There is an old Buddhist story about a man who is walking by a cliff when a tiger begins to chase him. The cliff isn’t very high, so he reckons that if he can get over it he can survive the fall and escape.
When he gets to the edge he jumps but, to his dismay, another tiger is waiting for him below. He manages to grab on to a convenient vine with the intention of holding on until one or the other of the tigers goes away.
Unfortunately, just as he steels himself to wait for however long it takes, a mouse appears, trots over to the vine and starts to chew on it. The game, the man realises, is up.
Then he notices that growing out of the cliff face is a small strawberry bush with one ripe strawberry on it. He knows the bush is too small to support his weight. So he reaches out with one hand, picks the strawberry and puts it in his mouth. The strawberry tastes sweeter than anything he has eaten in his life.
That’s the whole story. There’s no happy ending that we know of. Maybe the mouse will get fed up and wander off before the vine breaks, but we don’t know that either.
As I understand it, the point of the story, from the Buddhist perspective, is that this is how all our lives are always going to be: a tiger above, a tiger below, a mouse chewing on the vine you’re holding on to for dear life. But there’s also a strawberry, so pay attention and eat it.
My father was a farmer and – as is the case for all farmers, I think – his tigers were the bank, the weather and the market. For him, I think, the “strawberry” was walking in the fields, thinking things out, sometimes making up verses in his head.
A more modern version of the story would be to say we spend our lives between a rock and a hard place. We generally assume that what we need to do is escape from this position and into a place of ease.
But once we accept that there is no permanent place of ease we can start to look around and see what’s good in our moments in the in-between place.
Bear that in mind as our boom (with, by the way, its attendant homelessness and despair) gathers pace. With the tattered, ravenous Celtic Tiger above and its leaner, meaner version below, we need to look around for that strawberry. And that, in turn, is probably something simple that you can’t buy on the stock exchange, such as cultivating relationships with people who will still be there for you even if you lose everything, again.
Fathers on birth certificates
Legislation placing a duty on unmarried parents to register the father’s name on the birth certificate of their child has been enacted. It is remarkable that in this day and age about 3,000 births a year are registered without the father’s name.
This can happen if the father is uncontactable or unknown, if he doesn’t want his name on the birth certificate, or if the mother doesn’t want him involved with the child, or if she fears that naming him will affect her entitlement to social welfare.
None of these is a good enough reason to deprive a child of a father’s name on a birth certificate.
From now on, the registrar will seek the father’s contact details if a mother attends without him and will make all reasonable efforts to contact him. Just how enforceable all this is remains to be seen, especially if the mother doesn’t want the father’s name known. However, the legislation strengthens the hand of fathers who want to register their names, regardless of whether the mother wants them to or not, and is a big step in the right direction.
Treoir has brought out its 2015 guide for unmarried parents, which can be downloaded at treoir.ie. If you’re an unmarried parent, it’s well worth making time to read it.
pomorain@yahoo.com
Padraig O'Morain is a counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.