Sir, - Apparently the Yahgan Indians have a word, "Mamihlapinatapai", which has been interpreted by the writer Richard Reynolds as meaning: "To look at each other hoping that either will offer to do something which both parties desire but are unwilling to do."
The word does not seem without application to the situation of the parties involved in trying to advance the Good Friday Agreement and to attain to a peaceful resolution of the issues centred on Drumcree.
To have come so far forward has been miraculous. To have seen different individuals beginning to believe in each other's good faith has been heartening. It would be very irresponsible to throw away consequent peaceful results and then to find an excuse for the failures caused by personal intransigence in an escape to party loyalties, traditional ideologies, scapegoating and blame-finding.
What, then, is important? If the politicians and party loyalists could each stand back from the events as if they were gazing from a distance at Earth's green globe, and then decide to accept their personal responsibility and act quite simply as individual human beings, then perhaps some progress could be made.
If a letter to The Irish Times can be a prayer, then this letter is my prayer. If the politicians and party loyalists could make one extra effort to resolve the difficulties they see and act not for party or for adherence to some series of abstractions but look simply at the issues in terms of the "Golden Rule" - to do unto others as you would they should do unto you - peaceful patterns of behaviour could be further advanced, as they have been, to the practical benefit of all the people on this island. - Yours, etc.
Richard S. Harrison, St Luke's Place, Cork.