"Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" (Sir Walter Scott, 1808)
It’s funny how life can throw lifelines at us that we ignore.
Unfortunately, we believe that we know better. For me that knowing better was just a defence from the truth and my inability to listen to what I needed to hear.
Looking back there are many great people who helped me and supported me along the way and I have to say that I’m indebted to for their kindness, generosity and acceptance of me for who I was. The list of names is too long to mention but I do know that they know who they are and this is my way of saying thank you.
A great man once told me that the greatest and simplest prayer is those two words, THANK YOU.
How often did I take for granted this precious life and found myself caught up in the world according to me, the great I Am?
Between my ears I was a legend. I thought I knew it all and the price of it. I was unteachable believing that I was untouchable.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. The bottom line was that I was deceiving myself. I was filled with fear and self-loathing, a frightened child in a man's body.
Terrified of letting go, I was dragged along from pillar to post.
I remember meeting a wonderful Jesuit Fr Herbert Dargan the great-great nephew of William Dargan, whose name is sprinkled throughout Ireland, North and South: Dargan Rd, Dargan Crescent, and Dargan Bridge in Dublin. Unfortunately, Fr Herbert passed away in 1993, RIP.
He knew that I was suffering and he knew the cause of my suffering. He let me know that there was a way out of my suffering through simply surrendering.
He told me that I had to surrender to booze and my old ways because, obviously, my old ways weren’t working. I had to let go. I’m not saying that it was easy but I can honestly say it gets easier.
I remember arguing with him that I couldn’t let go of my so called resentments. Unknown to me, these resentments that I carried were poisons. It was like me drinking the poison and waiting for the other person to die.
I was told you can’t hear until you can hear. Sure enough my ears were closed as I listened to Radio Franky playing my favourite songs: Me, me, me.
My Jesuit friend through his kindness enabled me to open up and talk about what I couldn’t talk about. How liberating and emancipating that was to exorcise the phantoms of my fantasies that inhabited the world according to me.
I now know that over the years there are many good people like my Jesuit friend Fr Dagan and I believe what he told me was true, he told me that the nearest that I would get to god, would be the person next to me.
You can’t hear until you can hear and you can’t see until you can see.
It’s good to talk.
