Irish Examiner view: One step at a time to build momentum

'There is something to be said for working the problem immediately in front of us, rather than risking decision paralysis by either taking on too much or taking on a project while thinking of it as a whole and not the sum of its parts.' File picture

With just a couple of days left in this year, some of us will be limping to the finish line, others will be spending Twixmas among loved ones and social gatherings, others still will be glad simply to be about to put 2025 behind them. There is certainly something to be said for the psychological effect of hitting a natural marker for a fresh start, however that fresh start may shape up.

Some things we can’t shake off simply with the change of a calendar date. The housing crisis will remain, the American empire is still in collapse from within, the cost of living remains an uphill struggle for too many families. But that doesn’t mean we can’t take on smaller items as a way, not of distracting ourselves, but giving ourselves a few personal wins to build our own resilience and momentum.

Writing some 1,900 years ago, the philosopher Epictetus wrote: “Some things are up to us, and some are not.” It is the essence of the more widespread Stoic idea of focusing on what you can control.

There is something to be said for working the problem immediately in front of us, rather than risking decision paralysis by either taking on too much or taking on a project while thinking of it as a whole and not the sum of its parts.

Given how many Goodreads lists get shared online around now, a simple example would be “I want to read more books”. It is easy to get intimidated by the people who say they read 100, 120, or as many as 200. Well, what does “more” mean? More than last year? Or just more generally? Both are valid, by the way.

A way of making it less daunting is to snack-size it, say, 20 pages a day (that’s 7,300 a year). Or make it 10 and enjoy the little win of consistently beating it. Consistency, as with ingraining any new habit or regime, is key.

Speaking of snacking, the same approach can work for exercise. One-minute bursts repeated throughout the day not only break up being sedentary, but add strength and cardio training to your day while possibly breaking up some stress and frustration — and no matter how good a Christmas you might be having, there are likely a few minutes when you could do with just doing something for yourself.

Readers of the Feelgood pages on December 26 will have seen something similar in the examples of micro-habits, little changes that can be done daily without necessarily disrupting anything else going on in your life, but which could pay off over time.

These include walking as much as possible, or adding just one extra piece of fruit or vegetables into your day. As dietitian Orla Walsh told Feelgood: “We need about 25g of fibre a day for our bowels to function as they should, but the average intake is 18g. One extra piece of fruit, a handful of berries, or a fist-sized portion of vegetables could potentially fill half of that nutritional gap.”

So as we stare down the barrel of a year which is going to come whether we like it or not, let’s take it one step at a time and see where it takes us.

Why would you do it to yourself?

Who’d be a politician? With the rise in threatening behaviour, it seems a fraught, often thankless job at the best of times. We are beyond the realm of simple protest.

We can look back to the recent sentencing of a woman for making threats against the children of Tánaiste Simon Harris — who has previously had protesters outside his house — just to see how comments online are having a real, and serious, impact on the lives not only of our sitting politicians but their families as well.

Some of the messages sent on Instagram from Sandra Barry, aged 40, to the man set to become next taoiseach included telling him he needed a bullet in the head and “I hope somebody does something to your family”.

There is no justification for making a threat against a child anyway, but doing so as part of an overall threat against one of their parents seems especially heinous. The contents of Mr Harris’s victim impact statement were not read in court, but the judge said that the contents, as well as the evidence, meant she could not give a suspended sentence. Barry received a term of six months, but whether that will serve as a deterrent to others remains to be seen.

During the sentencing hearing, Judge Michele Finan said: “These crimes are committed behind closed doors and in the comfort of people’s homes, and yet they have such huge and very catastrophic impact on the individuals who are the recipients.”

And in the age of increasingly sophisticated deepfake videos, there seems no end to the potential avenues for unduly influencing public life — whether that be disinformation or some sort of targeted harassment.

Sean Murray’s interview in today’s edition with Art O’Leary, chief executive of the Electoral Commission, notes that an Oireachtas task force in 2024 had found that “abuse in political life is prevalent, problematic, and targeted disproportionately at women and minority groups”.

It added: “Online abuse is intensifying and becoming normalised, fuelled by the anonymity provided by digital platforms, and often driven by misogyny, sexism, racism, and intolerance.”

Regarding the discussion around whether or not to retain the ubiquitous election posters, Mr O’Leary cited them as a safe way of highlighting a candidate: In an environment where increasingly door-to-door canvassing is becoming more problematic, particularly for women and particularly for young people as well. Some of the public safety dangers that have been described by that Oireachtas group include harassment, intimidation, and physical threats.

Is it any wonder that politics is increasingly seen as a job, and not a lifelong career? There is nothing fundamentally wrong in that anyway. The politician gets to move on to a different phase of life and work should they choose to, while opportunities are afforded to the body politic to choose fresh faces to represent them nationally. But there’s a difference between seeking a new challenge and having taken so much abuse that even working for a greater good can’t balance the ledger.

It’s one thing to be a servant of the people, another to be their bete noire.

The worry, surely, must be that the calibre of our public servants will decrease as more and more people are turned off from seeking office. Why would you want to do that to yourself, let alone your family?

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