Looking out the window at the same reality

This article appears in the Irish regional newspapers of IN&M today.

By Michael Commane
"Anois teacht an earraigh beidh an lá ’dúl ’un síneadh,
’S tar éis na Féil’ Bríde ardóidh mé mo sheol”

No, this column is not going to be about politics or the upcoming election.
Yes, Taoiseach Brian Cowen did quote these lines in his valedictory speech in Dáil Éireann last week.

Once January came my mother would sit on the top step of our stairs at home, looking out the window and waiting for the day when dad would arrive home from work in the daylight. I often sat there with her as a small boy. I must have been five or six but I can still clearly remember sitting on that step and seeing dad arrive at 16.45 and in daylight. The day it happened mum was ecstatic.

Maybe I was there every January for years upon years or maybe it was just on one occasion. I can’t tell you that.

I am back living in that house now after a gap of 43 years. And probably because of that I have been thinking of how the first years of our lives leave such an indelible mark on our souls and psyches. It scares me to think how actually ‘un-free’ we are in the lives we lead. Has it all been predetermined for us in the structure of our DNA. No, it’s not as simple as that.

Although I only spent less than a third of my life in that home nowhere else has left such a profound mark on me. I have flip-flopped from home to home. I have lived in seven different places in Ireland and have also lived in Rome, Cologne, and Berlin. The house in Dublin is what made me into what I am. Maybe in some small ways I have grown up and developed and changed but the Michael who was inside my head and body back then is the same Michael today.

So how much do we ever change? What at all happens us in our lives? I could list a plethora things that I do and they are a copybook repetition of what my mother and father did. Even down to how I lose my glasses or lock the door when leaving. Half way down the road I wonder did I turn off the light. I remember one day being out with my mum and dad and mum wondering if she had turned off the gas. We had to go back to check. Of course it was off! And I got annoyed with having to go back, thinking how ‘stupid’ my mother was.

It is probably partly due to my return to the old home that has made me ever so conscious of how we become what our parents were.

I often cannot remember what happened yesterday but I can clearly and vividly remember so much about my early years.

What has particularly engaged my mind on this topic in recent days is an incident that happened me last week. I was looking out the window of the bedroom and noted the electric cable that was outside the house. There was a light wind and the cable was moving ever so slightly. And then it dawned on me. I remember looking out at that cable, or the one that was there before it, maybe 54 years ago. I had suddenly transported myself back to that day. But back then I recall wondering what I would be doing when I was 'grown up', where would I be when I was 50. And I kept saying to myself that when I would get to 50 I would know so many things about all sorts of topics. I would no longer be so un-knowledgeable and how great it would be to know so much. I also thought about what it must mean to be really free and do whatever you want.

Funny really. I got it all so wrong. Fifty-six years later and I still know really nothing. But I am captivated with how I felt that moment 56 years ago and how I felt last week. It really was exactly the same feeling. And has anything at all changed?

That set me off thinking about life and God and the idea of a life after death. What is it all about? What is the purpose or reason for life? The only time I am really adamant about the idea of a life after death is when I visit my parents' grave. At that moment I am convinced that my parents have not been annihilated - I say they are with God in heaven.

But what exactly does that mean?

Probably the victory of life over death, the triumph of goodness over darkness, over misery and hopelessness.

In the end the good person is triumphant.

Goodness and honesty can push aside so much of the nonsense and humbug that is thrown at us from time to time from so many different quarters.

In that context it gives me courage, even in dark times, stripping away all the humbug, to say that God is good.

And just as I say that, I get scared of the clichés we use when we talk about God.

Maybe it is that the good person stays away from all those clichés, those high-sounding words, rules and regulations that when stripped to their core, have no meaning at all, just bluff and bluster to keep the little person down.

We can never get it wrong if we are attentive, gentle and kind to the little person, and the marginalised too.