I don’t know a great deal about the Irish rugby coach and former player Anthony Foley who died last night at the age of 42. To be honest, although I have some interest in rugby union, it’s a name that I have heard of, but that’s it. Not knowing about him was my loss, though, having read the tributes following his passing.
The sport of rugby union will be feeling enormous pain tonight, as of course will his family and friends. Indeed, Ireland will be in national mourning. We wait to learn the causes of his death, but it is his age that I find oh so sad. 42 is nothing.
I return to a recurring theme that my loyal reader will recognise, that where life’s journey ends, we don’t really know. Throughout my life, I have lost friends and family at very times, people of different ages, some who never made it out of teenage hood. If some had survived, perhaps they would still be my friends today, perhaps they would have had children and even grandchildren. Perhaps they would have lived amazing lives as doctors or soldiers or pop stars. They could have been and done anything but it was all done too soon.
As I get older, I feel more than ever my mortality and through my job I understand far better the life ahead for many of us as we move into old age. It can be good, growing old healthily and happily, but it can also be bad as we lose control of our minds and bodies. Sometimes, we lose control much earlier than we expect. The future can be bright but it can also be dark.
I know people who are wealthy and happy and I know people who are not wealthy and happy. I knew people who had money but that money could not buy them happiness or ultimately life. When it comes down to it, life itself is the most precious part.
I know a man who has recently been diagnosed with numerous inoperable brain tumours. He will not be with us for much longer. I know another who has chronic heart disease who once walked everywhere for fun but now can’t even climb the stairs to go to bed and, worse, the toilet. Some of us act like the smoker who always believes that the fatal effects of tobacco will kill everyone else, but not them. We cannot imagine being afflicted by an illness that will kill us before our “natural” time on earth runs out. But it can and often does.
It is why, two and a half years ago, I threw away an admittedly piss poor civil service salary for an even smaller one in the charity sector and I have never regretted a second of it. What do I feel when I see friends and acquaintances driving nice cars, flying round the world, fine-dining and living the high life after a tough week in work? Nothing but best wishes. I like to see hard work rewarded with success and I have learned that someone having more money than you is nothing to fret about or be ashamed of.
As I never tire of saying, we are all different and for some the very buzz of work is the elixir of life. The drive and ambition to get on, to be the best they can and to work for as long as they can – there is nothing wrong with that. If someone gets as much pleasure from their work as I get from my writing, my music, my quality time with my family and friends and of course my new part time job, then I am genuinely pleased for them. I really am.
I am not someone who believes in a God, who maps out our lives, or some kind of fate where things “happen for a reason” because there is almost certainly not a God and things don’t happen for a reason, no matter how consoling and comforting either scenario might be.
Anthony Foley’s tragically premature death should shake us all up, to remind us that we should live our lives to the full and do the things we really want to do. Through the fog of depression, I am trying to do just that before it’s too late.
It’s just not fair, but life is rarely fair. We are, after all, only here because of the accident of our birth and there is no defined path. I came to the view that every day in my dead end civil service job was a day wasted. Nothing has happened since to suggest to me I was wrong.
