Why our words matter

COMMUNICATING WITH CONSIDERATION Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who last week spoke to the UK parliament about courage and urged people to understand and learn from their past. Pic: CC0/1.0

The Cast Stone
Michael Gallagher

Those of us with an interest in words have had an interesting few weeks here in Ireland recently. We’ve heard some people talk about ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationhood’, ‘courage’ and ‘conviction’. We’ve heard them tell the world that we’re ‘full’, we’re ‘over-run’ and some speakers have even spoken about ‘a nation of saints and scholars’. Thankfully, there are a lot of scholars in our nation – I’m not sure about the saints, they wouldn’t be much craic anyway.
There’s a line in a song from back in the ’80s – ‘Words don’t come easy to me’ – but Irish people have never suffered from that particular affliction, and now, more than ever, we’re avalanched by expression.
I regularly drive my loved ones dotty by drifting out of conversations just to think about a word. I know this sounds crazy (and my wife tells me there’s no medical cure), but words and actions are very important. They should not be used in a fit of pique or passion without context.
On Wednesday last, Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited London under the gaze of the world’s media. The president of Ukraine was clad in his customary military fatigues and spoke with deep pride, passion and courage in front of his nation’s flag.
His delivery, his words carried weight. His eyes expressed the fight, fatigue and determination of his people. He didn’t talk about a utopian existence or hark back to some nonexistent golden generation in his war-ravaged nation. Instead he asked for help, cooperation and understanding.
How different to the rhetoric we’ve heard here in Ireland from some agitators in recent weeks.
Zelenskyy spoke about a sense of brotherhood, a better world and a sharing of resources. He spoke about courage and urged listeners to understand their past and their present. In essence, he asked for us all to learn from our history.
Therein lies a real bug bear of mine. What do we know about out history here in Ireland? Is it a mixture of Michael Collins, PΡdraig Pearse, Cromwell, Michael Davitt, the Famine, General Humbert and the War of Independence? Is it sepia-stained frames of ‘Irish good – Brits bad’ with a sprinkling of monks, monasteries, mad warrior queens and a Salmon of Knowledge thrown in somewhere with a blonde woman from a land of eternal youth?
Maybe it is! When I hear speakers talk about a land of saints and scholars and ‘Ireland for the Irish’ I suspect their intake of historical facts has been limited.
Have they no concept of learning from the past? Have they no feel for who we really are? The ‘Irish’, as they describe us, are far from perfect, and we certainly haven’t lived in a land of milk and honey when left to our own devices.
When I was going to school our history books finished with the War of Independence. It was deemed a glorious victory over the British oppressors, but there were no following chapters telling us what happened in the aftermath.
There were no history books telling us how we Irish abandoned communities in the northern section of our island. We Irish turned our backs on them and left them to face decades of oppression because of the ‘Half a loaf is better than no bread’ bunkum trotted out. We Irish fought a tyrannical Civil War where we pulled one another into courtyards on spring mornings and executed young men mercilessly (much more frequently than the British ever did). We Irish tied one another around land mines and set them off. We Irish ethnically cleansed those of the minority Protestant population from various communities. We Irish should hang our heads in shame for the atrocities we brought to our own people.
So, to those speaking about ‘we Irish’ and the ‘land of saints and scholars’ and those telling the world we’re ‘full’, and those talking about ‘patriotism’ and ‘nationhood’ and ‘courage’: Learn your history. Learn what real courage is. Speak from a position of knowledge, speak about ‘help’, ‘cooperation’ and ‘understanding’; speak about realities; don’t grandstand and wrap yourself in a flag that covers more scars than we like sometimes to admit.
Zelenskyy didn’t overburden with rhetoric during his London trip, but the words he used were prophetic, simple, courageous and determined. He didn’t need to shout or roar or prance around. He knows his history.