Old-fashioned? Me? Fair enough. Let’s come clean and count the ways

ON this Tuesday, 50 years ago, September 15, 1967 a group of young men began their novitiate year in the Dominican Priory in Pope’s Quay, Cork. There were nine of us. One left at the end of the novitiate, five during the following six years. Three of us were ordained priests. One resigned from priestly ministry shortly after ordination. There are still two of us Dominican priests.

There’s little point in living in the past or giving it more importance than it deserves. But experience is a great teacher and surely we can learn from the past. What’s the point in being concerned about the future? A wise man once said to me that the things we worry about seldom if ever happen. All we have is the now.

I don’t remember much, if anything, from the philosophy classes, but I clearly recall hearing a lecturer say one day that all we have is the ‘nunc’. It always sounds learned to say something in Latin. Then again, I’m wondering would I have remembered it had he simply said that all we have is the now? The Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy says about the now: ‘It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power’.

A fellow Dominican writes a daily Gospel commentary called goodnews.ie. On one occasion earlier this month he recalled how as a child his local priest was always talking about life after death. Now as an adult he wonders why the priest did not talk about the now.

It might be easy to talk about the past, hope for or worry about the future but the now is the time in which we live our lives. But that does not mean we live lives of resignation. Of course when people live in shocking surroundings and conditions it makes sense to do everything possible to change things and improve their lot.

In early September, cycling in Dublin between 8.15 and 9 a.m., I saw children heading for school. At every street corner children were heading for school. All dressed in new school uniforms. Some were walking, more on bicycles, others on scooters. And then the toddlers heading to school for the first time. They were with their parents, a special day in the life of parents and children. But just to observe it all, fleetingly from my bicycle, there was something simply delightful about it. All one could do was to wish them well. So important that they enjoy the day that was in it and make the best of it.

Some days later, this time earlier in the morning, 7.10 to be exact, I saw someone on the footpath, waiting to cross the road. She was checking her mobile phone. Looking at her reminded me of the news report about how Irish Rail had recorded an increase in the number of accidents of people getting on and off trains. It seems they miss their step because they are on their mobile phones.

Mobile phones distract us from what we are doing and in that sense they take us away from the now, they take our attention off the present moment. Mindfulness is about living in the now, being actively conscious of what we are doing and appreciating it.

There’s so much to see and appreciate in front of our eyes. Fantasy world never lives up to the real thing. The gems that stare us in the face. It’s great when we spot them and seize the moment, carpe diem.

CALL me old-fashioned. No offence taken. Old-fashioned is a fair description for a middle- aged man who thinks that pop music ended in 1986. Before you ask, 1986 was the year Paul Simon released ‘ You Can Call Me Al’. We all have our landmarks and that is mine, which comes with the unshakeable belief that it has all been downhill ever since. My pop perspective is laced with pity for those poor souls – now well into their forties and stuck in a nineties time warp - for whom Oasis is their principal point of musical reference. What on earth is a wonderwall anyway?...

I am old-fashioned, looking at my wrist rather than my phone whenever I want to know the time.

I am old-fashioned, preferring loose leaf to tea in a bag, whether the bag is square, round or pyramid shaped.

I am old-fashioned, instinctively measuring weight in primitive pounds or stones rather than in the kilos which make so much more sense.

I am old-fashioned, expecting to talk to someone behind a counter whenever I go into the bank. Old-fashioned and vaguely proud of it.

I did something really, really old-fashioned the other day, something I had not done in ages. I bet you cannot guess what it was. ‘Did you eat steak and kidney pie?’ you ask.

What a lovely idea! But no one gets to eat authentic home-made steak and kidney pie these days, more’s the pity, because no one bakes steak and kidney pie any more. And the main reason for this is that kitchens no longer come equipped with the Thing which used to stand in the middle of the dish to prop up the pastry. My late mother used to cook steak and kidney pies which were sublime, using the Thing – a simple ceramic device, just the right height - which she inherited from her own late mother. The Thing somehow never made it down to the next generation and the tradition was lost.

‘Did you complete a journey guided by a road map rather than a navigation app?’

I did, actually, now you mention it. But that doesn’t count because I use real maps all the time. Listening to a computer generated voice telling me to ‘ take the third exit’ or ‘do a U-turn as soon as possible’ drives me daft.

‘Did you play golf using a wooden club with an actual timber head?’

Gosh, you are good at this game. Yes, indeed, I find that the technological advances made in sporting equipment much over-rated. If I cannot reach the green with my lovingly crafted Christy O’Connor five wood, then I am damned if I will attempt the shot with a gaudy, mass-produced piece of plastic. Harrumph! ‘Did you wear a pair of corduroy moleskins?’ Uncanny! You must have seen me! They were there at the bottom of a drawer and I was delighted to find that they still fitted all these years later. Very comfortable they were too. Okay, you get full credit for that guess but now I will reveal the old-fashioned indulgence I allowed myself at the weekend.

I had a old-style bath.

There are homes being built in the 21st century that have no bath. The shower has completely taken over as the primary means of ablution. The notion a good long soak has been largely confined to the history books in the helter-skelter of modern existence.

Gone are the days when Radox sold enough of their bath salts to justify taking out ads on national television. Gone are the days when Hollywood starlets posed seductively in the bath beneath a welter of bubbles to preserve some measure of modesty. Gone are the days when whole football teams jumped into a communal bath after the match.

On Sunday, in defiance of all trends, I took a vagary, emptied the tank of hot water into the tub, and had a bath for the first time in heaven knows how long. It was great, truly transcendental. I emerged an hour later, wrinkled as a walnut, as relaxed and as clean as I have been since Paul Simon released ‘You Can Call Me Al’.

Or you can call me old-fashioned.