THE EDGE.(the national dream and Ireland)(Brief Article)(Column)

I know a woman who lives in Chicago, and her life has been divided into two parts--the part where she worked in the jewelery shop and the part where she worked as a manicurist. She's bright and happy, this woman. She says that all she ever wanted to do was work with jewelery and work with nails. She's got to do it all and enjoy it all. You're smirking, aren't you? You're waiting for a snide humdinger of a punchline? I know you are.

Don't change channels, but there isn't a funny bit. She's happy and she doesn't care what you think. Doesn't care if you've been to college and made junior vice-president by the time you're twenty-eight. Doesn't mind if you won the lottery. She's happy and if you are happy, well she's happy for ya.

But I'm Irish and we know that won't do. We don't talk about being happy. When people ask us how we are we say, ah, no point in complaining. So when my friend tells me how happy she has been selling jewelery and shining nails, I feel uncomfortable. What do I say, me who's been brought up in one of the most class-conscious countries in the world? I think: you're happy and you're bright, but you could have done better? What do your parents think? Your neighbors? How can you be happy? Your car is 10 years old!

I've come to realise it's my problem, not my friends. I'm Irish. I have no shareholding in a great national dream. My friend is American. She had a right to pursue happiness. She went after it and caught up with it and now she's happy. She's happy when she sees people doing better than her because if you're happy, well then happiness is as happiness does.

I'm really bothered by this. Why do we Irish have no great national dream? Why are we never really happy unless we're winning at football or watching England lose at football. This past year I've spent a lot of time in America and some time in Australia. And coming back to Ireland I see us afresh, the great shiftless mob of us, spread out on our carpet of money, begrudging, and never enjoying a sweet clear day of happiness. We're not unlike America or Australia, just reduced to miniature and bereft of a vision. We're in a post-colonial phase having been England's pocket lint for so long. We're English-speaking. We've had our struggles. Yet the Aussies and the Yanks have national dreams. We have none. The Yanks ...