It took only two hours after returning from Ireland for reality to set back in. The familiar odor of The Hotel transported me right back into life here in Los Angeles, and immediately made me “homesick” for the land of leprechauns and red heads. (For those who don’t know, Johnny, Joe Fever, and I spent a week plus exploring and falling in love with Ireland.)
The trip we took gave me a new perspective on life and the world around me. I can now appreciate, and more importantly, depreciate, the immediate world I live in.
I stepped into Gold’s Gym Monday night to get right back into my workout routine. After changing, I stood on the balcony outside of the men’s locker room and looked at the floor below and thought to myself, “Look at all these assholes.” It’s sad. All of the people working so hard below for the perfect body; they need to look more attractive to their partner, maybe to meet the sexiest woman, or to appear better than the person standing next to him, and sadly, I was there with them, working out to make myself look better. I actually enjoy running every night. Running with headphones blasting music is my meditation. For two hours every night nothing can bother me. But what is the underlying goal? So I can be in better shape than the guy next to me and appear slightly superior. What a horrible and self-centered underlying reason.
People in Ireland don’t look at you that way. Hell, during the entire trip, we didn’t come across one gym, and I might have only seen two or three people running. And I guarantee they weren’t doing it to be better than someone else, but rather to only improve upon themselves. (I wish that were my only motivation.) I have a certain expectation I must live up to here; a certain character I have to play in my life. In Ireland, the locals had no preconceived notion of who I was supposed to be other than to be a friendly and respectful person. They didn’t care what I did for a living; they only cared about the kind of person I was. I was free to be anybody I wanted to, and I chose to be as honest and authentic as I could be. And I felt more like myself than I have for a very long time.
There is a standard people here have to live up to in the States which is shoved in their face every day.
American men see athletes going to every extreme to be the best they can be, even if the only way they can be the best is by cheating (I’m looking at you Bonds). You see typical L.A. douche bags wearing scarves in the middle of summer because it’s the new, “hip” accessory. They walk around with faux vintage t-shirts which probably cost more than a small car and were made last week. They have a stench of superiority, not giving a rat’s ass unless you are up on what’s “hot” that week. In Ireland, men aren’t in competition against one another, they just want to have a good time and share a pint.
American women compare themselves to the actresses they see on the cover of magazines at the grocery store. American women (and this is a broad generalization from my personal experience) four out of five times care much more about what you can do for them or how you look on their arm than getting to know you. If your looks don’t live up to the twisted ideal of the “perfect guy,” certain women won’t even give you the time of day.
One thing specifically I did notice was how not in-shape a great deal of the women there were. Now, I’m not saying they were fat or anything like that, but rather a little less tone. (I hope that makes sense.) And honestly, it didn’t take away from the attractiveness factor at all. Women in Ireland are amazingly genuine and there is no air of superiority. You will see the most beautiful woman with a below average guy (by US standards) because the woman sincerely wants to be with him. She probably sat down and really got to know him and cares much more about what makes him tick than what he looks like on the outside.
I didn’t see any kind of unhealthy, unreachable standards in Ireland.
And honestly, taking this all into account, it makes me not want to date another American woman again.
On a small transitory note: Comparing the population of Ireland to Los Angeles, they differ by only about a million people, Ireland being the larger of the two. Decently comparable. In Los Angeles, of all the women in the city, only about fifteen to twenty percent of them are attractive, and of that percentage, only about five percent of them are actually approachable. In Ireland, about eighty to ninety percent of the female population is attractive and all of them are approachable.
One of the first things Johnny told me on our first night out was, “Hey man, I know you can talk to pretty much anyone, but here, you really can talk to anyone.” At the first pub we hit, a group of five women were sitting at a table and Johnny told me to go over and talk to the broads. Instinctively, I refused because if it was a group of five women in the States, if I didn’t live up to a certain preconceived standard, I wouldn’t have even been acknowledged. One of the ladies broke off and came up to the bar and Joe immediately struck up a conversation with her. And she was more than happy to entertain all three of us world-weary travelers. I was blown away. At the moment, I had to throw out my L.A. goggles, and embrace the openness of Irish woman.
There are no egos in Ireland. People genuinely want to talk to you and get to know you for you. Paul and Barry at Farrington’s in Dublin were more than hospitable, treating us like we’ve been posting up at their pub since we reached the legal drinking age. I made so many new friends, both male and female, just by saying, “fuck it” and sparking up a conversation. Hell, if I didn’t say “fuck it” I wouldn’t have gone back to the Front Door Bar in Galway to spend time with Siobhan, the most beautiful woman I have ever met (which led me to meeting her fellow bartender, Declon, a very cool dude who just so happens to be spending his summer working in Philadelphia).
Outside of the great people, their world is generally a lot cleaner than ours. I can’t walk a block in Los Angeles without seeing a piece of trash on the ground. We have litter laws here in the States, which, from what I can tell, are never enforced. In Dublin, you see a garbage receptacle every fifty feet with a butt can for cigarettes attached. I didn’t see one cigarette butt tossed in the gutter in Dublin. I found four beer cans in the bushes outside my apartment this afternoon.
There are occasionally instances where you’ll find litter, such as outside Hillbilly’s Fried Chicken in Cork. After a night of pint-pounding, the whole mess of drinkers meets at this fried food establishment and chow down. This frenzy lasts for about forty minutes before everyone disperses, leaving the ground peppered with wrappers. A major cleaning crew takes to the square and spends the next hour sweeping everything up as if no one had ever been there. It seems Ireland knows it benefits their citizens as well as the image of the towns to keep clean, making it a much more enjoyable place to visit and live. As much as I love Los Angeles, its citizens sometimes are so self-involved, showing respect for their home is the last thing on their minds.
I live in a city whose major export is ego. I know I’ve used this word a lot, but it’s sad that I am so assimilated into the way things are run around here. It's a shame. I know after returning from my time abroad, I need to take a good look at my US based shortcomings. I must try to embrace the warmth and humility the Irish people showed me and incorporate it into my own life. I want to go back to feeling like myself.
The US needs to get its priorities straight because having the sexist body or the best looking girlfriend is the last thing we should be worrying about. We should be more focused on being better friends than just being better.
I must leave what I left far behind… So goodbye, sweet Roisin Dubh… I say goodbye… Until we meet again…
