No two people live in the same world

Walking from my home in Irishtown to attend a GAA county final in Cusack Park, I suddenly experienced a flash-back from nearly 70 years ago. Trodding down Harbour Street, I met multiples coming to meet me – going in the opposite direction – the wrong direction! It was then a memory hit me from the mid-1950s when I attended my first senior county finals in Mullingar.

It was an era of great hurling in Westmeath, where Wexford’s most famous team beat us in a Leinster semi-final. It was also the commencement of the decade long reign of the iconic Richardstown squad,w to my mind, our greatest club team ever. (Seven of the team were once called up together for county training). Richardstown was a miracle team for more than its hurling prowess. The team had no pitch, no pub, no hall or community centre, no meeting place, nothing but pride in their rural home place and natural talent that was nurtured in Johnstown school playground.

It cannot be overstated what that Richardstown success did for our community – young and old. ‘Jobber’ McGrath would have been the team’s best known player, but they were a family team, if ever there were a family team, backboned by brilliant bands of brothers.

I lived next door to two members of the team, Mick and Danny Forde. My brother Willie and I would go out hurling with the Fordes at the drop of a ball. Mick would see us on the road, come out, hold a hurl up, and with that signal, we sprinted out to play on Cosgrove’s Hill. Daddy would be giving out that Mick and Danny were only using us like ‘golden retriever dogs’ (I never figured why he had to throw in the ‘golden’ word!) but we loved every minute of it.

The flashback I got last week was of listening to the old men emotionally describing every puck of the ball and every wondrous moment recalled from final day. There were no videos or playbacks in those days, so the picture was painted by the recall of the supporter as he saw it. But what I really wanted to tell you about was the incredulity of the Richardstown crowd at going into Mullingar for an occasion, something more important than had ever happened previously in their world, and meeting able-bodied men going in the opposite direction… locals neither knowing, or caring about what was happening in Cusack Park.

So, walking back home after this year’s county final, and remembering the bafflement debated by those impassioned crusaders in the back of Harris’s lorry, Pat Fox’s blue VW fruit ‘n’ veg van (after we helped empty the van!) or Johnny Bartley’s van, (a travelling shop during the week and Harris’s lorry hauled livestock), it dawned on me once and for all that no two people live in an identical world. We live in our own heads and therefore for the eight billion people who occupy our planet, each one lives in a different world. We often hear about ‘sections of the community’, but each section is made up of individuals, none of whom are the same.

Take 10 similar couples living in a nice housing estate, for example. They have similar salaries, the 2.5 children, similar lifestyles and outward habits; but if you got inside each one’s head, you would find that they all live in different worlds. We all live in our own heads and that is why no two people live in the same world. I used this conviction to good effect back when my mother lost the use of her legs and I told her, ‘don’t worry about the legs – we live in our heads and yours is better than most people I know’. She used that as a consolation for the rest of her life.

Our world is in our heads and what creates that world is a complicated combination of experiences and events. Genetics play a big part in formulating the different worlds and of course our family upbringing. Past events before today would naturally have a bearing on the inside of the head, as do our individual perceptions.

The culture we come from and the education we receive help form the lens through which we see our world. To start with, each of our brains is different and each of us has our own unique method of processing information. A simple example of this is that if 10 of us standing on a footpath in town witnessed an accident or assault across the street, and if a garda asked each one of us to describe the incident, no two accounts would be exactly the same.

All any of us can do is to make the most of the world we live in. And it is those eight billion different worlds that make us unique as humans… otherwise; we would all be heading in the one direction heading for Cusack Park!

Don’t Forget

Anybody who claims that this is a man’s world probably gets a lot of other stuff wrong as well.