As the fog begins to lift, there will be plenty of questions to be asked about the pandemic and the way it was handled. When it comes to dissecting everlasting statistics, this is hardly the place to do it; but one aspect of it all that fascinates me is the role of anxiety. Authorities the world over could hardly have found better means to maximise it than the lock-downs, vaccine mandates, social distancing, masks and ubiquitous sanitising, had they deliberately set out to do so. My own scepticism about the vaccines was massively reinforced by the dependence of the whole effort on such anxiety, rather than on measured and rational considerations.
Does anxiety ever really help, or on the contrary, is it more likely to undermine health and sanity? We must figure out whether it was bogus or simply inevitable, leaving no alternative but to bury our heads in the sand! One thing that does not help is to try to simply ignore the basis of anxiety. Perhaps some people get so mad with BoJo because he does just this in private while trading in anxiety in Government, while others like him for giving thesaid anxiety the two fingers behind his own Government's back. With preoccupation with covid on the wane, other foci of anxiety will be on the make,- war in the Ukraine, the cost of living, climate change, there is rarely a shortage of them. Is there perhaps a genuine connection between such mega issues and the personal problems that dog us all?
Whatever our own personal preference in the line of anxiety may be, there is no satisfactory living with it if it comes to dominate our lives! Perhaps a useful thing to equate it with is inebriation or alcoholism, which one may say is founded in anxiety of one kind or another. I like those voices from the Ukraine that urge moderation and calm. Nobody wins from war, and if we try to diffuse anxiety, even in the face of threats, instead of ratcheting up the anxiety with counter-threats, surely we have a better chance of damping it down?
Nowadays there are calls for Ireland to increase our defence capability. It is very important to keep a sense of proportion when it comes to what we might achieve, and even to remember that a hundred years ago, we did not actually defeat the British Empire by force of arms. However the effort to do so was not in vain. The British responded by shooting the 1916 leaders and sending over the Black and Tans to terrorise the population here, all of which created a very bad look for an Empire that had just allegedly fought the Great War 'for the rights of small nations'!
Yet supposing war or catastrophe do catch up with us, in our relatively comfortable lives, can there be any living without anxiety? Surely sickness and death catches up with us all, sooner or later, and how can we possibly fail to be anxious about it? But perhaps it is possible to both confront and overthrow it, all the more effectively for keeping our eyes wide open? Jesus went willingly to his cross, 'for the joy that was set before him'. What kind of joy might that be? A very mighty thing, surely! So how do we find it? At this point, I might attempt to deliver a sermon on prayer and the Catholic Faith, but again, this is not the place for it. Instead I will settle for hoping we may go towards our fear, whatever it may be, and let us treat with disdain those who peddle anxiety.
The sea is a kind of archetype of chaos and anxiety, and that's partly why I like it, especially trying to cross it with an old wooden boat that at 50 years of age, has come very close to her end. Can an old man, coming close to his end, manage to turn this situation around? This year, finally, we shall see!
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| Steve hits headlines with Dublin Bay 21s |
Working on St Ayle's skiff in Steve Morris' workshop.
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| Kilrush Harbour on a January evening. |
