It’s now well into January 2018 and while tidying I picked up a September 2016 edition of Monocle from the have-to-reads beside my bed. As I leafed through it again I was struck by how much my highlighted articles had a single theme running through them, that only now, 18 months later, makes complete sense.
At that time I was already around two years into learning Irish (in Japan!) and since then I’ve been home twice. My last trip was an overwhelming 3 month pilgrimage in Autumn last year, that was inspirational for all the reasons I had hoped, and exasperating for all the reasons I came to remember.
And since returning to Japan I’ve been unable to think about anything else.
I've always been unable to precisely articulate why I left Ireland in the first place, but being in Japan and speaking its language, its foremost cultural expression, so different from any in Europe, made me question not just why I left, but what culture I expressed with my own. Finally realising that English does not best express who I am I’ve journeyed back and forth to Ireland for the last three years, drawn to learn Gaelic and my culture—that of the Gael—and it’s only now, though, picking up this time-capsule, do I realise precisely why.
Highlighted topics centred on independent national determination (2); service with attention to detail (3); representation of values (4); respecting and making history relevant (5); belonging and service to shared goals (5), and finally; as Finbarr Bradley often emphasises, leveraging sense of place (6). In every case they express not only a desire to be better, but to do so through high standards. Unfortunately, and with few exceptions, I could hardly find a place more devoid of them than in “modern” Ireland. Despite having the landscape and culture that informs us of an accomplished and Gaelic people with soaring, independent ideals, it’s widely preferred nowadays to cast all aside and throw in our lot with what Umair Haque calls Anglonomics and accept mediocrity above all else. While writing this Joe Brolly rightly pines for sense to prevail in the CLG regarding their dealings with Sky. A recent post from Seth Godin as much as says the same thing lamenting the #racetothebase. Not forgetting Tomás Mac Síomóin’s beautifully laid out analysis, The Broken Harp.
What Ireland lacks is not to be found in foreign shores or foreign companies, but stands proudly in plain sight all over our native landscape; all the evidence of our previous high standards that gave us the likes of Grianan of Aileach, The Rock of Cashel, and virtually anything that stands in the Boyne Valley, our very own holy land. The key to utilizing it is not in its denial, but in its acceptance. It is our inheritance and it talks to us, and only us. You need only know how to listen, but then that would require high standards to begin with.