Never a good idea to spend our lives in queues

Below is the Thinking Anew column in today's Irish Times

Michael Commane

In summer 1975 my parents came to Rome to visit me where I was studying at the time. At that stage I had spent a year in the city and most likely had visited many of the tourist spots. A day or two before they arrived I did a quick reconnoitre of where and what we would do and visit.

One of the first places we visited was the Colosseum. I can still remember the occasion. The ancient amphitheatre was an easy place to visit and not too many visitors about.

Fast forward 37 years and before one even gets inside the building there is a queue which seems to go on and on. Last year I was back in Rome and decided to retrace the steps of my parents’ visit. The queue to gain access to the Colosseum meant an hour-long wait. Can anyone call that a holiday or any form of recreation? And in that heat?

In early May I was working at a conference in Freising outside Munich and after the week-long event I spent a few days wandering around Germany. And again, the throngs, the crowds amazed me.

The early morning flight to Munich meant going through a crowded Dublin Airport. The Dublin Airport Authority was expecting such large crowds after the Irish Open that they texted passengers the evening before advising them to be prepared for a busy airport.

How can anyone call queuing at every corner, spending long periods of time waiting in milling crowds a holiday?

It’s usually the case that young people want to be where the action is but even then the ‘action’ does need to have its limits. No person in their right mind would want to live eternally at Dublin Airport at 06.00am. Or would they? It would be interesting to ask Edward Snowden what it’s like living at Sheremetyevo Airport in Moscow.

In tomorrow’s Gospel (Luke 10: 38 – 42) Martha berated Jesus for not reprimanding Mary for sitting back and doing nothing. She feels she has been hard done by.

It is completely understandable to empathise with her. People who sit back and take it easy can be most annoying. If there is work and activity to be done then of course it is a terrible sight to watch the schemer and dodger doing nothing.

But the case in tomorrow’s Gospel is not as simple as that. Martha is appreciating the moment and turning her attention to Jesus.

Indeed, there is something about tomorrow’s Gospel that one could easily misunderstand. It can be too easy for a certain type of people to look down their noses at the hoi polloi and ‘explain’ to them that it’s great to live the simple life, to commune with nature. There is always a danger of that kind of patronising and objectionable waffle.

But Jesus reminds us that we all have the possibility to stand back and give time to thinking about who we are, what life is about, what we are doing with our lives, how free and good we feel about ourselves. Can you do that in the hustle and bustle of a queue? Maybe you can. But from a personal point of view I find it far easier to do it sitting at home, walking in the mountains or along a river bank.

And isn’t that odd? Those activities cost so little money. On the other hand walking along the bank of a river is not adding to our GNP. In an economic world where everything has to be productive time can’t be ‘wasted’.

Maybe in some way or other tomorrow’s Gospel is telling us all to take a break from the frenetic world of consumerism. It is important never to surrender ourselves to the world of queues and 24-hour shopping. There's a lot more to living than that. And a lot more to us too.