THAT'S MEN:Don't attempt to be someone you're not, writes PADRAIG O'MORAIN
I WENT FOR a walk in the Phoenix Park before writing this and, as I gazed at Áras an Uachtaráin and tried to imagine it without a Mary in it, I heard a thump-thump-thump and a sound of heavy breathing behind me.
When I turned I saw, lumbering past me, a red-faced, corpulent man in a tracksuit. He wore a bewildered look, as well he might – I suspect it had been a very long time indeed since he had last propelled himself into a run. He was now suffering and might well die.
I compared him to a man I had written about before and whom I had seen running in the worst of last year’s snow, in his shorts, as astonished stranded drivers looked on. I have seen him since and he continues to run with the enthusiasm that brought him out in a snowstorm.
It seems to me that the snowman, as I think of him, runs because he wants to, whereas Phoenix Park man was running because he was trying to be a better person than the one who had put on loads of weight and had become terribly unfit.
If Phoenix Park man had been driven only by his health, then he would have chosen a gentler route than driving himself to the brink of collapse – that’s why I believe he was driven by a desire to be a better person.
This rejection of the self in favour of some ideal individual we think we ought to be is at the root of many of our troubles, in my opinion.
That poor man huffing and puffing his way to collapse (into an armchair, I hope) is heir to all sorts of traditions which have, probably without his knowledge, sent him out pounding the pavements.
For instance, the 19th-century idea of “muscular Christianity” was based on the notion that physical fitness was necessary for moral health.
The movement caught on and led Irish landlords to sponsor cricket clubs, some of which became hurling clubs under the influence of nationalism.
And don’t you get the impression that fitness, exercise and running about the place sweating, are all seen as morally good? So by doing these things, don’t you feel you have become a morally better person than you were before you started doing them?
That’s what you’ve got to watch out for. If you are running, dieting or cutting down on the drink because it will make you superior to the person you really are then, in my opinion, the whole enterprise is doomed to fail.
Do it because it’s good for your health or because you want to. Never mind all this nonsense about becoming a better person.
Addendum: If you think you’re done with new year resolutions, hold on. Before the year goes further, resolve to clean out that drawer into which you have been stuffing things you don’t know what to do with. Here’s why:
About 70 years ago in Naples, a married woman called Rosa T wrote a letter to her lover and stuffed it into a drawer in her bedside table. There it remained during a marriage in which she and her husband, Antonio C, had five children and lots of grandchildren.
In 2002, Antonio was sorting out the drawers, as you do, when he came upon Rosa’s letter to her lover. Six decades had elapsed and Rosa argued that, in effect, time had erased her crime. Rejecting this, Antonio left and went to live with his eldest son who wasn’t too long about persuading him to return to his wife.
Since then, however, Antonio and Rosa have remained at odds over her betrayal of him in the 1940s. They have recently filed for a legal separation. Antonio will be 100 years old this year and Rosa 97.
A sad story with a lesson: stay out of your spouse’s drawers and sort out your own. Do it now, before she or he reads this article.
Padraig O'Morain (pomorain@ireland.com) is accredited as a counsellor 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 email.