Trouble In Paradise

Now and again I crawl out from beneath the rock I reside under and read the papers.
When I do, it generally reminds me why I usually don't bother.

Tiger Woods, for example ...devestating good looks, dizzying career, beautiful wife, gorgeous kids, the epitome of clean-cut family man. Most of us mere mortals would expect him to get down on bended knee to thank the gods for his good fortune and charmed existence.  Instead, he spit in it's eye.

The Irish Economy, once a roaring lion, now diminished to a mewling kitten thanks to greed and stupidity.

The Catholic Church, once the steely backbone of Irish society, now exposed as the sickening face of evil as they chose not only  to protect child rapists, but to actually facilitate them to rape the most vulnerble children in the country for decades, by moving collared perverts from area to area.

James and I are watching the endless analysis of the "toughest budget the state has ever seen".  The unions are beating their war drums, the politicians look grey-faced and beaten, and everybody is busy blaming everyone else for the state of the nation.

James is a nurse and he loves his job. Watching the news, we could be forgiven for thinking that, as a public service worker, the collapse of the Irish economy is his personal fault  (dammit we must have missed that lecture at nursing college...someone should have copied the notes for us!).
We could sit and bemoan our loss of income, carer's allowance, children's allowance etc etc...but we look at Tiger Woods and see a man who apparantly had it all and appreciated none of it.
We look at our nation who was knee deep in wealth, and forgot what was important in our scramble for 3 holidays a year and 4x4's.
We see a church who became so arrogant and so removed from God and people, that they lost all sense of religion and became what they were pretending to oppose.

At the risk of being cliched, we need to stop childishly grasping for external solutions, to grow up and take responsibility for our own destinies.  Heroes are the stuff of children's fairytales. We need to find tangible heros, closer to home, to give us  a sense of what is important and worth striving for.

A gift to many of us special needs parents has been  the ability to recognise the true triumphs in life.  It means nothing to Mr Briers and I that we don't go out, or buy new cars.  We can live quite happily with a cupboard stocked by Lidl and socks from Pennys.

What we do celebrate are the precious  moments when Bob makes eye contact, uses the toilet properly, or instructs us to "lie down!!" so he can have  cuddle.

Maybe the powers-that-be peddle on our outlook.  I don't know...and frankly I don't care.  They are the ones who are losing out.

I'm off to crawl back beneath my happy rock, to hold my children and my lovely husband, and to let the church, the state and the Tiger Woods' of this world inherit the wind.

I pity the fact that they have no idea what  real love is.