To mark St Patrick's Day I sat down to write something about what it means to be Irish. In my mind I had something about the contrariness, our beautiful contradictions. And maybe I will get to all of that another day.
But this is what came out on the page instead. And maybe this answers the question better than what I hoped for.
Years ago I worked in an Irish pub in London during a summer break from college. Not one of the kind of trendy Clapham bars that Paul Mescal might frequent — an old school drinking pub in North London at the turn of the millennium.
The daily regulars were men in their 50s and 60s who had left Ireland in the 50s and 60s, to work in London. The majority of this generation had worked hard, sent money back to Ireland at a time the country didn't have any. Many had met a partner, settled there or returned. But many - like these men - had remained. Stayed single, with a significant relationship with alcohol.
For the most part they were decent men who tolerated my inability to pull a good pint, mostly because I hadn't figured out that pub and home measures of whiskey were different. They enjoyed the spoils of my ignorance.
I liked our chats. But I felt for them.
They were thoroughly, completely Irish - yet had lived in another country since their teenage years. For some, the vast expanse of their entire adult lives had been spent on foreign soil. But they dreamed of Ireland. They asked me endless questions about home. They told me their own stories of growing up, of the fields and the towns they had left behind, and how they longed to go back.
Home. They still called it home. It would always be home. Even those who hadn't returned since they left in the 1950s. Perhaps they had never returned because some part of them already knew - that the longing inside them was for a place that didn't quite exist anymore. Had it ever?
There was one man - let's call him Sean. From Mayo. Sweet and shy when sober, sparky and witty after a few drinks, maudlin and quiet after a few more. He had booked a flight - his first ever - to go home to Westport for the first time since he left. For weeks beforehand he spoke of it like a literal visit to Tír na nÓg was ahead of him.
I didn't know him well but I worried for him. I was a Celtic Tiger cub of sorts — without the money and the flash cars, it has to be said. But I knew Ireland had changed enormously even in my short lifetime. From Haughey's demand everyone tighten their belts in the 1980s to the government handing out free money through SSIAs at the peak of the boom. Unimaginable changes had happened since Sean had last set foot in the country.
His trip came and went. A short week. His first holiday at the age of 68.
When he came back, he was quiet. He didn't engage much with anyone. His spark had gone.
On my last shift before I returned to Dublin, he finally spoke. He didn't know the place. He had met cousins, relatives - they didn't know him nor really want to, he said. Everything was fast. It felt the same as London. It didn't feel Irish. It didn't feel like home.
"What had it all been for?" he asked. He looked at me. This wasn't rhetorical. He was waiting for an answer.
"Maybe this is your home?" I said tentatively, completely out of my depth.
He shook his head slowly. He had spent nearly 50 years in London but had never tethered himself to it. The longing for home had surpassed his entire lived experience. And now he could see it clearly - the vision he had carried all those years was a mirage. He was simply lost. Unable to find his way home.
I don't know what became of Sean. I heard he came back to himself after a while. Pre-mobile phones, eventually I lost touch with everyone from that summer.
I was moved, years later, when the Irish government did highlight and put in place some meaningful supports for the generation of Irish men and women who had found themselves in this in-between state in the UK - elderly, displaced, unmoored. But many more slipped through the cracks.
So why am I telling you this story on St Patrick's Day?
When I sat down to write something about what it means to be Irish, I thought I knew what I was going to say. I planned to mention Sean's story. But it became its own story and rightly so.
Maybe because it's part of my own heritage - my parents were part of that same generation, having met in London. I am here because they were there. Or maybe because it speaks to something bigger than Ireland.
There is a sadness and empathy in the Irish psyche - a deep loving concern - borne from centuries of displacement. Yes — we have built remarkable things in the countries we ended up in, literally and metaphorically. We have been creative and resilient and endlessly adaptable. But we did it while living in an in-between space. Neither here nor there. A kind of limbo that gets carried quietly, in the bones, from one generation to the next.
And so we carry it. All of us. Irish or not.
The longing for a place called home. The ache of the in-between. The grief for a version of somewhere that may never have existed quite the way we remembered it.
Because right now, across the world, millions of people know exactly how Sean felt. They are sitting in places that are not home, carrying an image of somewhere they may never see again. Some left by choice. Many did not. Many had that choice made for them by war, by persecution, by poverty, by politics. The lucky ones dream of going back. The unlucky ones know there is nothing left to go back to.
Ireland knows this story. It is our story. It has been our story for centuries.
And perhaps that is why, on St Patrick's Day of all days, we might pause before the celebrations and hold space for every person living in that in-between. The displaced. The stateless. The ones who left and the ones who were pushed. The ones still searching for the place they can finally call home.
We know what that feels like. In our bones, in our history, in our music and our literature and our long, long memories.
We must never forget that we know.
Lá Fhéile Pádraig Sona Daoibh. 🍀
Paula McGovern is the founder of Wizard & Grace Wellbeing, an Irish essential oil candle brand handcrafted in West Cork. She writes occasionally about business, wellbeing and the things that matter.
