THAT'S MEN:Don't test your masculinity until you grow up, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
WITH SO many guys beating their chests and inviting the IMF/EU to come outside and settle our differences like men, I’ve been thinking about the question of masculinity again.
My first brush with the cowardly, un-masculine side of my nature came on my first day at Naas CBS Primary School when Brother O’Leary picked up a very large and heavy-looking football and led 50 of us (yes, that was the pupil/teacher ratio at the time) onto the playing field. He kicked the ball into the middle of the field and told the boys to go get it. Forty-nine dashed out. I stood safely beside him and pondered my options.
I observed that the boy who had got to the ball first and picked it up was now running around the field with 48 fellows after him and gaining fast. Soon he disappeared beneath a mountain of bodies. I decided football was not for me.
I wasn’t happy with my reaction though. I recall standing there on the sideline, knowing I should have been out there in the melee because that was what you did if you were a man.
Maybe that’s why a few months later I walked over to the toughest guy in the class and thumped him. Actually, it was Brother O’Leary who rescued me from the ensuing flurry of boots and fists and who tut-tutted as he washed the blood away in the toilet.
His disapproval aside, I seem to recall feeling a lot better despite my cuts and bruises because at least I had, for that few moments, behaved like a man.
What has this to do with our “friends” in the EU and the IMF? Just this: the more humiliated we feel, the more we are likely to want to thump the Germans to help us feel better – but I would urge that if we do it, we need to act out of cold reason and not because it will make us feel like men again.
I’m not saying the day will never come when walking over and thumping the toughest boy in the schoolyard is the right thing to do. But when it comes to timing, calculation beats wounded pride in these matters. For instance, waiting until we’ve grown up might be a good move.
Because Brother O’Leary won’t be around to wash away the blood this time.
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Turning to a completely different matter, could I be desperately politically incorrect and say that I would rather have an iPad than a goat for Christmas, if it’s all the same to you?
I ordinarily wouldn’t say this but I have been emboldened by Galway poetess and diva Mags Treanor who, on her Daily Arse Kick blog (yes, that is indeed what she calls it; she gets away with it because she is a poet) recalls being given not one but three theoretical goats when she’d much rather have had something sexy like an iPhone.
Sending goats to Africa is, she concedes, hugely important and she adds: “I myself have been involved in similar projects.
“I do feel, however, that when one wishes to make generous and altruistic contributions towards improving the world we live in, that it just doesn’t sit right to say, ‘I’m making a donation, not out of my own pocket money though, I’m using the money for your gift to do it’.”
Mags and I not only share the same view regarding the relative merits of goats and Apple products as Christmas presents: we also occupy the moral high ground together since I give money to Concern every month.
I hope that what I give will be enough to buy a few goats while I play with my new toy.
Mags Treanor has not given up entirely on the goats though: she is currently knitting goats to give to hopefully grateful recipients as presents this Christmas.
Her blog, which is one of the best-written around, is at arsekick.blogspot.com
Padraig O’Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His book, Light Mind – Mindfulness for Daily Living, is published by Veritas. His mindfulness newsletter is free by e-mail