Out of hiding…

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about hiding. Or, perhaps more correctly, about why I should make sure that I’m not always doing it.

 

Yet, it’s easy to hide. To find something safe and somewhat comfortable and even if it’s not where you actually want to be – you know that where you want to get to, means being out there in the big bad world.

Maybe, you don’t even know where you want to get to. But you know that too means casting off the safety net and taking steps into the unknown.

Through my work and through my hobbies, I am absolutely privileged beyond doubt to meet amazing people every single day.

Often, I get to tell the stories of these real-life, genuine heroes and heroines and I’m truly in awe of them.

I think they’d laugh at the idea of that. And yet, I hear their stories or in many cases see their story unfold and I know these are truly outstanding people.

Ordinary folk for sure, but they are brilliant people doing fantastic things.

Yet, some of them I would say are hiding.

Some of them have a safe place now and the 100 reasons why they should not leave is pouring cold water on the one burning a hole in them every day telling them why they should.

And I get that. I get the idea of safety and security and I also get that it is also not easy to put yourself out front and centre, if that is far from your comfort zone.

Trust me. I am an introvert by nature, sneaking into the corner away from the spotlight is my default setting.

But I’ve also learned that when you are in that corner, your head can easily fill with doubts and before you know it, you somehow think that you are less.

And then the excuses sneak in and all of a sudden the world and its mother are to blame for all of your woes.

I was thinking on this during the week, when I heard photographer Jay Doherty talk of how he had gone about setting up his business.

If it failed, he said, it was down to him. Nobody else would be to blame, but it didn’t stop him from going for it anyway.

As I drove home that night, my head started processing some of the stories I had written, heard and witnessed of the people around me in recent weeks and months.

When I thought on something else Jay had said that night: embrace every new experience as part of the adventure, I remembered that one of my own poems had suggested you need to get beyond the edge of the comfort zone for the magic to happen.

Another poem sprung to mind then, a reminder to forget comparisons and remember what a brilliant person you really are.

For me, all of that was a reminder to stop hiding behind excuses and to make a start on getting on with stuff I’d procrastinated over.

Who knows where any of that’s going to lead me, but sure isn’t that all part of the adventure?

The light after dark…

When she spoke at the end of a talk in the Irish Immigration Centre in Philadelphia last week, my sister Una McDaid, stressed to those in attendance that just a few years ago they would never have managed to get me to stand in front of them and talk as I just had.

 

She was right.

 

Reading from my book at the Irish Immigration Centre in Philadelphia last week.

 

I was in Philadelphia for a few weeks having been invited over for their first ever Darkness into Light walk for Pieta House where I read a poem at the opening ceremony.

 

Two nights later as part of their Darkness into Light events, guests came to the Immigration Centre to hear the story of my book Dance in the Rain and heard me explain that – even though I feel I have come a long way over the past few years, I had still been hesitant about crossing the Atlantic to tell my story.

 

Despite the fact that my book had been launched in Donegal and that I have got a tremendous reaction from people who have bought and read it, when it was first mentioned to me about coming to Philadelphia to talk, I wasn’t so sure.

 

But the more I thought about it, I realised that it’s important to tell the positive stories too. That it shouldn’t always be about the darkness, that people needed to see there is light too.

 

Honestly, the last thing I had ever imagined was that I’d have published a book, never mind that I’d be standing in Philadelphia talking about it.

 

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I said there, what I have said all along – that I was lucky. I somehow managed to see the direction I was heading and turned that around. The writing helped, but it was only part of it.

 

The friendship and support that I had, the encouragement I got to continue with the 365 challenge and then to go try things well beyond my comfort zone, made me feel like I had something of value to give

 

It was a truly humbling experience to stand among hundreds of people and read a poem that I had written especially for their Darkness into Light walk, but it was equally humbling to think that any of them would even be remotely interested enough to come along two nights later to hear the story behind the book.

 

When they did. When people came to talk to me afterwards and said that some of what I had talked about had resonated with them, I was never more glad that I had once again pushed away self-doubt and had made the decision to tell my story.

 

It had rained on the morning of the walk.

 

By Philadelphia standards in May, it had rained a lot, but I told everyone that was not necessarily a bad thing.

 

Reminded them that, if I could do it, then they could also change their mind set, overcome new challenges, dream new dreams, achieve new goals and maybe even learn to dance in the rain!

Contrasting campaigns

There’s a scene in the Monty Python film ‘The Search for the Holy Grail,’ when, faced with a killer rabbit, the Knights of the Round Table respond finally with:  “Run away…run away.”

It’s a line that for some reason came to mind last week in the run up to the children’s referendum.

Faced with trying to get their head around what this all actually meant, the response by many was almost the same – ‘run away, run away.’

The low turn out was nothing to do with the fact that the referendum was held on a Saturday. It was to a large extent due to the fact that many people were confused and unsure – but as many perhaps apathetic.

Voter apathy is something that is always going to happen, and it seemed interesting that the television advertisements in the run-up to the election were more targeted towards tackling that issue, than they were on explaining what this referendum was actually about.

“A lot of people say we have no control… we have the final say on our most important document…it can only be changed if we the people say so…etc”

Those advertisements from the Referendum Commission asked people to discover the facts by reading the booklet delivered to their home or to visit their website.

It’s hard to know how many people actually did that, or indeed sourced any kind of information on what this referendum actually proposed (even though there were plenty of debates and talks on television and radio and articles in the papers). In that regard it’s reasonable to suggest that not all the blame should be apportioned towards the state for failing to educate us.

After all, the adverts we saw were correct. We do have a wonderful right in this country to have a say in any changes to our constitution, something people in countries all over the world who would dearly love to have. With that in mind surely we must bear some responsibility ourselves towards finding out the facts so we can make informed decisions.

And yet, with all that said I cannot quite seem to get my head around the contrast in two campaigns that had been running here recently – that of informing us on a change in our constitution and one to inform us of making sure we have a television signal for the dark nights of winter.

I’m not sure how much money was spent on the campaign to have us switch to Saorview, but I’m sure it was colossal. Indeed I think I even read somewhere that for the money spent, it might have been cheaper just to go out and buy every household in the state a Saorview box.

That sustained campaign on television and radio, in the local press and national press ran for months and months. There were even people employed to go into rural communities and speak to community groups and organisations and inform them of this upcoming change.

Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not sure whether the same energy or resources were put into the campaign to inform people on the change to our constitution.

It was hardly a surprise then that there were probably more people in Ireland on Saturday night concerned about how voting went in X-factor than they were in how things had gone in the referendum.

Thanks to Saorview,  X-factor was now available in digital High-definition.

And that other thing, sure wasn’t that just about changing our constitution or something…