words of wisdom

An article from my brother Tom, an award winning writer, who has a weekly opinion column in the Irish News.  He regularly includes family members in his meanderings, enjoy the read!

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HERE we are, on the cusp of a new year.  It's a truism, I know, but it seems to come around more quickly every year, and the hope that comes with turning over a new leaf is tempered by the realisation that I am closer still to what writer Rabelais called "le grand peut-être" - the great perhaps.
 
It's the sense of time passing that always makes me mournful at the turn of the year.  My preference for New Year's Eve is to take to my bed early and wake up with the dirty business of passing time' done and dusted for another year.
 
When I was a teenager, I did just that.  Bed at 10, the radio on in the background, lulling me to sleep.  I was happily in the land of nod when the midnight bells were ringing out - only to be rudely awakened by my parents and siblings, who dragged me from my pit for a round of Auld Lang Syne.  
 
Let's just say I did not enter into the spirit of things.
 
Rabbie Burns may well be one of the world's great poets, but were 1 to be allowed to eradicate one song from the canon, it would be that dirge - particularly the version sung by Rod Stewart.  

​You can take your "cup o'kind-ness" and pour it down the drain, for all I care.  
 
I am now old enough to decide on my bedtime, but this year I will bow once to social pressure and stay up to midnight for the bells.
 
When we link arms and sing Auld Lang Syne, it will be in memory of a father who loved it, and family togetherness, enough to risk the ire of a teenage mutant human and drag him out of bed in the dead of night.
 
One thing I am increasingly conscious of as l age is that traditions are important, not just as markers of the year, but as reminders of our common humanity and the links to parents, grandparents and generations of family beyond the time history describes.
 
And that surely is what this time of year is about.  It's not just the Christmas story of a birth in a stable, lowing cattle and wise men travelling across the desert; it's our ancestors' elemental understanding of the passage of time.
 
The Celts were at one with the seasons, and recognised that in the depths of winter, life was stirring and the resurrection of spring was at hand.  The sun that shone over Tara, over Newgrange, over Navan Fort and over the Giant's Ring, is the sun that sustains us today.  And like ancestors, we should reverence it.
 
Many of our winter traditions find their roots in that Celtic past - holly wreaths, Yule logs, glowing candles, family gathered round the hearth.  Even though our modern world is unrecognisable from theirs, this season is proof of the old adage 'plus ça change, plus c'est le même chose'.  Yes indeed, everything alters, and everything remains the same.
 
Our basic needs are the same as any ancient Celt's; and sustaining our spirit comes best from being in touch with the living world around us, by understanding the ebb and flow of nature and by being at one with it.
 
When night closes in, we'd do well not to flood our world with the brutality of electric light but to burn a candle or two, to sit around the fire and share our stories with one another.
 
That's fanciful I know in a world dominated by mobile devices, world that is always switched on, a world where our agency has been taken away from us.  But this coming year I will do what I can to live more in the moment, and to better understand one of the greatest gifts given to us - the world around us.
 
The ancient Irish understood winter to be a time to take stock of who we are and where we are in our lives, and to look forward to the renewal which comes with spring.  
 
I know too well that the madness of the world will reassert itself once we get into January, that the things that get under my skin will once again make their presence felt.  But if I sit quietly - whiskey in hand - and listen hard enough, I can hear the spirit of my ancestors telling me that I will be better able to deal with the madness if l am better grounded.
 
I know too that if I listen hard enough, I will hear the rich bass-baritone of my father singing "Should auld acquaintance be forgot".
 
A happy and rooted new year to you all.

The megalithic passage tomb at Newgrange is lit up during the winter solstice, which marks the start of longer days and new life. Our basic needs are not so different from our ancestors who built the ancient monument.