St. Patrick’s Day Toast 2011
Someone I met from Cork once told me that St. Patrick’s Day is a different thing in America than it is in Ireland. To him, America’s version was a product of diaspora (my word, not his), about the longing for land and people left, even if it is generations past. To him, it was also about the celebration of surviving and thriving.
Famine, conflict, you name it, drove people away, but never stopped a heart of people who survived and thrived…the Yeats, the Joyces, the Morrisons, or the creation of charities that made the world better.
The last few weeks friends and coworkers have given me a hard time for being a human news channel ticker in the face of the tragedies in New Zealand and Japan. I would bleat the latest statistics out of being massively overwhelmed by each situation.
But I know these are people who have faced much in their histories and at the end of the day have also made the world better for them being in it.
So on this St. Patrick’s Day, I ask you to raise a glass.
To Ireland.
To New Zealand.
To Japan.
And to all those who survive and thrive.
