*Foreward*

There is an episode of The Simpson’s in which the family sits down to watch some TV and Garrison Keillor is on their TV. He slowly phrases a line about Lake Wobegon and then exhales. The crowd goes wild with laughter. Cut to the Simpson’s staring blankly. Homer gets up and bangs the side of the TV and yells “Be Funny!” Somehow this describes the few weeks after I emailed Gina Hill and accepted her invitation to participate in this write-off. I traveled through my life occasionally beating the side of my head exclaiming, “Be Funny!” but alas, I just can’t think of anything funny about this topic. It’s a pretty lively subject, one would think that an idea would have popped into my head of some sarcastic or witty way to talk about the idea of inspiration, but nothing came. So instead of taking a few steps back and looking analytically about inspiration and what it means to me, I am choosing to take the question at face value and dive into it.

*End Foreword*

I scoured through my pictures of my trip searching for the reason that I went to Ireland. Basically, I was searching for some cue from my memory to recall what prompted me to hop on that plane. But all I can tell you is that I was at a bar with a friend who was planning a trip to the Emerald Isle and too many beers later, he had somehow convinced me that I should join him. I think Mark Twain said that he would always do everything when sober that he promised to do drunk. I try to subscribe to that theory and so I was pretty much locked in. As a bit of background and without getting into too much detail, let me just say that I had been battling a pretty bad case of panic disorder and getting on a plane to a foreign country was last on the list of things my therapist recommended. But somehow in my weird logic, I wanted to face my disorder dead on and was sick of trying to think and talk everything out. So sometime in May 1999, I was on a plane with about $1000 in my pocket heading to the working class city of Dublin, no place to live, no place to stay, and my return ticket had some date in August on it. Although I hadn’t much idea of what to expect, I will say that out of all the places in the world that I wanted to have as my first trip out of the US, Ireland was first. I think it was the music that got me interested. I once had a person tell me that every single Irish song is about Whiskey, Women, or War. He said it in a condescending way, but these things appealed to me. I loved the heartache in tunes by Christy Moore or the drunken sing-alongs to “Whiskey in the Jar.” But the thing that really entranced me was the spirit of Rebel Tunes. Something about the underdog small country of Ireland fighting the Empire of the British invoked the rebel within me. I supposed that’s what those songs were meant to do, but I just couldn’t resist identifying in some weird way with it. I must say that another reason why I decided to go was my travel companion. Somehow I knew that this man had a lot to teach me and if I went on this trip I would be a better person because of it. Let’s call him Tim. Tim is one of those people that you meet once or twice in your life that lives outside the bounds of well, everything. He is guy that lives on impulse and freedom that all of the inspirational movies tell you to aspire to. I felt pretty secure with him as a companion, although I think my parents weren't so sure.

There is great line in the movie “Kicking and Screaming” in which a guy, upon learning that his girlfriend is spending some time in Prague, exclaims, “Oh, I’ve been to Prague. Well, I haven’t been to Prague been to Prague, but I know that whole thing: Stop shaving your armpits, read the Unbearable Lightness of Being, visit houses where Kafka lived, realize how bad American beer is.” So spending your junior year of college abroad and finding yourself is cliché, sue me. I did it, and damn it I’m going to write about it.

So we arrive in Ireland and with a combination of jet lag and the free alcohol I had on the trip over, I am bewildered by the busyness that is Dublin and greeted with a sunny day. Little did I know that that would be about the nicest it would get all summer. So after finding a hostel, what is the first thing to do? Well try the Guinness of course, isn’t that why we had come here? So we found a local pub in the suburb of the city in which we were staying and ordered up two Guinness. In the anticipation of the trip I had wondered in my mind of how to order Guinness. Was it "I’ll have 2 Guinness’s?" Or "2 Guinness?" But it turns out that it didn’t matter because by ordering them by sticking 2 fingers in the air with my palm facing me, I was saying Up Yours to the barkeep anyway. Note to self, in the future when visiting country, read about local customs before going. Regardless of my faux pax, we were served and I took a small slip of this world famous drink (I had purposely never drank Guinness before because I wanted to try it in its homeland first) and thought it to be alright. Not as good as I expected but as bad as my lightbeer-drinking friends had told me. I looked over to my companion Tim who hadn’t touched his yet and was looking at it kind of strangely. He then grabbed the glass and slurped down about ¼ of the pint in one drink. He set the drink down, tilted his head back and let out a sigh that can only be described as orgasmic. I inquired into his well being and he gave me a blissful smile. I had learned my first lesson of the summer. Enjoy the moment. I watched Tim throughout the summer, and every time he had his first drink of the evening, this was always his pattern; he seemed to be experiencing the drink on many different levels that I hadn’t tuned into. Before you chime in an say that this sounds like the first drink of the day for an alcoholic, let me just say that he seemed to do this with his food, his cigarettes, listening to music in the Pub, etc. Everything that he did, he threw his entire attention into. This began to rub off on me. Instead being anxious towards the onslaught of stimuli that was around me, I started to embrace it, enjoy it even.

I have found that there are a couple of extremes to travel: you can get up early, go see all the sites that you are suppose to see (tourist) or you can try to immerse yourself in the culture as best you can (anti-tourist). We choose to do the later, which for Ireland meant experiencing the nightlife.

(Insert two weeks of debauchery traveling from the east coast to the west coast and back again bouncing from pub to pub)

It really is an odd feeling when you are almost out of money in a foreign land. I no longer had the safety net of my relations or friends if I were to get into a jam. But this is where something strange happened. Instead of getting overly worried about it, I just trusted in the fact that when the time came that I would either be pennyless in the gutter or scrambling to find a way home, something would come up. And it did. By being in the right place at the right time, we landed a job working in a hotel on the west coast about an hour away from Limerick. My second lesson had been learned. Sometimes you just have to let life flow around you and it will push you the right way.

Allow me to say a few words about Ireland. It really is a wonderful place. Ireland is a land that is blossoming in the new world economy. From what I hear, it is a very different place than it was 10 years ago. Its youth are starting to lead the charge in bringing the country to the 21st century. Whether this is a good or bad thing, I will leave up to you. If you are expecting to see horse drawn wagons on every road, you will be disappointed, but you can find a small corner pub with a fiddle and a tin whistle just about everywhere you go. The people have a genuine knack for making you feel welcome. One afternoon, on a rare day off from serving at the hotel, I was sitting in a pub reading a book (On the Road by Keroac of course) and a fairly attractive, mid 20’s woman approached me. She informed me that they (I’m assuming the citizens of their country) had a rule in which noone can sit alone in a pub and that I must join her and her friends for the rest of the evening. That was just kind of the way it was. I always felt like if I wanted to meet someone, I could go down to a pub and someone would end up striking up a conversation with me.

Towards the end of my journey, I was eager to get home. I missed a Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich. I missed the warmth of the summer. I missed the comfort level of completely understanding the norms and rules of a culture. But I think my biggest surprise was how much I missed my relationships with people. So I think I learned my last lesson. The people around you are more important than you realize. When I arrived home, again taking into account my delirium from the jet lag and free alcohol on the return trip, I hugged my mother in a way that I will never forget. Not in my soft usual “Nice to see you, Mom” way, but in a “Wow! I really missed you and it is nice to hug you” way. It was one of the best hugs in my life. (Happy Mother’s Day Mom)

So you as the reader are probably wondering, “Nice Story, Roark, but what the HELL does this have to do with inspiration or hope?” This was the event in my life that gives me my inspiration. This is the time in which I can look back and say that when a challenge arose, I rose up to meet it. It helped with my panic disorder because it gave me a new perspective of life in which I know that no matter what kinds of things happen, I’ll find a way to get through them. Ireland will always be the place that I started to live life instead of being afraid of it.

Oh, I also learned that sleeping in a field isn't that bad unless it starts raining and no matter what month it is, skinny dipping in the Atlantic is really really cold. But that's a whole different story.

This review was written for inclusion in the Reflections of Hope Write-Off, hosted by GinaHill and Angelabar. Please take time to visit the other participants reviews which can be found here: http://www.pronetisp.net/~anjuliz/hope.html, a special webpage designed by Angelabar for this write-off. You might want to keep this page in your favorites as there are other Write-Off pages created by Angelabar - for past, present and future Write-Offs.

The participants include: 29th_Candidate, AdaDavis, Angelabar, danni_d, darkmistress, debbie26, Dr_Steph, Ed_Grover, ezreka, fallyn96, fjbpab, flamepillar, fragglemom, ginahill, hawgwyld, jankp, jkkelley, jo.com, khahn86351, kittyokc, mellkinwa, missy32, murasaki, nwinston, phineaskc, roark_8, Sordid-1, Sloucho, SurgRN911, Sumo_Rhino, Westerbear

Recommended: Yes