Contradictions

Life is indeed a contradiction. Stuck in the often crushing structure demanded of us by society, I yearn for a freedom that is always just out of reach. I do make the connection sometimes, but it is hard-won and always fleeting. Elusive to my touch. Forgotten at the moment when the cold fist of reality drags me kicking and screaming back to where I’m meant to be. Often, I’m too tired to resist. A simple taste of calm perfection that is lost in the briefest moment in which it actually exists. It feels like it’s sitting out there somewhere between the lost and found of the great beyond. A vast ocean of potential going to waste. It is tired of waiting for me to catch up and make sense of its own importance. It’s where I would happily spend all of my time if I didn’t have responsibilities, bills to pay, and all that goes with society’s way of keeping us all in check.

The cold iron-clad sense of system pushes us into a tight corner at every given opportunity. The price we pay for living in a so-called democracy, in name but not in nature, is not of our making. True freedom remains elusive and out of reach, drowned out by the daily routine. It drains us of hope and energy that would be better spent in the pursuit of happiness, rather than mere survival. Modern life still has so much going for it and yet it seems that Blur might well have been right when they called it rubbish.

We have become fugitives in our own playground. Now, even the people who do everything they are told to are struggling too. And yet the irony appears to be lost on them. Many have ticked every box they were told would matter along the way. Education. Marriage. Mortgage. House. Kids. Pension. Settling in and settling down. For what? A slow painful march towards death. To see the banks that we bailed out put up interest rates to bring inflation down. They are grinding us into the dust. The sun setting on the shadowed ground of our hopes and dreams. Torn and ripped away. The irony. A government that should be made homeless itself living it up at the expense of the people sleeping on the streets. It beggars belief that we continue to accept this as okay. Instead, it seems that we are more shocked by anyone with the guts to challenge the status quo. The media is silent on the reality of other people’s woe. We divide ourselves along parallel lines, impotent to the corruption of power, meaning we’ve let our own precious freedom slip through our hands. We rip ourselves apart.

It’s left to the musicians, the poets, the writers, the actors, the artists, and the playwrights, to put the wind in our sails. They tell it like really is. Real stories that must be told, not made up, the punch of truth hitting is in the gut. And yes, it hurts, especially for those who made it up. We trample on the graves of our ancestors every time we dance cautiously around our bloody history. For example, the dirty sense of shame that goes hand-in-hand with the politics of the Civil War when we shot our own on the exact same spot where the 1916 signatories were executed. We don’t write about that. It’s hushed up and pushed under the carpet. And so the anger in our midst refuses to heal. The sins of the church, in bed with the state, they’re with us still in the way we roll over to authority, based on a legal system that only speaks to the rich. You have to have the money to push back in this town. Big bucks. Big shucks. A penny falls to the ground. We’ve given our freedom away, time and again. To the British. To Rome. To Europe. To the Banks. To the WHO. To our own precious selves. It’s fair to say much of it was taken, but it hasn’t stopped us from being our own worst enemy on so many occasions. We need to bite back, and fight back against our own indoctrinated indignation.

It’s a pity because we are surrounded by such beauty. It’s in our landscape, our songs, our words, and in our strength to go on. It’s with us still. Our goodness is wrapped up in the darkness we have lived. We will carry it to our graves. A collective trauma that is still waiting to be healed. Listen to the ghosts and you will hear the willowed whisper of history calling us to account. The trees are desolate and sad. No one listens anymore. Listening has walked right out the door. We’re too busy talking about and to ourselves. That’s why I don’t wait anymore. Waiting is only a ticking clock on the wall of time.

That’s why I’ve found the bravery to step away every now and again, to try, even if it led to difficult days. To not go there would be to pretend that everything is okay when it’s clearly not. I’ve learned to tread carefully in the Promised Land because I know there’s no way back once I go there. I’ve said the necessary prayers and buried much of my thought in consecrated ground. There is no limit there. Nothing to hold me back as the sun goes down. There’s always tomorrow. It reminds me of younger carefree days when anything was possible. The Pogues played on the radio as we danced across The Burren. Money didn’t matter as much when there was less responsibility.

It is here that I can wander through the forgotten corners of my mind. Here I am really me. Walking across the limestone with Prosser, Trev, Stu, and Niall, but when I turn around to look back they’re gone. A reminder of what I’ve lost along the way. The restless nature of friends and family. We say our goodbyes and get on with it, but it still troubles me. It feels like I’m running from something, rather than trying to find the answer to the riddle that I’ve set myself. I need to stand still. What is it that I am walking away from all this time? Regret? Is it the fear of losing something or someone that hasn’t happened yet? The feeling of belonging to something bigger than myself? I long for such days again when life was simple and there was never an end in sight. Is it the Catholic guilt I carry in my Protestant self? Religion has never meant much to me, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t get to point the way. It’s in us all whether we like it, or not.

Is it love?

Two worlds collide to create the infinite self. The world inside and outside. The clash of the ash. Bloodied noses. I know I have to face the doubt to find the lights of home. We all do. It’s here that we will find ourselves again, and find out who we really are as an individual and as a people. Are we a pint of porter settling on an old wooden counter, waiting for the night’s conversation to begin, the bodhran and the violin waiting to join in? I don’t like goodbyes, but sometimes they’re necessary if we’re to move on. Going back can be too painful. The gap you left behind is filled by the ghosts of someone else.

But still, hope burns brightly even on the darkest of nights. We all get to go home in the end. I know that home is the best part of me. The person I am deep inside. The person I can be when I am left to myself. Cut free of convention and expectation. It is here that I am entirely free. I exist only in spirit like the isle of Innisfree. A journey of the soul to find the essence of who we are meant to be. It’s the reason I am so restless all the time, with an innate inability to settle into the boring rhythm of routine. I am tossed and turned on a wild and angry sea. A restlessness that will only scatter and disappear with my ashes on the four winds of the sea. Lying still in the cold, wet ground was never going to be an option for me.