Heart Beat
Maurice Neligan
It is a beautiful morning. The softest breeze is ruffling the surface of a flooding tide. Assorted waders and ducks are retreating before the gently insistent waters and vacating the diminishing sandbars. Two cormorants have just passed the window heading out to sea. One can understand the derivation of the name, corvus marinus, the crow of the sea.
Weather wise, it has not been a good summer. Already in the woods in Killarney and around Caragh Lake, the leaves are begin- ning to fall. The blackberries are pale imitations of other years and the fields are waterlogged. The swallows have not yet finalised their travel arrangements, but I sense their departure is imminent.
Events and controversies seem more remote when viewed from here and distance tends to minimise many problems. I don't know why it is that I feel this is not the real world and that life is ordered differently here. I do know that it is so for me and I also realise that such healing retreat is temporary and the other world awaits. I have always found on my return journey to Dublin that once I cross the Kerry/Limerick border and pass through the townland of Templeglantine, where my father was born, my thoughts focus on what I term the real world ahead.
My father would have been beside himself with hope and expectation bordering on certainty, contemplating a Limerick hurling All Ireland victory. That the good folk of Kilkenny might have a dissenting view he would not entertain for a second. It has been a great summer for that essential Irish institution the GAA. This was chronicled for me most vividly by that greatest of sports commentators, Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh. He can make the parishes, villages and towns come alive, with their traditions, personalities and families as he weaves the word pictures that we can visualise as we listen. His is a rare gift indeed.
In the football world, by the time this article is published, matters will have been decided between Kerry and Dublin, no bets here, and Cork wait in the wings. Furthermore in the weeks ahead Ireland sets forth in the Rugby World Cup. We travel in hope but possibly with more expectation than usual.
All of this stimulates public interest and excitement and engenders a sort of national feel good factor. It also encourages participation in sport with all the consequent physical and mental wellbeing. It is hard to overestimate the importance of reasonable exercise and physical fitness. Some forms of exercise require little investment, while some require considerable investment; there are much worse ways to spend your money. It is also an excellent investment for government.
John Dryden wrote:
"Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught
The wise for cure on exercise depend
God never made his work for man to mend".
All very well I'm sure, possibly a bit overly enthusiastic, for one way or another, the doctor will get a slice of the action. Indeed there are many medics who do quite nicely out of 'sports medicine'. One can't help wondering how we all managed before such specialists came on the scene. These injuries and treatments are light years away from the struggles for basic health and indeed life itself for millions in the disadvantaged areas in the world. For me there appears to be a serious imbalance here with the huge transfer fees and enormous incomes of elite performers with a ball or club, contrasting with the problems of those who lack the most basic requirements of life itself, let alone life with dignity.
We advantaged folk deal with this issue simply, either by ignoring such unpleasantness or avowing it to be somebody else's problem. I don't think we can shrug off our common humanity that easily. Nobody can absolve us for our culpability in ignoring those who most need help in this most unequal world. Francis Thompson's, The Hound of Heaven, puts this succinctly; "Naught shelters thee, who will not shelter Me".
So it is with this that I return to the world of problems, and regarding the Shannon debacle; may I ask a question? Why did the Government retain 25 per cent of the Aer Lingus shareholding if not to prevent such anti social decisions apparently motivated only by profit? Minister for Defense Willie O'Dea and his colleagues should put their money where their mouths are and vote with the opposition to reverse this short-sighted decision. Will they? I reckon there are the proverbial two chances.
u Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon