This week's Independent News & Media Irish regional newspapers' column.
Michael Commane
Earlier this month an aggravated burglary took place a short three kilometres from where I live.
A woman and a man smashed the window of a house and forced a man in his 60s to go to an ATM to withdraw money. Later in the morning they made him go to a bank and withdraw a larger sum.
Fortunately, two people were arrested. Imagine the terror and trauma caused to that man.
A day hardly passes when we don’t hear about a violent act done to a person. In mid-December a 78-year-old widow, who lived on her own, was murdered in Limerick.
All crimes are heinous but when they are done to vulnerable people there is a gasp of horror from the collective national conscience.
We read it in the newspapers and see it on our television screens. But when it does not impinge on us I think it’s true to say that we easily move on to the next item of news.
When it touches us at a personal level it is a different story.
In early December I was cycling on a narrow Dublin street. It was 5.45pm. I was well lit up and it would have been impossible not to see me. A car passed me but alas it was far too close for safety and certainly for my comfort. I got a real fright so my immediate reaction was to beckon to the driver to move out. I simply waved my hand suggesting he give me more space. There was no rude gesture, nothing like that from me.
Nervously I continued cycling. Because of the heavy traffic I managed to pass the motorist, so some minutes later I spotted a car pull up beside me and the window coming down. It dawned on me what was happening. My motorist friend was not happy with me. I was expecting a roar or two, a short exchange of words and that would be it.
It was nothing like that. He launched the most aggressive and frightening tirade that I have ever experienced. He screamed at me, using violent and obscene language. I was so frightened there was no way I was going to argue with him. I tried to explain that he drove too closely to me. He was having none of it.
He so frightened me that I was stuck to the ground. Why did I simply not jump up on the footpath and cycle away at speed? The answer is that I was terrified. Does he behave like that at home?
This was small stuff in so many ways. What must it be like for people who have to live with such behaviour? How must it be for women, children, vulnerable people, who are confronted with intolerable violence on a daily basis?
Later that evening I phoned a Garda station. I got chatting to a friendly garda and explained what happened. He told me that the general public has no idea how society is changing and how violent people are becoming.
What is it about us that can make us violent? Nature of nurture?
Since that incident happened me I’ve been thinking of the words of Levin in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina: ‘We must live for something incomprehensible, for God, whom no one can know or define’.
There’s a line in Psalm 41 which reads: ‘By day the Lord will send his loving kindness.’
I like to go for that.
Goodness and kindness surely are the hallmarks of strength. We need a gentler world. There’s more to us than nastiness and violence. It should never be tolerated.
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