The second coming

My first son was born during a snow storm. It was also the time the banks failed and the economic crisis started. The good times were over. We had lived to excess during the boom years and now we had to pay for it. Figures so huge they did not mean anything, were owed to nameless bond holders and banks by every man, woman and child in Ireland. My newborn was in debt up to his barely opening eyes. The media was full of panic and doom. It was a scary time. Would there be a run on the banks? Would all our savings be wiped out? People heard overnight their homes were worth a fraction of what they had taken out a huge mortgage for last year. You could not sell your house if you wanted to because you could not clear your debt with bank. Scenes of panic on the news as Lehman Brothers, a bank I had never heard of, closed it’s doors in New York. Everyone was worried, pensions were wiped out. People were loosing their the jobs. People losing their homes. And riding on the heels of the shock and the worry came the anger and the blame. How could this happen? Who’s fault it it? Who knew? We were being told by the media that we had lived to excess in the Celtic Tiger. We had got ahead of ourselves. We had notions that the good times would never end. We were careless and reckless and now we must pay. But the vast majority of folk like myself looked around their modest homes and lives and knew their were being falsely accused. And so the anger came and the outrage and disgust. We heard about the few who made millions through the loopholes in the law. We raged against the Powers That Be that fostered a society built on greed; a government paid by the people who squandered our money, who did not protect us. We were angry and afraid and the media related this to us and amplified it.

I stopped watching TV. Listening the radio. Reading about it, in any forum. I came to a point where I was anxious and angry and tired from it all.

I feel like that now again. In the last month or so, wherever I looked, I am surrounded by sexual harassment and abuse. Day after day, yet another powerful man is identified as a perpetrator of sexual harassment. Another public figure is revealed to be an evil destroyer of women and children.

On a Saturday my treat is to get the papers, some danishes and sausages and have a long leisurely brunch at home. Lots of food and coffee and a flick through hard copy news print. Today as well as the what’s hot right now and the restaurant reviews, I read articles about Tom Humphries. A man who used his position and intellect to groom and abuse a young girl and was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison this week. Two and a half years for destroying her childhood. Harvey Weinstien has no criminal charge against him, despite all the press and media coverage. despite the allegations and FBI stings. He is, at the moment, the face of sexual harassment ( Google for a an image of sexual harassment and you will get his picture) and yet he is a free man.

Everywhere I turn in the media or online, women, are speaking out about the abuse or harassment they have been victim to. The mass societal outpouring of anger and fear are all around me. It feels like is is happening again, the media is telling me who to hate. I am being surrounded by anger and grief.

I watched my six year old’s hurling training this morning. As I stood there, freezing, I thought about the stories I had heard on the radio this week about sexual predators in sporting organisations. I thought about the harassment and abuse stories that are breaking since the outing of Harvey Weinstein. I looked at the men who have given up their Saturday mornings to coach a load of six year old boys. I watched the enjoyment and concentration on my baby boy’s face. I looked at the crowd of parents standing on the sidelines in the bitter wind. Predominantly male. I looked at all the dad’s there and I couldn’t get my head around it. Like at the time of the crash, neither I, nor anyone I knew had lived to excess during the boom. This time I looked around and I wondered how many men here are perpetrators of sexual harassment or abuse? How many are horrified by it and how many are unaware and how many are doing it? I thought of all the good men out there and the good men I know. I thought of all the hurt and hatred I heard and read this week.

I am left with a lot of questions. About what it means to be a man. About evil and abuse. About what it means to be a woman. A lot of questions I don’t know the answers to. I’m back to anger, fear and tiredness.

I wonder if in the last ten years our society is determined to rip itself asunder. I don’t know if we are rooting out the badness. If we are exposing the wounds and the infection for all to see, so that we can heal or destroy ourselves. I feel that I am living through the painful years that lead to the change. I’m afraid the change that might come may not be a good thing.I’m angry, I’m afraid, I’m confused, I’m tired. And running through my head are the words “And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I think it’s time again to stop watching and reading the news. I fear for us. However, I know I can care but not engage, so I need to focus on the good. I will turn my focus to how lucky I am. How my micro-society is full of good and wonderful men and women. I don’t know if I am deluding myself. If I am putting my head in the sand. But I can’t believe all men are are capable of being evil to their core. I feel, in the media at the moment, that the message is a high percentage of men are these misogynistic haters. The bad man is everywhere, lurking behind his apparently normal facade. That message is wearing me down. So I am going to take a break. I will think about the joy on my son’s face this morning when he was awarded player of the week and not fear for him, in the world he is growing up in.

W.B. Yeats: The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?