How Ireland Changed Me

While I was doing some research before drafting this article, my brain reminded me of a quote from the despicable former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “There’s no such a thing as society”. The past few years in Ireland proved to me that society is the most important thing.

I moved to London during the early stages of an economic boom in the United Kingdom, just a year before Labour won the elections and lead the UK Government in 1997 and people had hopes for the future. That sense of hope was short lived but I think the individualistic mentality of only looking after yourself, focus on your career and get on the property ladder remained unchanged for decades.

In other words, the first change that I am noticing when I compare my life in the UK and my life in Ireland, where I have been living for the past seven and a half years, is that I have learned about the importance of community.

From my first weeks in my new home I realised that neighbours do look after each other and this became apparent later on during the pandemic, which started in my second year in Ireland.

Small parcels with freshly baked cupcakes would appear at my front door and they were the highlight of my months in isolation, bringing such a sense of joy.

Living in London for 22 years really exacerbated my impatient nature, as everything happens at double speed. On the one hand, I got used to efficiency, especially in the services sector, and, on the other, life was so frenetic that you could no longer walk at a normal pace because you had to power your way through crowds of people.

The immediacy of having so many options also meant that you could easily choose something else if your first choice wasn’t available.

Here in Ireland options are limited and so are the opportunities, so you need to train your mind to look out for things, put them in your diary and wait patiently for the time when they will happen. For example, this applies to festivals and music events in Ireland.

Also, if you think you would like to see more of something, say a film festival, you are encouraged to go ahead and try and organise one. Yes, it’s hard work, but the funding is there, waiting to be used by enthusiastic organisers.

When I lived in London your job was what defined you as a person. At parties or at events, someone would come and talk to you and, once they knew what you did for a living, they would make a snap judgement whether they wanted to continue talking to you or not. If you were working in a sector that someone didn’t find useful for their own career, you were not really worth spending time getting to know.

Side note: I once went on a date and this guy was telling me about his elderly mother. It turned out he wasn’t just looking for a partner but also for a carer for his mum and he was hoping to catch two birds with one stone!

Now, looking at the way people interact here in Ireland, I can say that work isn’t the first and most important topic of conversation. Sure, many people will tell you everything that is going on with their children, the school they attend and the sports they practise, but also they will tell you about their own hobbies. People here in Ireland have a life and they want to enjoy it.

Compare that with parties that I attended in London, where my contemporaries were lamenting the fact that, apart from going to work and going to the gym, they didn’t have much spare time and trying new hobbies or having outside interests was impractical.

If you speak to old people in Ireland you will hear two contrasting opinions: back in the day you could trust everybody and keep your front door open as you would welcome complete strangers into your home for a cuppa and everything would be fine. On the other hand, you can’t trust anyone because if you are in your car you need to keep all the doors locked and if you are getting home late at night you need to get a taxi because there are so many bad people out there.

If I compare the way I perceive people here in Ireland to how I did in London, I would say now I am more likely to trust people at face value and, if I need to regret that later, so be it. Maybe it’s something to do with age, who knows? I am older now than I was in London (I still can’t believe it’s been 10 years since the Brexit referendum, which caused me to move).

What I can say without the shadow of a doubt is that I have met some genuinely nice and generous people here in Ireland so I feel more open to meet someone new and get to listen to their life stories.

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