We moaned our way through the boom and forgot all about gratitude

EVEN if you didn’t do everything you planned, this Easter, you probably had a better holiday break than did Joe Duffy, who was minding his own business last week when a car reversed into him with enough enthusiasm to break his leg in two places.

He never saw it coming, since the car snuck up from behind him, reportedly in reverse.

Joe fell to the ground (as you will, when one of your key support systems is rendered inoperative) and did what one does in this situation. He yelled in pain.

According to a good source (Joe himself) while he was lying on the ground, presumably face-up, getting over the surprise and coping with the pain by yelling, at least one passerby came over, looked down at him and asked the obvious question: “Is that you, Joe?”

Oddly, Joe, when recounting this idiocy, seemed more bothered by his own yells of pain (“I’m a complete wimp,” he confessed) than by the daft inappropriateness of the question put to him.

Fortunately, as well as the passersby eager to make sure that they were gawking at the right man, another visitor to the scene happened to be a doctor, who, before the ambulance arrived, examined the broadcaster, briefly disappeared and came back with a syringe of something, perhaps morphine, to ease the excruciating pain.

When Joe, high as a kite on painkillers post-surgery, spoke to Marian Finucane at the weekend from his hospital bed, he got quite exercised over not knowing who the doctor was. Because he was grateful to him and wanted to express his gratitude in a more personal way than “Hey, you out there with the medical qualifications, wherever you are, thanks for reducing my misery.”

Not only was Joe grateful to the passerby doctor, he was grateful to St James’s hospital, where he swore that everybody around him, as well as himself, was getting great treatment. Excellent treatment. The best treatment in the world, in fact.

He was grateful to friends and strangers who had made their concern known to him and his wife June. He was grateful not to be in as bad a way as some of the other patients suffering around him. He was grateful. Full stop.

Now, the fact is that Joe Duffy, stuck in hospital over the long weekend, had good reason to be anything but grateful.

He was the victim of a random vehicular incident (as they’re now called.) He did nothing to provoke the car that ploughed into him and he will not like the sequel to the surgery the injury required. He’s a man who devotes time and energy to keeping fit and who loves activity. No matter how expertly the pins have been fitted in his leg, he’s going to be severely hampered for some time to come. Plus, he’ll be permanently scarred.

Yet he spent no time on any of that. No, he had to devote himself to delivering more gratitude. This time it was to Marian herself and to Gay Byrne, who had, Joe said gratefully, reminded him that nobody was indispensable. (Marian was a bit iffy about accepting his thanks on that one, denying she’d ever said anything so blunt.

It had the ring of Gay Byrne, though, in its tough, “look after yourself, life’s short” kindness.) Isn’t it ironic, that a man who spends his days provoking people into complaint would be so uncomplaining in response to such a personal setback?

He has carved out a niche, through the delivery of sympathetic moans, little sighing nudges and bored mutterings, for the whingers, the disaffected, the moaners, the outraged. Managers of companies in trouble would infinitely prefer to take their chances with Miriam or Mark on Prime Time than jump into the open grave that is Liveline.

Liveline is the radio version of Peig Sayers, rendered less boring than the Dingle Diva by Joe Duffy’s ruthless selection and juxtapositioning of his varied moaners.

The programme has no place for the contented or the appreciative.

You get the feeling that the entire staff of the show regard optimists the way a vampire views a crucifix: as a real and present threat.

They do not want the happy clappy. They want the moany groany. And they’re quite picky, even within that sobbing sub-group.

The programme doesn’t just take any old complainer. It seeks and finds people who are really good at complaining. People who can out-shout each other in the ferocity of their resentment.

Not that we have an undersupply of world-class complainers. During the Celtic Tiger years, we complained, night, noon and morning.

We moaned our way through the good times. Every minor issue that offered, we mole-hilled into a mountain. We became proficient at complaining because we confused complaint with analysis and confused whinge with gravity.

The phrases echo around the aural archive of that decade: “It’s just disgraceful.” “It’s an absolute outrage.” And, of course, “I’m gutted. Gutted.”

At the same time, we lost — if we ever had — the capacity to express gratitude or appreciation. To express gratitude for national or personal good fortune was seen as creetchy-crawtchy. There’s no doubt that we should have been more grateful, during those years.

The rising tide didn’t lift all boats equally, but it did lift an awful lot of boats, and the captains of those boats were never thankful for it. They felt they deserved it.

Which is a pity. Religion and folk wisdom have always seen gratitude and forgiveness as not just meritorious, but as essential for redemption, possibly because each of them tends to derive from a certain humility.

You cannot be grateful unless you have been in a damaged or subservient position and been helped.

You cannot forgive unless you have some insight into your unimportance in the greater scheme of things. (Lack of forgiveness is a trait of spiritually small people who misinterpret personal rigidity as strength of character.) Religion and folk wisdom are supported by modern psychological research, which suggests that gratitude and forgiveness are in our self-interest.

“Forgiveness is good not just for the person forgiven, but for the person who forgives,” observes Gregg Easterbrook, who extensively examined the twin emotions in his book, “The Progress Paradox.” “Similarly, positive psychology finds that people who take a grateful attitude toward life, counting their blessings rather than inventorying their complaints, tend to be healthier, happier and more successful than others. Again it appears to be the sense of gratitude that causes the happiness and health, rather than the other way around.”

Easter is all about the expression of gratitude, the renewal of hope, the sense of redemption.

This year, if we’re feeling economically hard-done by, we should perhaps follow Joe Duffy’s example and cop on that forgiveness and gratitude still apply. We’re alive at an exciting time. Warmth is coming into the sun. We live in a beautiful country.

And, in no time at all, Joe will be back, on crutches, to showcase lives even more miserable than our own.

Talk to Joe. Or, rather, moan to Joe.

He’ll be really grateful to you.