Ba Humbug!
Today my eye was drawn to a brief piece on the website of the Daily Mail about a documentary shortly to be aired on RTE called The Secret Of The Universe. It tells the story of the death of Peter O’Neill, apparently styled the naked hermit of Wicklow – see here – DAILY MAIL
I’m not sure I would claim that I recognised in Mr O’Neill a kindred spirit but I certainly felt a certain sympathy for him. After all – channelling my ‘one man’s meat is another’s poison’ and ‘variety is the spice of life’ inner thoughts – there is a degree to which life on Earth encompasses all sorts and is the better for it.
There are those dripping with ambition who strive to reach the top, whatever that means, and there are those who appear to exhibit no ambition whatsoever.
There are those motivated primarily or exclusively by the pursuit of money and there are those who have little or no interest in money or possessions at all.
There are those who are completely without spirituality and then those whose spirituality and/or religious belief governs nearly every aspect of their lives.
There are those whose life revolves around spending time with friends and family and those who have few friends or family and spend most of their time solo – and who like it that way.
There are those who love holidays, adventures, seeing the world, constantly seeking new experiences … and then those who prefer living frugally in a small community, rarely travel outside it, and for whom a visit down the pub for a pint on a Friday night is all the excitement they need in their lives.
(I saw examples of the latter sort of community on the BBC’s Countryfile transmitted at 6.20pm programme last night, viz. several Scottish fishing village communities on the edge of the North Sea to the north of Aberdeen).
It must be difficult for normal human beings in the 21st Century – surrounded by new technologies, partying, going out to concerts, the theatre and art shows, all the while knee-deep in the gossipy whirlwind of social media – to have any understanding of how and why the Mr O’Neill I mentioned at the beginning of today’s post came to reach his choices and indeed the guideline principles by which he lived his life.
Those of us who regard ourselves as ‘outsiders’ in one form or another may feel that we have a degree of connection with Mr O’Neill and his ilk but (who knows?) we may be just as wide of the mark as everyone else. How Mr O’Neill ended up deciding to live his life seems a little extreme, even for me.
[I guess all this gets filed under the heading that ‘The things I like doing are always perfectly normal, but anybody who likes doing any of them, or indeed anything else, to any greater degree than I do is somehow a bit weird or even kinky …’].
I write as someone who by personal choice doesn’t go out much and tends to survey the world from my bunker via the internet. Inevitably I do dip in and out of ‘the real world’ whenever I feel like it and it suits me, but in the meantime (and generally) I’m perfectly happy as I am, thank you very much.
As far as I’m concerned, each new day is a brand new 24 hours on which I can do anything I like.
Except when, of course – by necessity or choice – I have already have an appointment or meeting in my diary to attend or to host. Such days are not my own. They are someone else’s because in whole or in part I’m going to have to share them with others and therefore will have to compromise on what (plus how and when) is going to happen.
By definition, therefore, they are not days on which I can do entirely what I like.
In a situation thus described weekdays and weekends blend into a mix. If you want to look at it this way, all days are weekends – or indeed all days are weekdays. If I want to ‘work hard’ (whatever that means) over what other people regard as a weekend … and then perhaps vegetate and relax on a Tuesday and/or Wednesday … I can. My choice.
Other people’s plans or schemes wither into insignificance. If I receive a kindly-intended invitation to attend a midweek festive 6.30pm to 8.00pm drinks party on the far side of London – or as occurred not long ago, an invitation to dinner on a Sunday evening – when otherwise I would have been (in other people’s terms) doing ‘absolutely nothing’, I still have to make a choice as to whether I wish to travel across the metropolis – and then later back again – and in the meantime making obligatory small talk, something I’m hopeless at anyway, with some people I know and some I don’t and whom I shall never meet again, when (as an alternative) I could have been perfectly happy doing my own thing at home.
It’s not an easy choice. Or rather, perhaps I should say, a relatively easy one. I’d prefer not to go. And the trouble is, of course, that when you go to something you don’t actually wish to attend, but rather out of obligation … then by definition (99 times out of 100) you’ve already ensured you aren’t going to enjoy it when you do.
I don’t go out much, I gain no pleasure whatsoever from celebrating personal birthdays (though I would defend to the death the rights of those who do) and the annual festive Christmas/New Year period means little to me. Well, other than the fact that shopping (a practice that I hate) becomes even more of a pain because of the crush of people out and about buying their obligatory presents for friends and family.
As I said above, left to my own devices, the likes of Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Eve would be each simply just another blank day in the calendar.
Yes, hello everyone – it’s Mr Scrooge reporting for duty!
