A CHILD IN IRELAND

Once again sorry for the delay between posts! Since we're doing the personal essay part of the LC in English I thought I'd post something I wrote for it. Its is by no means my best work but then again its not really my style!

GROWING UP AS A CHILD IN IRELAND

I live a rarefied existence wherein I live on a farm yet do little or no manual labour, I give advice yet hate hearing other people’s advice for me and I constantly dream of the life I want yet do nothing to push myself towards it. Such is growing up as a confused child in Ireland. I have the day-to-day routine of a sloth- generally involving watching lots of television series- and this irritates me. Human contact is a coincidence, welcomed but not invited in my lifestyle. I want for nothing yet yearn to want.

Ireland around me is changing with the recession and a new decade upon us. This is what I have been told anyway. From what I see we’re in transition: some holding onto the tendrils of the Celtic Tiger and some letting go to fall to another metaphorical platform. The fact that we as a people are coming together, knocking down those high walls we built during the boom pleases me enormously. Unfortunately there are problems.

Firstly there doesn’t seem to be a political ideal in Ireland that can get us out of this debt and worry. While England has possible hope in David Cameron and America has Barack Obama we have no one to look to for inspiration. And to be honest we’re not exactly trying very hard; we seem far too concerned in attacking anything coming from the current government with such fervour it makes me question whether we really do want an answer to this mess or whether we just enjoy the endless complaining. We’re described as a pessimistic country by some and it’s not hard to see why. Having been to America in the last six months the mood there is radically different. Even the arch Republicans are putting faith in Obama. Perhaps we need the same confidence in what the government has to say- not that I’m endorsing them but we don’t have an alternative so trashing them is counter productive.

A minor note here but the liberal in me protests. We have 500ish pupils in our school and statistics say on in eight are gay, one in fifty bisexual and yet we have only one person with the courage to come out gay in our school. It’s a mark of how little acceptance we have in Ireland. Or perhaps it’s a mark of how little acceptance teenagers have. This brings me onto my next point.

Teenagers. The media treats them akin to a grandmothers treatment of their grandchild- lecturing them when they make a mistake and yet the first to take credit when they do something right. If we really are the hope for tomorrow they should have faith in us. And yes teenagers take drugs and yes they drink but so do adults up until they die. Don’t lecture us for experimenting because as the hope of tomorrow that’s what we will have to do to make progress (I’m talking about ideas here but a drug addled government might be interesting for a while). We have a lot to live up to. The greats such as Wolfe Tone, Collins, Lemass. We certainly have the potential to do something extraordinary. The children of the 80’s managed it and while this recession is not comparable they brought us this far to an economic boom and a leap forward for Ireland.

Also teenagers are the scourge of every country with their hormones raging and their minds questioning everything they are told. This is a great thing though. I’m sure Michael Collins discovered his patriotic side during his teenage years after being dumped by his girlfriend of four months or having a row with his parents as I’m sure did Robert Emmet my ancestor who joined the United Irishmen at sixteen. This brings me to a potential problem. We are made to be so conformist that it’s hard to thrive with these new ideas. I can understand completely the need to have a restraint on us because some of the ideas that occur to us are less than savoury but it does mean with these constraints that the weak fall under and never find the courage to think differently again. They call being a teenager “the best years of your life” and with meeting our lifelong friends and discovering lust that is very possible if we weren’t so destructive with what we have. We seem to rebel purely for the sake of it, which in essence is what we need but for the most part it is over anal trivialities rather than anything life threatening. We still need guidance from family, friends and teachers if we to become the saviours of Ireland.

We also need inspiration and in these times where religion is outdated and tired we turn to our new icons, those ever-loveable breed of parasites: celebrities. Our fashion trends are decided by them and we bask in their every move, whether it’s good (a marriage to a footballer, an exclusive photo shoot of a Z list celebrity giving birth to quintuplets) or bad (a divorce from a footballer, an exclusive photo shoot of a Z list celebrity aborting quintuplets). We seem fascinated by their mundane lifestyles or their quotable philosophies originating from the backs of cereal boxes. We need an honest figure to look up to, someone who is truly inspirational, not pseudo inspirational. Unfortunately this is an impossibility because with so many people out there to admire it’s hard to focus on any one. There’s Jedward- depending on whether or not you feel the need to vomit when you see them- or Oscar nominated Saoirse Ronan or one of the Irish football team like Ronan O’Gara (I jest, I know he’s a tennis player).

We are growing up in a time of extreme change where our values are evolving beyond materialism and take-take-take. We need to evolve with these changes or we shall be left to wither and die in an idealistic world that no longer facilitates us.