Ná habair é déan é
Anon

We’ve had had this fridge magnet on our oven (!) for nearly two decades and only yesterday did I figure out what it said.

It’s a slogan used by several campaigns. On one website it was labelled as “the rallying call for social, cultural and political change”.

I got a sweatshirt as a present recently saying –

– and I liked the idea of living without limits, of standing tall in the wind, of facing the waves of adversity, with no horizon too distant, no ocean too deep, daring to go where others can’t follow.

Until I came across a quote by Confucius who said, ‘To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short’.

So, yes: pushing the boundaries is good. Going where others can’t follow, not. Neither is to fall short. That is if you want to affect change.

We need social, cultural, and political change to make this world a better place. But we can only do this if we bring others with us. If we go places where others can follow.

And it is not sufficient to talk about it. We have to do it.

On Wednesday of last week, a 162-page Programme for Government of Ireland over the coming five years was published.

According to Christina Finn, writing in The Journal on Thursday, the word ‘continue’ is in the document 249 times, ‘explore’ is in there 34 times, ‘review’ is mentioned 126 times, ‘examine’ is contained in the document 86 times while ‘consider’ is mentioned 56 and ‘assess’ 27 times. 

Ná habair é déan é.

Finally, if you have a few minutes, this article, published in the New York Times last week, is worth reading: The Terrifying Realization That an Unresponsive Patient Is Still in There by Daniela J. Lamas, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She writes that

A provocative large study published last year in The New England Journal of Medicine suggests that at least one-fourth of people who appear unresponsive actually are conscious enough to understand language. As a doctor who sometimes sees patients like this, these findings are, in a word, terrifying.

Studies like this raise the possibility that there are tens of thousands of men and women locked inside their minds, isolated to a degree I cannot even imagine. They are voiceless and largely invisible, with some of them being cared for in nursing facilities.

Now that we know this, how can we ignore this horror?

Now that the An Saol Foundation has shown what can be done, how can the State not sufficiently support it?

We don’t have to go beyond. Just act on what we know. This horror has to end.

Ná habair é déan é.