Time
My wife and I celebrated 21 years of marriage this week. This poem was inspired by something my wife said to me in relation to that chunk of time.
love
Understanding Brotherhood, or Why ‘Bro’ is not a Dirty Word! – Episode 146
In this episode, Dara is scratching his head over the idea of brotherhood. One of four sons, he feels he has a reasonably reliable perspective on his own experience of brotherhood, one he admits was not, nor continues to be, straightforward.
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Turning 50 – If I’m Calm, It’s the Jedi’s Fault! – Episode 138
Dara has just turned 50, and in this episode he lets his mind hover over the moment in an attempted stocktake. Even as he argues for gratitude, he acknowledges how challenging the world is right now. This leads him to consider whether enough weight is attached to softer impulses and emotions. In these times of fracture and isolation and estrangement, should we attach greater significance and worthiness to love and positivity and connection?
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The Dublin Riots: The Denial of Dignity and the Rage of the Unloved – Episode 132
In this episode, Dara tries to get his head around the riots that took place in Dublin recently after a violent knife attack on young children outside their school in the middle of the day. The subsequent outpouring of shock and anger escalated into a night of destruction, rioting and looting in the city centre, fuelled by anti-immigrant rhetoric.
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Don’t Turn Off the Lights! or, Have You Made Room for Romance? – Episode 129
In this episode Dara reveals that he is unaccustomed to the comfort of pajamas. This fact is relevant to a very recent late-night incident that he shares. That same incident concluded with an inherent contradiction relating to the presence of both love and rejection.
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Collective Heartbreak and Tears of a Clown, or How I Baptised my Baby Daughter – Episode 126
In this pendulum swing of an episode, Dara is dancing between joy and pain. It is a journey that takes him from Ireland’s expulsion from the Rugby World Cup last week to the birth of his daughter 10 years ago.
Foundational Beliefs of Identity and Gender-Neutral Parenting, or How I Got Cool With Being a Girl-Father! – Episode 99
In this episode, prompted by Spike Lee’s He Got Game (1998), Dara examines his convictions as a parent, and recalls how an ill-fated Irish journalist helped him get comfortable with the idea of becoming a father to a daughter. He identifies a pillar of his parenting approach that he hopes he will manage to keep intact. He also looks at the idea of gender-neutral parenting, something he tries to adopt with his daughter.
The Vulnerable Idealism of Living With an Open Heart, or There’s One Born Every Minute! – Episode 96
In this episode, Dara examines the centrality of heart to his own personal philosophy. He recognises that his concept of the metaphorical heart is suffused with his natural idealism, and how that can lead him into situations where he can be easily wounded. He argues against the interpretation of open-heartedness being equal to naivete.
Stirring the Masculinity Pot and Countering Dubious Male Voices – Episode 89
In this episode, Dara is all stirred up as a result of the theatre production he is currently working on. The subject of the work is masculinity and the nurturing and shaping of boys into men. Dara admits that the process of examining this subject closely is leaving him exhausted but also inspired and full of almost uncontrollable thought processes and emotional impulses around what masculinity means to him
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The Finding of Gabriel’s Heart
This year’s Christmas story features a man who is desperate for a break so he can feel worthy of his wife’s love. A larger-than-life blind man hijacks his night and steers him on a path towards victory. But is he all that he seems? And what does his one-eyed cat have to do with proceedings?
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