We all need a space just to be ourselves

Fr Jason reflects on how he meets 'real people' in the spaces they are most comfortable in his popular column Let the busy world be hushed...

I’m not all that keen on front rooms, as often they can be cold and unfrequented, a room bedecked with shining ornaments and chandeliers, shelves above the television set lined with sets of encyclopaedias from bygone days. The fire place standing empty of fuel that gives it life, walls beautifully papered, lined with Wedding, First Communion and Confirmation photographs of people standing poised in their Sunday best. Sets of fine bone china cups and matching saucers and side plates with yellow roses and sparkling Cavan crystal vases and trophies displayed in well-polished glass cabinets, awaiting a visit of the Parish Priest or Santa Claus at Christmas.

You know when you’re brought to the front room that you’re a stranger, a visitor not yet vetted for slipping in the back door, for fear that the basket of clothes might be asunder in the middle of the floor beneath the washing machine ready for separating the colours from the whites or the plates with the remnants of the dinner, yet to be washed, left unattended in the sink.

For here in the kitchen, unlike the sterility of the front room, life is truly lived in all its varying colours; where things are as they are, where people are as you find them, asleep beside the Stanley range, boots off and feet outstretched with holes in the heels of working socks. In the kitchen, at least in kitchens as they used to be, devoid of islands and marble tops, things are as you find them, the beating heart of how life is lived, radiators lined with underpants and football shorts, drawers full with bits of nothing, screws and nails and radiator keys, notes stuck in jars on this shelf and bills in the corner of that shelf. Here it is that people feel at their ease, not long in the door of an evening, relaxed at the table in their working clothes, a mug of warm tea between their hands as they watch the remainder of the six o'clock news. Here in the midst of the everyday, life is really lived.

For this is how it has always been in homesteads long ago, where people used to lift the latch and walk right into the kitchen, this was the room where life was lived; the table covered in flour and left over raisins, all swept aside to make the tea, chairs pulled up to greet the visitor, the smell of bread baking and cabbage on the boil, all that which was familiar, the messiness of life shared by every neighbour in every kitchen across the townland. Here, within, you were welcomed, part and parcel of what was going on, no marble countertops nor islands, a settle bed against the wall, a dresser to show off your willow pattern plates, here you entered in without formality, to the heart of people’s living, far from the coldness of the Parlour room.

For often we feel we must put on a show, of confining the mess to the utility room, laundry shoots and boot rooms, plates piled high not in sinks but in dishwashers, close the door and conceal it all and so it is with life and living, we are taught to conceal the messiness that lies within - the heartaches, the troubles, the pains that occupy the mind.

Our young people are being schooled by that which they watch and read that all must be perfect in the image that they present, the airbrushed photo of living your ‘best life’, smiles and fake tans and pursed lips, ripped stomachs and bulging pecks, the perfect skinned fades that must be sheared every week or so.

It’s hard to be yourself, warts and all, in a world that resembles a cold front room where we are presented with life in its ideal, poised photographs dressed in Sunday best, constant reminders of that which is the ideal. Those who do not grow up before their time, who do not conform to this image, can feel somewhat isolated, adrift from the crowd, pressurised by social norms among their peers, into changing.

But, though they strive for that which is seen to be perfect, all is not well, with ever increasing numbers of young people attending mental health services, waiting lists for counselling services that never reach their end.

We, as grown-ups, also fall into this trap and wear masks that present an image we believe the world expects, one has only to look at Facebook profiles, the perfect photographs taken in shining front rooms, influencers that we follow portraying the flawless life, a life that we should aim towards if we hope to achieve fulfilment. You only have to look at comments made about others on Twitter who do not conform.

If this is the message we hand on to our young people, that life is lived in the cold front room, then we are doing them a huge disservice. Life is lived in the messiness of the kitchen, it is there you can grow and be yourself, it is there you are welcomed by the heat of the range, throw off your boots and reveal your heelless socks. We all need a space just to be ourselves, devoid of masks or who it is we are expected to be.

So let us embrace the messiness of life for therein the lessons for living are learned.