Prayer for a Young Man

The Tables You Will Sit At

A Young Man Goes in Circles

May you find strength in every gentle touch

May you find your voice in listening to those who have not been heard

May you find wisdom in forgiveness

May you find your heart in the boy inside you

May you find the man in all that you are to become

Dear young folk,

I wrote this prayer for a young man I knew who was lost, and all the more so because the same problems in his life just kept happening again, again and then again. He had elders in his life, but the gap of lived experience was just too damn wide for the wisdom to flow into his life where it needed to, and the elders were too far away to see what was happening to his world around him. And somehow, it was all his fault—or so it seemed to him. That young twenty-something was me.

I know you don’t know me, but I don’t need to be your grandfather to tell you that I care about you, your hopes and dreams, your future, and—one day—the young people you will help. I wish I had more decades (I’m 43) before writing something like this to you, but things are changing quickly now. The threads that have traditionally connected us together through the generations are no longer just cut, they’re being forgotten.

I’m a lifelong carrier of what many call folk culture and a dance PhD in the embodied history of us—that is I study how being human has changed for the last 500 years. In my work and artistic life I am seeing really important things go missing from our lives every day at a faster pace.

People used to sing when they worked with the land. They used to dance with their toddlers. They used to hold each other and sing love songs in public. They used to gather at night around the kitchen table or fire and tell each other stories. Men and women alike had visions from beyond while doing household chores. Things may not have been perfect, but we had this—and it was everything. It may not seem so important right now, but as you get older and need some guidance, folklore is that compass, wheel and watch to help you down the road of your life.

Many peoples all over the world are resisting this silent erasure, but there is no mistaking that there is a war on our humanity, and we need you right now. There are a lot of people who want to control you who do not have your best interests at heart.

One of the ways these heads of business, media and government manufacture control is by creating tech-enabled youth cultures that keep you away from and mistrustful of those who care about you the most. Some will just say this is how it has always been, and that’s a lie.

In so many cultures throughout human history, your desire to forge your own road in a new way doesn’t mean you must be cut off from family, community and tradition. Just because you want change doesn’t mean you no longer deserve the same love you received when you held your parents close all through the night. Wanting new things doesn’t mean you can’t also learn from and benefit from the old. And if you haven’t had that, well, I know myself and many, many others are here for you.

So, for today, we don’t have to solve all the world’s problems. I just want you to know that yes, you’re being robbed of so many things, but you don’t have to let them take your love for nature, your body, your community, your family, your creativity, your voice, your art, your ingenuity, your hope or even your tech on your own terms. As a Gypsy, I can say that in the worst of times this inheritance is what gets us through, and in good times we’ll need this to rebuild and remember what really matters.

I don’t know how you need to solve the problems you are facing, but I know how much harder it feels when you’re alone. I know how hard it can be to make connections when you don’t have what seems like everyone else has. I know what it’s like not to get all the guidance you need from your family and have to look for adopted elders to help make you whole.

In the face of all these things that can leave you feeling like you’re not enough and it’s all unfair or even impossible, there is some age-old wisdom that can help. It’s very simple and cuts through some of the bullshit:

What tables will you sit at in your life?

Tables are important but transient spaces. Some of the most valuable things you will do in your life is at a table, but you also must be invited to sit at them. And most of the time, you’re not looking for tables you’ll sit at just once, you want to come back and—importantly—you want the other people at it to want you to come back.

Some people spend their lives dreaming about tables that they might one day sit at, while throwing away the ones where they could never, ever be replaced. Some get there and realize it’s not what they thought it would be. Others are strategically invited to some tables, where their presence is symbolic and their voices aren’t welcome. Then there are those who force themselves upon someone else’s table, or coerce others to sit at theirs. Tables can get very complicated.

So maybe you have tables you already sit at, and you don’t appreciate them yet. Perhaps there are tables you should leave and never come back to. Or maybe you already know what it’s like to sit and share a meal or cup of tea at a table with friends on a Tuesday afternoon, and it’s time to teach it to someone else who might have never had a table to sit at. Maybe, that table-less person is you, and you can’t see that there people right now waiting to sit at a table that you’ll put together one day.

Looking back, what I’d share with the young man I wrote this prayer for is that the circles he was going in were the returning and returning to a table of his own making. One that he had to forage, harvest and carve alone—a traveling table that one day he could invite his family, elders, peers and youth to share in, and his heart would be fed with a love he never imagined possible.

I can’t promise my table will be here forever, but you’re welcome to come back. I hope you do.

Lacho drom,

Russell

Breakfast at Maria and Michael’s in Ennistymon, Co Clare