Today is my final column this month, this year and this decade. I’ve also decided that it’s my final regular column for The Irish News.
In June 2014, I was given the privilege of this special platform by the editor. In my first column, I wrote: “I resent those who deamean the privilege of paid public commentary in newspapers to flippantly fire scatter-guns or slew side swipes like bar-stool barristers.
“It’s always easy to put down individuals; it’s a lot harder to push up ideals… But this particular privilege requires a moral compass for positive social responsibility that surpasses the smart-ass; that commands a higher level of dignity in thought and word; that demands a tangible standard of humility and honesty. (And the ability to say sorry, which I do when I’m wrong.)”
Throughout five and a half years, I’ve pursued that strategic vision, trusting your intelligence and integrity as Irish News readers, respecting your ability to think critically as citizens.
If just one column during that time has uplifted a single person or improved some social understandings, then I’ve left things in a better place. For now, I’ve taken it as far as possible.
The interim period has seen changes in my style, my thinking, my opinions, and above all my life. Nothing stands still. I try to understand public affairs from the shifts of the tides – not distracted by individual waves. That also applies personally.
The art of timing any stage exit is crucial. Ultimately, the powerful play always goes on, and there’s really only ever one final curtain call in politics, public affairs, professionally or personally. (The fiction of indispensibility comes from the fraud of ego.)
Our motivations dictate our decisions. That’s why ethical personal change is crucial to delivering positive politics and effective public service. Nelson Mandela said: “One of the things I learned when I was negotiating was that until I changed myself, I could not change others.”
Increasingly, our ability to adapt to changing contexts and to embrace strategic uncertainty will be tested across these islands. We’re already being blown asunder by the impending geo-political hurricane of a decade yet to arrive, where our social, security, economic, environmental, technological, constitutional and political realities will become unrecognisable from today.
Only through the creative resilience to manage rapid change and adapt to unforseen challenges, can we optimise our contributions as citizens. Higher motives and stronger ideals will become vital navigational lighthouses.
Increasingly my small voice in the public square has invited only one outcome – improving this society, how we interpret, interact and interrelate; learning from past mistakes and integrating dialogues of dignity, equality, love and inclusion across the harsh boundaries of political and public affairs.
Now it’s time to reflect on new ways of contributing.
Looking back personally this decade, facing the devastating impacts of marriage breakdown and tortuous divorce; the sudden deaths and slow demise of close friends; the reality that historical hypocrisies are guarded by sentries on all sides, it’s conceivable that I might not even have reached 2020. At times I’ve almost drowned under darkest despair.
But the light won. It always wins. And hope never fails. Because hope is a choice, an aspiration, an act – not merely a feeling or a prayer. Hope comes alive the moment we summon it.
So when it comes to writing the next decade, I will keep journeying to find the right words. Words that describe the beauty and brilliance of those people and places I love, in ways that fully appreciate their soaring spiritual giftedness.
Words hidden in my heart’s deepest core - not yet written - that might hopefully someday illuminate interpersonal love just a fraction as wondrously as St Paul’s letter to Corinthians 1(13).
Words that will strenuously keep building and bridging stronger relationships, rights and respect (and stable local institutions) as the cornerstones of our future social and democratic progress across these two islands. Words that matter – the Irish News’s raison d’etre.
Go raibh míle maith agaibh. Nollaig shona daoibh.
Twitter @jarlathkearney
j.kearney@irishnews.com
