We need the unsinkable community spirit of the west

Sunday Tribune, 27 December

"He'll never make it. He must be mental." We watched the brown water at Kiltartan rise higher up the JCB's wheels. "Seriously, he's mental."
The stinking river, tainted by slurry and overflowing septic tanks, flooded across the broken N18 outside Gort, turning the hard shoulder into a beige waterfall. A snapped 'Stop' sign lay semi-submerged in its foam.
The driver was hell-bent on ferrying his neighbour's home. The torrent was hell-bent on making his digger join the 'Stop' sign. It was a tense few minutes.
We started to breathe again when his tyres re-emerged and he barrelled, defiantly, up the road.
There was a lot of defiance washing around Galway last month when I visited its flood sites. People whose homes were destroyed were defying the urge to drown in their own misery. They were determined that their neighbours would do the same.
In the hinterland of Beagh, I traipsed across acres of Somme-like mud with Hugh O'Donnell. Hugh's family, including his aged mother, had to be airlifted from the farmhouse he was born in. He, too, was defiant as he led us to his sub-aquatic home: he wouldn't let his spirit sink along with his belongings. "It just proves that you're not guaranteed anything in this world," he said philosophically, as the water lapped around his window sills.
His chief concern was that his mother was safe and happy "and that's all that counts". No self pity. 'There's always someone worse off than yourself'.
Above the waterline, we could see a kettle and a picture on the wall – the flotsam of 50 years of family life on the O'Donnell farm. Memories, his wife Kathleen later told me, were attached to every fitting: even to the gate Hugh's late father had built. There were memories attached to frames as well: the only pictures Kathleen had of her mother were in the house.
"I lie awake at night and wonder if I'll ever see a picture of her again." It was not a complaint, it was a regret – and all the more poignant for it.
Everywhere we went, we heard the same philosophy flowing through the conversation: don't complain, there's always someone worse off than you.
On Ashfield Drive in Ballinasloe, Michelle Devlin showed us around her parents' home. The flood water had receded, leaving cracks in the walls. The Sacred Heart hung behind her father Eamonn. "This is our dream home for 21 years," he said. "Now it may have to be knocked down." There was no display of, justifiable, self-pity. Just a resigned sadness and an overflowing concern for others as Michelle listed the damage her neighbours had suffered. There's always somebody worse off than you: someone deserving of your sympathy even though you're up the creek yourself.
The sad stories flooded out, as did the warmth and humanity of the people we met. Neighbours' dogs were being minded, houses were being cleaned and possessions stored. The Church of Ireland chapel was offered for mass as Catholic St Michael's was under threat from the river.
There was no public/private sector divide. There was no 'them and us'. There was just 'us'.
After a year of disharmony and disturbing revelations, here was tangible proof that we are still a fundamentally decent race.
We frequently behave like idiots – and we have some terrible skeletons in the national closet – but at the core we're disarmingly kind, despite what we say about ourselves.
Our problem is that we are, collectively, mad. Freud said we're the only race "for whom psychoanalysis is of no use whatsoever". We're too contrary.
Part of this madness manifests itself in our Dysfunctional National Body Image (© Dr Kenny). We don't know how small we are. We look in the mirror and see a big nation, although we're only the same size as Manchester. Look at the first Lisbon Treaty vote when we told Europe to stuff it. Four million of us against 500 million. We're nuts.
Look at the declaration of war with France over Thierry Henry. If we could harness the energy we wasted complaining about him we could be out of this mess by next week.
This lack of objectivity has led us to expect more from the world than we are entitled to. The result has been an inflated sense of entitlement which has now driven a wedge between the public and private sectors. We've wasted a year squabbling when we should have been behaving like a community. We're not some great sovereign power. We're a small community on the west coast of Europe that occasionally punches above its weight. We're the south Galway of the EU – and there's no shame in that.
Hopefully this new year we will start acting like a community again, bear the hardships for each other and stop the interminable bickering. The defiant, unsinkable community spirit of the west has shown that we can unite to ride out any storm – despite what Freud said.
That spirit will serve us better than the one displayed by Siptu's Jack O'Connor when he talks of indefinite strikes in February. We just need to tap into it.
The west's awake – the rest of Ireland needs to start waking up too.

dkenny@tribune.ie

December 27, 2009