Loneliness minister needed to curb people’s social and health ills Reluctantly following in the flight path of Bouffon and Byrne
THERE can be no doubt that we now live in a society in which we have never been more connected to each other at the press of a button – and yet we live in a world in which extreme loneliness is affecting so many every day.
January is a terrible month for some people. For others, green snowdrop stems shooting up tall from the ground and mellifluous birdsong early in the morning and in early in the evening, are enough to stir the spirit into a smile at the thought of fresh beginnings and horizons new.
Personally, it’s been a topsy turvy month, one of dread going into some evenings, wondering what to do with my time, whereas other evenings I’m happy to be warmed by the fire, reading a good book.
Living on your own, (as I do four nights a week), can focus the mind too much, whereby you must always have a project on the go and something lined up. Having injured my knee recently at indoor soccer, I suddenly found my routine thrown out of orbit. A little change combined with the completion of a project left me struggling to fill my evenings.
The thought occurred to me: ‘How must people living on their own all the time cope?’ The walls of the house closing in, silence from the phone in the hall. People all around us are battling extreme loneliness and we never know what other people, (some of whom have seemingly great lives), are going through. The realisation of the hold routine has on our lives arrived with an apple-onhead Eureka moment sense of clarity to me. Routine should not be underestimated. Like the voice in your head that tells you to do something (like eating a lot of food at a fixed time during the day), it is to be taken with a pinch of salt. I have many good habits. I eat well, exercise regularly and I enjoy reading, watch the occasional Oscar-nod-worthy film and try to push myself in most everything I do. There are also the bad habits: obsessing about stupid stuff in moments of boredom, eating chocolate like the world’s supply is going out of date tomorrow, and being a slave to routine.
People’s routine can get thrown out for all kinds of reasons: a bereavement, an illness, a separation, the loss of job.
Men are rubbish at reaching out to people. Women are better, but not all. The recent appointment of Tracey Crouch as Minister for Civil Society in the UK – with a lead brief on loneliness – has sparked calls for a similar role to be created here.
Recent studies have found a direct link between loneliness and various illnesses, from cancer to depression and opiod addiction, prompting calls for a public health policy, to include a Ministry for Loneliness to be funded. In many ways people are more connected than ever through social media and online chatrooms, but just because you have 10,000 Twitter followers or 5,000 Facebook friends, it doesn’t mean you aren’t gripped with painful feelings of loneliness.
People of all ages are affected by loneliness. It is the elephant in the livingroom in society, so it is time that the Government looked at this problem, and no it won’t be solved by a u-turn on drink driving legislation. For me, it is a part of life, all part of a learning curve, the opportunity to grow in light by understanding yourself, befriending yourself and others better – in ‘fertile solitude’ even, if you are digging for artistic inspiration, while looking forward and not taking yourself to seriously. Loneliness is not a failing, rather sense a self-realisation from which human connections can grow. DON’T dive.’ Better believe it, everyone – young Persephone does not dive. Never has. Never will. The way in which our daughter pronounced the three words should have made this clear, beyond all argument: ‘I don’t dive.’
This was no casual announcement. This was no throwaway remark. This was royalty making it clear that Her Highness does not lower herself to buttering her own sandwiches or changing her own spark plugs. She could no more be expected to dive than to sleep on a mattress under which there is a pea or some other irritating foreign object. Diving, her regal loftiness made it abundantly plain, is something best left to less refined mortals. ‘I don’t dive.’
She was speaking to her goalkeeping coach. The poor man could be excused, I suppose, for thinking at first that he had not heard her correctly. Watching the early season training session from the side-line, I could see his brow furrow. He was about to join the list of well-intentioned sporting mentors who have struggled to convey basic sporting skills to Persephone.
There was the camogie trainer who took the time to show how a ball should be picked up on the end of the stick. There was the athletics enthusiast who conceived the notion she might make a hurdler. There was the rugby stalwart who made the startling revelation that the game involved collisions. All of them failed to capture the attention or imagination of someone for whom sport is more a social exercise than a physical one.
Now, here was Eoghan attempting to suggest that she might consider sprawling on the ground in an effort to block attackers or leaping to intercept shots on her goal. He felt that diving goes with the territory but Persephone was having none of it. She all but laughed in his face at the absurdity of the proposal. She is a believer in remaining upright in the face of opposition attacks and she could not be induced go to ground. She might stick out an arm or, perchance, a leg to make a save, but lying down was simply not on her agenda.
‘I don’t dive.’ End of.
In vain did Eoghan seek to inspire young Persephone with talk of the great goalkeepers, past or present. The roll call included Pat Jennings, Stephen Cluxton and Gianluigi Bouffon, all of them capable of diving to great effect when called upon to do so.
Or how about a female role model? None better than Emma Byrne of Arsenal. Surely, Emma would never have collected more than 100 caps for Ireland had she been worried about dirtying her shorts. But the fact is that the Our Town ladies’ second team do not perform at the same high level as Arsenal.
The no-dive, no-frills approach has proven largely suited to life in the lower divisions. Persephone starred this term as she demonstrated that effective goalkeeping is just as much about getting the angles right as about being prepared to go from vertical to horizontal. The goalie who is the correct place to start with has no need to take off in flight, she coolly asserted. Once she worked out that a well-timed advance from the goalmouth reduces the target available to opposing strikers, then she began to go through games unbeaten.
Unfortunately, Hermione and I missed the fixture in which her side took on the formidable might of the league leaders and emerged with a very creditable scoreless draw after a backsto-the-wall performance. What a wonderful clean sheet for the intrepid, if statuesque, keeper.
Persephone played down her contribution to this outstanding result but her friend Oprah told us later that our girl had been awesome – and she had the video footage taken on her phone to prove it. The pictures showed the upstanding one repeatedly springing left and right to pull off mighty blocks or hurling herself head first into a ruck of players with no thought of her own safety.
When our daughter came home that evening I smilingly congratulated her on overcoming her inhibitions, only to be met with show of incomprehension.
‘Oh, Da, I told you – I don’t dive…though maybe I do sometimes fall over.’