Everyone’s life contains twists and turns and at this stage you might have an interest in where I am coming from – as is said so often nowadays.
(Or you may not, in which case you can fast forward to the next Sub-Chapter)!
I am currently a community worker and a psychotherapist, who started off my career as a soldier and a physicist. I love cycling, music and anything to do with boats and rivers. I am a son, brother, husband, Dad, and Granddad – in that order! I was in the Defence Forces for over 22 years – a considerable slice of anyone’s life. But I believe that community work is my real strength.
I feel very lucky that I found something interesting to do with my life and I don’t take it for granted.
Now I was intrigued, when I started writing this, to see what would emerge (we’ll be using that word again) if I threw the experiences of family life, soldiering, boating, physics, psychotherapy, music, and community work into a pot and mixed them all together. I’d like to think that I bring the best of what I have learned in all the above to community work and to this website also.
I went to secondary school in Sexton’s St. CBS in Limerick. I was never the brightest in any class that I was in but I was (and still am) quite a hard worker. I retain a lot of core beliefs about hard work from my schooldays. This, of course, was matched by the work ethic in my home and, I believe, in my extended family in general.
In my teens/twenties I was quite good at physics (and mathematics) in fact I loved both subjects but in particular what was, in my day, (and probably still is) called experimental physics. I’ll skip over all the failed exams of my early academic years – (moving swiftly along – I think is the best expression to use here), except to say that on my journey I learned the very valuable lesson that I wasn’t bright enough to do nothing and still pass exams like some of my more academically inclined friends and acquaintances.
Following my Leaving Cert I joined the Army as a Cadet, and two years later I was appointed as an officer in the Signal Corps – that’s the part of the Army that is in charge of communications – mostly electronic communications nowadays – since flags, smoke signals, and pigeons are not used that much anymore!
On my eventual qualification from University with a degree in physics and maths (after, yes, you’ve guessed it – a lot of hard work) I was appointed to a post as an electronic engineer in the Army Signal Corps which I served until I left the Army in 1990.
I spent a number of years in jobs with responsibility for installing/repairing radios and radar systems in air bases, naval bases and ships, and teaching young signalmen, airmen and pilots about radio and radar. I got some enjoyment and job satisfaction out of it and I suppose I was reasonably competent but I never had a great idea or a wow moment and if I am to be honest I never considered myself to be great at it!
However I enjoyed most of my life in the Army, and am very proud to have made some contribution – however little. I particularly enjoyed the Signal Corps so long as I wasn’t posted in what I considered to be meaningless bureaucratic roles – which I endured for about five out of all my years in uniform.
Now while I was never over-confident about my talents in engineering, radio/radar, etc., I considered myself a good listener as an officer, and I would try to help soldiers (some of whom, in those days, were from not very advantaged backgrounds) with different problems that they had. I sometimes tried to hide this helping part of me (though I don’t believe that I ever succeeded) because I feared that if I listened to soldiers’ problems, and empathised with them, I might be deemed to be not keeping the distance that officers were expected to keep from other ranks – as military men who were not officers were known those days in the Army. (Of course I didn’t know the meaning of the word empathy in those days).
But nowadays I am very happy with this part of me. And looking back I realise that my thoughts had more to do with my own fears than some imagined attitude of colleagues with whom I generally got on very well and with whom I had and still have long-lasting friendship.
However, as a person that took soldiering seriously, I did connect , in some way, my tendency to empathise with my image of myself as a military man.
Because accepting that acknowledging the pain (or even the potential pain) of others was a gift that I wished to embrace changed my attitude to soldiering – and, thereafter – militarism in general.
I suppose that I might as well say here that I suffer from a rare condition not easy to diagnose.
It is a mixture of naivety, over-enthusiasm, and idealism. A lot of my motivation to join the Army was patriotic. Looking back on those days now, I can say that I was a little disappointed and disillusioned that my idealism wasn’t matched by the career in the public service realities that I encountered all around me, after I was commissioned and began to serve in ordinary barrack life, and in particular as I rose through the ranks.
But change – even though I was not aware of its full implications – was on the way!