There are many lessons to be learned in life. Most take time and require much pain. Nonetheless, a lesson learned is worth its weight in gold and often pain is an acceptable price to pay.
The secret, I would imagine, in life, is to learn your lessons early and thereby save yourself most of the price and much of the pain.
However, this world we live in is not really conducive to learning lessons. There does appear to be a proliferation of stubbornness, of opinionated cussedness and dogged intransigence that encourages too many of us to display a casual disregard for the thoughts and feelings of others. Just why this is so, I am unsure.
Respect is, in many ways, a relic of bygone days, a shadow that flits in and out of our world where once it was, like a spider's web, a subtle but strong coupling that connected and held together so many elements of society.
People nowadays take so many things personally. I mean, insult is forever a bitter pill for anybody but a saint, but even so the best way to right a wrong is to forget it, to refuse to allow it to remain in your head where it can fester and become something it was, in all probability, never meant to be. We spend too much time in our own head anyway.
It may be due to the enormous amount of distractions at our disposal, television, game consoles, iPods, etc., that we find it so easy to disconnect from the world around us.
People appear far less happy with who they are, too preoccupied with comparing themselves to pictures in magazines and faces on television, to revel in their own individuality, their own uniqueness.
The essential reason that they exist in the first place is abandoned and replaced with a desire to be something and somebody else. It is no surprise that someone like Michael Jackson was a leading man of our times.
I am not altogether sure why I am following this particular train of thought. My fingers sometimes meander along the keyboard with splendid detachment, refusing all suggestion of communal cooperation with any other parts of me, a bit like Ronaldo and Manchester United in their final few months together.
It was probably the criticism I offered last week in the wake of the Cork City Football Club debacle of the past two years that generated the above paragraphs. Cork City must rediscover its true identity and regain its rightful place in the community of Cork.
I do genuinely have a great empathy for those running the club; I understand the confusion of the supporters and the players and both groups have demonstrated a marvellous loyalty to their club under the most stressful of situations.
I know the players also love their profession and would dearly love to be able to get back to the normal but hectic life of a pro footballer.
Professional football is a most persuasive profession. It can convince even the most experienced mind to concentrate so much on the next game that the life in between games becomes a blur, a fast-forward mechanism unfortunately lacking the benefit of a pause button.
The part-time and amateur players have the wonderful diversionary attribute of the 'day job', which pulls them back into the normal world where plumbers plumb, doctors doctor and whomsoever else do whatsoever else.
The full-timer must become embroiled in the fearful uncertainty of his occupation
However, if you can attain for yourself even a modicum of detachment from the carousel of confusion that is professional sport, you can become quite aware that the challenges that emerge with such profusion in the sporting life are in many ways identical to those of life itself.
The struggle to prove yourself in a competitive world, to search for respect and the desire to provide for those close to you are all aspects of the day-to-day existence we all experience.
The point is that these challenges come quicker and more frequently in a sports career and bestow the alert individual the opportunity to gain great confidence in himself at a relatively young age.
The performer who has confronted uncertainty, overcome fear of failure and proved himself totally reliable in the most challenging situations moves from the world of sport into the real world with a deeply rooted confidence in who he is.
That is why ex-sportsmen tend to exude a demeanour of self-assuredness. It is not necessarily because they have won trophies and accolades but rather that they have faced up to their own demon of uncertainty and survived. Some don’t, of course.
There are a few who seek the crutch of alcohol, drugs or gambling as a mechanism to divert their minds from the ongoing pressure to deliver.
I do agree with your developing thought that the above sentiments are not just confined to professional sport. I would concur with the proposal you are mentally coordinating that sport is wholeheartedly capable of infusing an almost spiritual understanding in the majority of discerning individuals who prepare and perform with a wholehearted commitment to the task in hand.
Sport is a vital commodity in the well being of an individual and the society around him, and as we delve deeper into enormous uncertainty of the economic world about, sport will acquire an even greater importance.
Again it is my pleasure to be congratulating St Patrick’s Athletic Football Club for their stunning success in the Europa League. This particular success is a timely reminder of the amazing properties of sport in that it underlines the value of retaining belief even in the face of a seemingly impossible set of circumstances.
I am delighted for all concerned but especially for Jeff Kenna, who has shipped a lot of criticism and this achievement will hopefully revive the unique identity of the Inchicore club.
Derry City can have great pride in getting so close to emulating Pat's, but this will not in any way lessen the deep disappointment felt by Stephen Kenny and his lads.
