Higgins gives us great expectations

MICHAEL D Higgins comes to the presidency at a time when the country is, in his words, awash with broken expectations.

For a man who is, at times, accused of speaking in abstractions, the words he chose to encapsulate the mood of the people were reassuringly realistic.

Unemployment, mortgage insecurity and collapsing property values — all mentioned in the opening moments of his address — are not the language of poetry. They are the dictionary of daily life for hundreds of thousands of the population.

That President Higgins chose to sympathise with that reality rather than chide the vaulting ambitions that crushed the dreams from which they sprang, was equally reassuring.

As a country, we have made mistakes. We presented, as he gently put it, “not the best version of ourselves”. But the last thing we need now is to fear ambition.

Michael D never feared it. He said he entered his term as president with a sense of humility but that should not be mistaken for false modesty. He is a man whose self-belief carried him from inauspicious beginnings to the position of first citizen.

He is a man proud of his achievements but, like any good teacher — and his first role as public servant was that of educator — he also takes pride in the achievements of those he mentors.

There is every reason to believe that when he speaks of the possibilities that lie ahead for us, he is not trying to mollify or flatter, but that he genuinely sees, feels and wants to nurture those possibilities.

That when we engage in soul-searching about the failings of recent years, that he wants us to be not merely contemplative but creative in our conclusions.

That when we look for solutions to current crises, that we wait not, as he put it, for some mysterious hand of fate to reach out and pull us clear but that we look to our own collective strengths.

In the depression days of 1930s America, the magnificent marble lions that guard the New York Public Library were named Patience and Fortitude as symbols of the qualities felt needed to pull the people through grindingly hard times.

President Higgins yesterday unleashed his own lions. Hope and Courage, he called them, and he has instructed them to stand guard over the next seven years as we strive to learn from the recent past and climb clear of it.

We can not expect miracles from the small man with the big ideas who moved into the Áras yesterday. He has little real power except as a powerful symbol.

But symbols are important. They have a place in both poetry and real life and help one inspire the other. At this time we need inspiration like never before.

We are living with the hurt of broken expectations but after yesterday’s inauguration, we can, for the presidency, have great expectations.

If President Higgins can deliver even a few lines of what he promised, in him at least we won’t be disappointed.