Tommy Tiernan

How to deal with down days

One of those days… where things seem slow and without meaning. A low emotional weather-front, as they say. Does air pressure affect mood? Perhaps. And if it does, we should surely have a psychological version of Met Eireann telling us what states of mind are on their way. “Misery, rising slowly, with some giddiness in coastal areas.”

I heard two aul lads talking recently and one says to the other, “How are you today John?” And John replied, “Sad… I feel sad today.” And the reply he got was, “Will you tell me about it?”

And I thought that there was such generosity in it, such friendship. No rush to judgment or attempt to fix it. Just patience and kindness.

We can all the time be looking for big experiences, big sensations. Driving ourselves so demented on the hunt for distraction that the world can seem very empty when we can’t get it. The lull between dopamine hits becomes a void. And all the while, perhaps, the miracles are there hiding out in the obvious.

A friend of mine was in the woods one day and said that suddenly — apropos of nothing, no wind, no mouse, no obvious external force at all — a leaf on the ground just turned over. It took him by surprise. He imagined it, he said, like a key opening a lock, that the forest was inviting him into itself.

He was deep into a meditation, everything was still, as if there was a weight laid on it. Perhaps the forest was meditating too. Anyway this tiny happening, that of a leaf, apparently of its own accord, turning over, stayed with him for the rest of his life.

When my mother died a few years ago, a pal sent me a text saying, “It blows you wide open.” He was right, the sides of me skull came off. I didn’t know who I was for a few days. An overwhelming event, an experience that seems bigger than the human being to whom it’s happening. A sorrow larger than any sense of identity. Selfhood is no match for the infinite, and perhaps that’s what the death of a loved one puts us in contact with, an encounter with infinite stillness.

Well, I am down the shed today lurching from tobacco slow to caffeine fast and back again, so the miracles of the mundane are not available to me. I’m not in mourning either, thank God. Today I’m in the doldrums. So what to do? As the monks would say, “Chop wood, carry water.” Turn your attention to that which must be done. Articles to write, lines to be learned. Coal scuttles won’t fill themselves.

Menial obligations

And the monks might say that when it feels meaningless, then that’s when you concentrate harder. Really write the article, really get the coal. Fulfill your menial obligations, that’s all that there is. And at your funeral they’ll ask, “Well, what did he do?” And a relative will tell, “He wrote articles, he got coal. Can’t ask much more of a man than that.”

So, with that in mind, here’s a story to shorten the road. I was up north, beautiful Donegal. The show had gone well and I was brought in to the local bar to meet the parish priest. A hairy man with good love in his heart. There were three pubs in the area, and for charity he was getting one-third of his thatch and beard shaved off in each one. He did it once a year and never touched the hair until he shaved it off again 12 months later. The place was thronged to see the shearing. You’d swear the Sam Maguire was in the room.

They asked would I do the first bit. “No bother,” says I. “Always been an ambition of mine to crop one of them lads.” A lovelier man you couldn’t meet, and adored he was in the locale. I took the blade to his head, and gently pared one side of him. Jaysus, he was sweaty. Priests is sweaty when you get up close.

Job was done and we took some photos. He introduced me to some kids that were in the bar as well. “This wee girl is a beautiful dancer, and wee Sean here loves to paint. Don’t you, Sean?” Sean had Down syndrome and he looked at me and said, “Yeah…” The band started singing Joyce Country Ceili Band. The place was hopping, as the bucket was passed around and money for local causes was collected. “I have to go now”, he says. “There’s two more bars down to the road to get to.”

I was in a hackney cab not long after meself. Thin and winding country roads on a pitch-black night in the mountains. Says to the driver, “You couldn’t drive fast up here.”

“No, you could not,” he says. “Stags, you see. There’s too many stags in it. They hop out in the road and you could hit them. I was driving here last night and this bucko jumped right out into the middle of the road, and whatever way he landed, didn’t he end up with his backside sitting on the bonnet of the car? And he turned his head and looked at me as if to say, ‘Would you mind slowing down there; you’re going a bit fast.’ And then he hopped off into the ditch again…”

Two little parables for me to meditate on for the rest of my life. Now, the coal...