Wednesday, January 27, 2021

No man is an island.

 I was never a big fan of the poet, John Donne. That's not to say he wasn't a cool dude and all-round magic wordsmith. It just so happened that he was one of those poets that I was force-fed in school and he became a hate figure along with pythagoras and James Prescott Joule. In short I refused to understand them and mentally I fell out with them. 

But this isn't a journey back to my adolescence, the bruises and blackboards. In fact John Donne has only sprung back into my life twice since 1988 when I finally collected enough brain cells to escape secondary school. Donne showed up in a Hemingway novel I read in 1999 and in the Lidl car park yesterday. 

Lidl? Well, it was a quick conversation I had with an old friend. And as we parted, that line of Donne's, 'No man is an island' popped into my brain. Because in this time of Pandemic and uncertainty and media-manipulation I had come to feel isolated. In eight months I, like many others, have lost direction. And before you slam down your device,  I'm well aware that worse things have happened in those months. However, I've lost a little too. Lidl got me thinking. No, not about battery operated drills and cheap bread. About feeling like an island. I cycle on my own. Do the shopping to keep the risk to my family at a minimum. I jump when the doorbell rings. I cross the street or step off the path to avoid people. Nobody has come in for a coffee in damn nearly a year! I've become comfortable with short, distanced chats. As a family we go out of our way to walk alone. 

But this isn't about me. 

I teach spectacular kids and have a lot of fun. But if it took a conversation in a Lidl parking space to help me realise I'm not alone and I'm a useful cog in the world's workings, then how are my students feeling? From my half-century-old perspective I can only begin to imagine. I have no concept of the depth to which mobile phones and social media have devastated the social ability of those I teach. I don't even want to accept that every single time I see teenagers together or alone in the street they are looking at the phone, guided by it like it's a map. Technology has become the focal point. And this is hard for me to take. When I was sixteen a sense of humour, a taste in music, a knowledge of motors or football or a fashion fad defined us. If you couldn't keep a conversation going or tell a story against yourself, then you were dull. 

Now? You have to laugh at what everyone laughs at. The awkward silences are filled by instant internet gratification. A machine provides the laughs, likes and memories. And media makes people scared.

And if you throw a Pandemic, lockdown, homeschooling and isolation into the mix then where are we? At least the students I teach could have the banter when in school. Feel part of something. Have an identity in some way. Now I worry that those formative years will be at best a case of arrested development. Kids trying their best to be assimilated into college or work won't have the natural abilities that come from interaction and socialization. 

I can meet a friend randomly at the supermarket and reconnect. At one point in my life I was connected. But what if you never have? College by internet? Jesus, I'd have jumped ship. No kicking a ball in the field or sneaking out to share a slab of Dutch Gold with the lads as a right of passage? Will the world soon be remote working, remote thinking, socially retarded individuals?

Maybe I'm too juiced up on caffeine, fear and old age. I need to remember that my fifth years make me laugh and relentlessly put me in good mood. They show up to online classes and use that energy that only they have to up the ante every time. They don't know the positive effects they bestow upon me.

And the other thought that plays on my mind; war. The Irish never had a war of their own. Is that a bad thing? I dunno. Always struck me that the further east you go, the quicker people mature. Think about it. All the Baltic states, Russia, those places saw atrocities and barbaric sights that gave the survivors a critical sense of living and getting on with it. To them, life is fleeting, tenuous at best. Maybe this will be the outcome for our present young people? Maybe this is their war? Maybe Covid is a monster reality check that will kick start a whole new mindset? Maybe they won't be a lost generation. Maybe they'll be the first Irish generation that are really alive and switched on and devoid of all our Irish generational baggage?

I can only hope. I think this whole mess will make us stronger, help us switch on. Some of us anyway. 

Maybe I lost sight recently, maybe I'm not an island. Or at least, I hope to always be in sight of the mainland. Maybe if the young make it through it will be a balm for all of us? They might just drag us all ashore. 











































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