I was given the book “McCarthy’s Bar” by Pete McCarthy
shortly before leaving the States. I
brought it along with me to read on the first part of my journey. It’s a fairly entertaining book, written by
an English author who’s half Irish by heritage.
He spent a chunk of time traveling around Ireland trying to figure if he
belongs there, if he is truly Irish because of his mother’s roots. I did enjoy it, and I thought he had a lot to
say about the current state of things in Ireland, his own journey he was on
during the trip, and ultimately about where we all come from and where we feel
we fit in. In a serendipitous twist of
fate the day after I finished reading the book, the owner of the B&B
brought in his next book “The Road to McCarthy” to leave on the bookshelf
here. I was unaware of the existence of
this book even, so it was quite a coincidence.
I grabbed it before it had a chance to make it to the bookshelf, and
started reading it a while later. This
one is a sequel of sorts, or really maybe more of a companion piece to
“McCarthy’s Bar” in which he travels to other places in the world. It seems to be a more far-reaching concept,
perhaps less about his own heritage, and more about what brings us all together
globally. But I dunno I haven’t finished
it yet… Anyway, I spent like a whole day
devouring the first half or so of the book.
I came across the below excerpt in it, and it really struck a chord with
me.
“There’s no denying,
though, the huge and burgeoning modern need to know where we come from. When I was a kid it seemed most children
would grow up, leave home, then live in the next street to their parents. That doesn’t happen so much now. As we become more socially and geographically
mobile, so the need to belong to some collective past has rocketed; not an
invented need, a plastic heritage, as some cynics suggest, but a genuine
yearning that’s always been there but is no longer satisfied. And for many people…God’s gone missing
too. He may be back one day, but until
then people will seek the reassurance of a wider human context, a bigger
picture in which their own walk-on role gives life meaning and
significance. Everybody wants to be in a
good story. It’s a natural impulse to
shape the random events we live through into coherent narrative, otherwise our
lives would feel like experimental theatre or abstract painting, which would be
a complete bloody nightmare. We need a
good plot, and if God isn’t available to provide it then an epic human story
stretching back in time across far-flung continents fits the bill nicely. And so history and archaeology are all over
our televisions, and genealogical websites implode under the volume of ‘hits’,
I believe they’re called. Americans come
to European archives, and Europeans go to Australian prison records, and people
tramp around the west of Ireland going into every pub that bears their name and
wondering at their place in it all. In a
world that lives increasingly in the moment it’s important to remember where
we’ve come from, or we may wake up one morning unable to remember who we are.”
As I read this I was kind of taken aback. I had never seen what I feel about life and
my own need to travel and investigate the world spelled out so plainly. I think this is the absolute truth. Our own personal narrative has become
increasingly reliant upon what has gone before.
We travel to better understand who we are, where we come from, and where
we fit into this giant mess we call human existence. As we get farther away from the small
close-knit communities of the past, we must create our own community and shared
history, even if that means traveling to the other side of the world to do so
(or at the very least researching online things and people from faraway
places). A shared history and sense of
community no longer needs to come from the people geographically right around
us who we grow up with and know into old age.
In the information age, a community can be based on people who have
never even met face to face, and I think that has made us ever more reliant on
the past to create a sense of belonging.
Seeing the tangible places where things from the past have occurred
makes us feel the commonality between all people. After all, the history of what has transpired
on this planet binds us all. All people
share in it, and we can all learn from it.
Traveling gives us the ability to feel like we are part of a global
community, instead of a just neighborhood community, city community, etc. It bursts the doors open to where we can feel
included. No longer are we destined to a
certain existence simply because of the street we were raised on. Obviously this does not hold true across all
people, but at this point in human history, I would say it is increasingly
becoming the norm.
We all want to feel as though we are important in our own
way. To feel as though our own story IS
unique and needs to be told. We do want to shape our lives into some kind
of “story” that makes logical sense. As
he says, “otherwise our lives would feel like experimental theatre or abstract
painting.” Indeed we all do want to
have some sort of overarching plot to our lives, and it makes me wonder if this
was so in the past? Have we become so
changed by books, movies, etc. that we search for the “plot” in everyday
life? Perhaps living in the past people
were not so consumed with this idea, it is hard to say. As things are now, I think, that is what we
are all searching for in life, how to connect the dots between all of the
incidents in our lives and have them make chronological sense. We are trying to assimilate all the chaotic
data from one existence and have it be coherent. Perhaps this is a futile exercise. Maybe it’s not supposed to make sense, have a
plot, or be coherent. Life is messy, not
orderly. When we try to force it into a
narrative, maybe we are trying to change the fundamental nature of life. But when it comes to your own life, it’s hard
to think that objectively. We all just
want things to make sense to us.
So here I am, living as a perpetual traveler for now,
searching for that binding past to make me feel like I belong on this planet
amongst everyone else. Trying to add
plot points to my story, and figure out what the hell the overarching themes
and plot of my own existence really are.
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