No live and let live. I’m right. You’re wrong and that’s that. It seems that some people have lost the ability to listen to others, to way things up or to even, heaven forbid, change their mind in the rush to be right. Maybe it was always that way, maybe it’s just that the battle lines are so clearly defined now that we tend to trade in short sharp sound bites, leaving little room for the subtle art of holding an argument.

Maybe that’s why I found such solace in the words of Michael D. Higgins over the last few months, words founded on a wisdom and calmness borne out of an innate empathy, understanding, knowledge and compassion for people which filled the vacuum of lockdown. Too often politicians speak to us through a language of fear, whereas Michael D’s message was predicated on hope. John Hume had a similar way of doing things. Even on the darkest days in the North whenever I heard John speaking my gut was wrenched out of the awful darkness to the hope of a brighter future. Here was a man who was prepared to do what he felt was right to try and bring peace to the island of Ireland. He never gave up and he never gave in to the voices who said he shouldn’t be talking to whoever he wasn’t supposed to be talking to. John possessed a wisdom that refused to leave even the most immovable of stones unturned.

Thankfully wisdom isn’t limited to our elders. It’s also present in the young, old souls who spread knowing and understanding through spirit. It seems that some of them have been here before. Too often the wisdom we come into the world with gets educated out, leaving us to spend our lives desperately trying to find it again. A knowing that comes with the rush and the push and the shove of birth. Perhaps wisdom’s greatest gift is accepting that life’s pattern is different for every one of us. We dance to rhythm of our past, our environment, our influences, our upbringing, our collective history and our circumstances. Knowing that we’re different allows us to accept the difference in others. It’s the reason why I’m not you and you’ll never be me.

As I said above, wisdom has a habit of finding us. It might be the simple act of deciding to sit down beside an old person on a bus, listening to a podcast of choice, choosing a good book or watching a documentary like the recent one about the Meath herbalist and football manager Sean Boylan, the witch doctor as he is affectionately known by Dublin fans. Or even the giant skinhead on Hill 16 who put his hand on my shoulder during the early stages of Dublin’s match against Donegal in 2002 and told me to “calm down bud,” that everything was going to be alright, when I was getting upset with the referee. In my defence it was a really hot day. It can be the lyrics of a Springsteen song or the words spoken by a heroin addict on the Luas explaining the frustration of an argument he had with a friend. “I didn’t want to be in his head and he didn’t want to be in mine.” Like Michael and my parents my son Samuel is blessed with it. When I asked him what he had done in school one day, he replied, “I sat on a chair for five hours.” He was four at the time. Like so many kids Samuel likes to move and shake, sitting still is the opposite of what his spirit is telling him to do. Another time he asked his mother, “Can I bring my happiness to school?” “Only if you make sure that you bring it home at the end of the day little man!” And perhaps the most important question he ever asked me, “Can I colour outside the lines daddy?” I nearly fell over I was trying to get the “yes” out quickly. 

Wisdom connects the dots. It’s taught me to trust my gut, even if it means walking in the opposite direction to the crowd. I prefer to do my own thinking. Wisdom lies in the unconscious wrapped up in the folds of the body’s memory. It keeps us safe. It’s a step back in time, the stillness that comes with knowing, the beauty of nature cradled in the loving elbow of dew dropping onto the soft floor of a beautiful dawn. It’s the quietness, the pause; the deep in take of breath before everything begins again. It’s a quiet road winding through the countryside on its way to nowhere. It’s the quality of beauty, courage, joy, wonder, knowing and understanding followed by a forgiveness that sits easily with itself. Sometimes we have to reach out in a desperate attempt to grasp it. It’s a conversation grounded in the past, the legacy of hope that keeps the flame flickering until it catches fire again. It’s the wonder of the seasons changing and the years carrying the changing breath of a shifting spirit. Wisdom is an early winter morning carpeted with frost and the longer evenings chasing summertime. It’s the light getting thinner as it slips slowly into winter. It’s infinity. It’s a wild flower pushing its way upwards towards the blue-sky overhead. It’s Luke Kelly getting out of bed in the morning to write another brilliant song. Wisdom exists in the time and space we sometimes need to find our way home again. It’s darkness into light. It’s a whisper; a scream or a forgotten thought remembered when we’re looking out the window at the pouring rain. It’s a simple cup of coffee in the afternoon. It’s the spoonful of sugar that makes the world go round.

It brings us to the places where we can stand tall and breathe what’s left of ourselves in. For me it lives in the silence of the Burren, the electric energy on Hill 16, or a relaxed Sunday morning walk in the Phoenix Park with Samuel talking about which Harry Potter book he likes the best. I learn so much from him. It’s in the conversations I still have with my mother and father before I fall asleep. It’s a walk along the seafront listening to the waves wrestling with the shore. These places that provide the empty space we need to connect with the people and things that take us home again. It has many faces: family, friend, lover or stranger. It’s the voice of an angel busking on Grafton Street, the words surfing the melodic beat of the footfall passing by. It’s Jim Morrison on dawn’s desert highway bleeding. It’s a whisper catching on the wind and spreading its wings to fly.

It’s Mike Scott and the Waterboys doing their thing on the Atlantic seaboard. It’s a riff; a rhyme, a drum beat catching the rhythm from an ancient time, the druids and the high priests walking in line with the earth’s beating heart. Wisdom holds hands with some forgotten place. It knows much more than we ever will. It’s in our head, our heart and brings with it the little bits of everyday. It carries us out to sea and brings us back on its after thought. It echoes through the generations to carry us beyond. It’s where we go when we die. It’s the darkness just before the dawn. It’s spirit rising up and the sun going down until it reawakens in the early morn. It can found in the wildest of places. It’s the incredible beauty that comes with terrible grief of a dying thing taking its last breath before it travels to where we all go to in the end. It’s the seasons switching places before they grow, only to die again. It’s silver and gold. It’s the nectar that remains. It’s the sweet perfume teasing our nostrils. It connects us to self and everyone else. It’s why we have butterflies and bees and stories still waiting to be told. It’s the individual and it’s all of us. It’s inside and outside. It’s spirit, love and collective consciousness and the balance that is our guide.

Wisdom is the knowing that we don’t know everything and never will; that there’s always more. Wisdom is borne of experience. It knows what to say, when, how and where to say it. It’s ‘Running to Standstill’ where Bono cries without weeping, talks without speaking and screams without raising his voice. It can be a simple look, a subtle nod or a welcoming smile. I bumped into the kind of wisdom that doesn’t need words when I was working in Saudi Arabia. I was queuing up to pay for my bread and milk in the local shop close to where I lived on the outskirts of Riyadh, dressed in shorts, a tee shirt and flip flops. It was one of those beautiful warm evenings after the sun had gone down. There I was waiting patiently beside an elderly Saudi man. He was looking me up and down, his eyes locked on my silver earring, when our eyes met, and we smiled before we burst out laughing together. The wisdom of acceptance and connection holding out its welcoming arms. I also felt it from the Pakistani and Bangladeshi taxi drivers as we bonded over the international language of cricket. From there we would go on to share our thoughts and feelings about missing our families back home. I learnt so much from them. They had a faith in whatever was coming that went way beyond words. Often when I stepped out of the taxi I felt incredibly rested and calm as if my worries had been packed away. They too felt the longing to be home on the Hindu Kush or the crowded streets of Pesharwar as much as I wanted to be back with Samuel. There’s was an inner wisdom that kept me safe until thankfully it was time to go home for good.

Wisdom is indeed a wonderful thing.