Daire Power | Contributing Writer
Daire is the winner of the Voluntary Tuition Programme’s Secondary School’s Writing Competition. She is 18 years old and is a sixth year in Sion Hill. VTP is a Trinity society which matches up 300 Trinity Students with 300 local primary and secondary school students from the Pearse Street and Ringsend areas to provide them with free tuition every year, as well as running various activities clubs and events for the local community’s young people.
Fellow classmates, friends and other audience members, my name is Daire Power and the topic of my article is ‘I want to break free’. This is a quote from the band Queen, and from listening to the lyrics I think many different angles could be taken when trying to decide what the song is about.
It could be the face value of a woman who has fallen in love with another man and wants to run away to him, as Freddie Mercury depicts beautifully in the music video, moustache and all. Or to want to break free from your life, to change the course you’re currently following for a new, more exciting path, or to break free from the constraints of society, of groups and gangs.
In the 1980’s this song was an anthem in South Africa while Nelson Mandela was imprisoned. So there is no doubt that this song has a strong message and can mean a lot of different things to different people.
I personally think that the song could be a mixture of all the different meanings I’ve mentioned already, but today I am going to use this quote from Queen in a personal way. I want to break free from something, and that is the constraints of growing older.
At every second of every minute of every day we grow older, and supposedly we are maturing and developing life skills. We are forever pushing forward in our life. With each breath we take we are moving from childhood to teenage years to adulthood and eventually old age. And generally I guess life is interesting, fun and exciting. Yet it also sends us on strange journeys where the destination can be unclear. These unknown destinations can be the most amazing surprises. But at an age where we consider ourselves to be most knowledgeable, we can still be afraid of what is in store.
Our leaving certificate is one of the big monsters hiding in the closet of the unknown, along with decisions to do with colleges, courses and careers are ahead of us. And of course all of the other million things floating around them like friendships, relationships, personal behaviour, interests, body image, what to wear on the night out, etc etc. These are just a few thoughts and concerns of hundreds that pass through our minds on a regular basis.
My point is that today at 17/18 years of age we have become overloaded with concerns and worries that constrain who we really are. These forever niggling thoughts affect how we act and how we behave around others. Ten years ago, when we were 7 and 8 what concerns did you have? Did they restrain the way you acted, or how you thought about yourself?
Remember when our hardest decision was what game to play at lunchtime? Remember when kisses really did make it better? Remember when goodbye only meant until tomorrow. Remember when we could play all day and never get tired? Remember when we only had tests, on our times tables or spellings, and they weren’t called exams.
You could say we were young and naïve, and now that we have matured we know the truth, now we can try protect ourselves knowing how hard life can really be. How cruel this world can be, how awfully people can treat each other and how so many can turn a blind eye to the evils that happen every day.
But I don’t think that’s fair to say. Yes we were naïve, and innocent, but we were free. Free to not care. To not be weighed down by troubles of the world. We were confident in ourselves. We could do what we wanted, we could become whoever we liked before the coils of the poisonous snake began to choke on our dreams. A coil wrapping around our bodies with each year we gained. Every breath we took the snake of age squeezed us tighter, filling us with dread. Frightening us further.
We are so afraid of being wrong that many of us would rather not try anything new. A wise woman once said; “Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.” Fear is a quality we have all developed as we have gotten older. Fear of jumping from that tree. Fear of what the others will say. Fear of reaching too high. Fear of rejection. Fear of being shot down. As children we loved freely, and openly. We never thought for one second that love could ever hurt us.
And the largest fear of all, the fear of being wrong. We are so afraid of being wrong, that when someone else is wrong, we are ready to pounce and correct them.
My sister came up to me recently saying “Daire I know why humming bird hums, do you?” I already had a rough idea it had something to do with how fast their wings moved when they flew, but I pretended I didn’t and asked her why. “ It’s because humming bird loves to sing though her friend tortoise said that she wasn’t very good at singing, and told her that she should hum instead and it would be much prettier. So now humming birds hums all the time, wherever she goes”.
Immediately I thought, where did she get this false information from? And I was about to correct her when I stopped myself, and thought, why not let her believe that? It’s much more fun, and maybe she’ll go on and tell her friends and they’ll pass on the story and bring a smile to their parents face. Because it will be too soon that she will be corrected and penalised for every untrue fact she tells. Right now, it is sweet and innocent and fun, and I think we all could do with more smiles and laughter in our lives.
I do understand that growing up is compulsory, I do understand that there is lots of wonderful things to do in our lives as adults. But I feel that our childhood should not be something of a memory. Instead of learning and growing up and away from it, we should learn from it. We should never let it go. It should be a part of us, to cherish and use every day.
I think the world would be a better place if we keep the strengths we have as children. Their honesty. Their fearlessness. Their ability to be wrong, and not let it affect them. Today, we can start to make a difference, and find our inner child again. By little steps we started to walk tall like our elders. By little steps again, we will learn to walk like the children we once were.
I want to break free today, from the snake of aging, the snake that constrains my behaviour. I will break free from those constraints. And I will do that while listening to the golden laughter of my sister as I take my first baby steps again.
