Being Irish – updated 2017
Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all!
I don’t subscribe to the ‘abiding sense of tragedy’ idea. But I, as well as many others of Irish descent, do share a great sense of irony about life. It might be because I know that bad things will happen. I know that disease will come somewhere, accidents will come somewhere, heartbreak, loneliness, betrayal, setbacks, plans delayed. All that happens in real life.
I have experienced it many times, from being blown up when I was 18 and burned on 70% of my body to my mother almost dying from a brain hemorrhage and spending 9 months in the hospital to a divorce to a family member having serious emotional and mental issues. But what family doesn’t have tragedy? I am not unique in any way in that regard.
What I think the quote is really saying is that tragedy doesn’t destroy me. I know it will come and I take it as it is given, as part of life. I don’t like it, I do my best to avoid it, but I know I ultimately can’t, just as I can’t avoid the ultimate step in life, the end of it.
The great thing about knowing this is that it allows me to face reality head on. I am not afraid of it because I am familiar with it. It’s not exactly a friend, but it is an acquaintance I am on speaking terms with. And as a result I can go about my business with my other friends and acquaintances; love, joy, happiness, humor and passion in confidence, knowing tragedy isn’t my only companion.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Being Irish, I have an abiding sense of tragedy which sustains me through temporary periods of joy.” – W. B. Yeats, 1865-1939, Irish Poet. Winner of the 1923 Nobel Prize for Literature