Everyone's looking for inspiration

INSPIRED — it’s a loaded word. An exasperated parent may ask “What-in-the-name-a-god inspired you to do that?” as they snatch the creosote-dipped brush from your hand and look at the wallpaper.

Inspiration is said to comprise 5% of genius — the other 95% being perspiration (or transpiration if you’re a plant). These days, inspiration represents approximately 87% of the internet traffic between human beings. Be it an epigram about friendship and love written in the Lucida Calligraphy typeface, set against the backdrop of clouds; a video of an otter’s unlikely relationship with a sloth reminding you that at the heart of it all, we are all just sinew and muscle; or a list of inspirational quotes from self-made men and women; every day across the computosphere, petabytes of inspiration-transfer keep the server farms in West Dublin humming away.

You can’t blame us. Everyone’s looking for inspiration. We need something to condense into an understandable format, the sheer awful randomness and cruelty of human existence.

Speaking of which, if you work in an office, you may have experienced the Inspirational Speaker on staff communication days. After a few hours of illegible Powerpoint about strategic growth platforms and the importance of reading updated HR diversity policies, a special guest will arrive on stage with a story to tell.

They may have kayaked up the Himalayas in a bath or crossed the North Pole wearing nothing but a pair of tracksuit bottoms and a Lark By The Lee t-shirt. Their photographs are astounding. “That’s my arm after the polar bear ate it. Luckily I had a sewing kit!” they will say with mordant humour as the audience gasp and consider their own inadequacies.

At some stage, the Inspirer will realise that this bear bears no resemblance to the lives of those present and hurriedly finish with “But the most important lesson I learned when fighting off a Yeti armed only with an Allen key (I had the Allen key, not the Yeti), is that no matter what your career, you need a good support network that you can trust.”

One thing that impresses me about inspirational speakers and all that inspiring internet traffic is the ability to encapsulate truths into so few words. Sometimes though, “Dream. Believe. Create. Succeed” is too nebulous. “You’ll never treasure something so much as a sister” doesn’t apply.

For that reason I have written a few maxims of my own by which to live my life.

* Half-arsed tidying is better than no tidying at all. Leaving stuff at the bottom of the stairs is fine. It gets it out of the sitting room.

* Not every unexpected item in the bagging area will make sense. Learn to accept that.

* Don’t wait until Pancake Tuesday to eat pancakes.

* Life is too short to be spent trying to match socks.

* Another person’s food always tastes better. That’s because they put salt on it.

* If you hadn’t spent the last ten years reading inspirational quotes and watching otters gambol with sloths, you would be earning more money.

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