A Strange Sadness

I've just finished writing an article about a celebrated Irish priest-- or rather, a priest of Irish descent. I won't say who, as I like to keep it a secret until it's published. But I came away from it feeling rather sad-- or, more accurately, sorry for myself.

This priest had fingers in a lot of different pies, and buckets of energy. Consequently, he had several "bases" where he could stay on his travels. He always seemed to be meeting people for dinner and staying with them.

This is the sort of thing I've always daydreamed about, but never had. Coming close to my fiftieth year, it seems like a failure.

I've long been fascinated by "soft bonds". I'm particularly, for some reason, fascinated by Eamon De Valera's lifelong connection to Blackrock College-- a connection that continued when there was no formal relationship between them, when he was no longer a student or a teacher there. There's a whole book on the subject. John Henry Newman and his Oxford snapdragons are another example. Yeats and Coole Park is another.

I don't have anything like that. I have no mentor, no fire-forged comrades, no alma mater (in any meaningful sense), no old stomping ground, no war stories. No place where everybody knows my name, and they're always glad I came. There are no doors of institutions open to me when I have no particular business there.

I'm not really talking about friends here. I do have friends, and I'm deeply grateful for them. I'm talking about something different.

Although I've worked in University College Dublin for almost twenty-five years, and value being part of such a permanent institution, I can't really fool myself that I belong there in some deeper sense. Not even the Catholic community on campus-- though I've been going to lunch-time Mass in the church for about fifteen years. I gave a talk to the Newman Society, but it seems to have made zero impression. I suggested a spiritual retreat for staff to one of the chaplains, but after an initial show of enthusiasm, the idea was forgotten about.

Sometimes I like to think of this blog as an institution, but perhaps I am kidding myself.

Doubtless I am overlooking some things (although right now it doesn't seem like it.) I've realized before that my wide-eyed attentiveness to other peoples' stories has often given me unrealistic expectations. It's taken me decades to realize how much people talk themselves up, romanticize, and embellish. Maybe I just have to learn how to do that? And yet...that can't be all of it, can it?

I wonder if other people feel like this? Is it a feature of modern alienation? Is this something other people have, or even feel they lack?

I suppose I have an unfulfilled craving for gemeinschaft rather than gesellschaft.