Jennifer Horgan: This Christmas, I want what a screen can never give me — the joy of looking at those I love
To Us, To Poet Useless Own Ways Way, From Back That Knowledge We Kavanagh Certain E Simplicity, Return A Is Tells Patrick In That Need In His
I was asked to read a poem in celebration of winter at Cork’s City Library this month. It was part of the closing ceremony for One City One Book, organised by the wonderful Patricia Looney.
I sat with my parents that morning, reading poems aloud. I didn’t have to read my own work, so I looked to Ireland’s rich canon for options.
Advent by Patrick Kavanagh was a favourite poem of mine at school, so I tried it out for sonic size. Back in the day, a dreamer of a teen, I wrote out its opening lines in my beloved and well-worn school journal.
I can see the scrawl of it still, next to newspaper cuttings of Gabriel Bryne, Kate Bush, and Ringo Starr. I like to think I was a girl of taste. Taste enough to know Kavanagh’s lines were special anyway, and more importantly — true.
Wonder is not just for children. We are all meant for it. But it takes a way of seeing, of noticing, of being receptive — a combined way of existing in the world that is easily dulled by excess, over-exposure, and overload.
I took down those lines in around 1996. Well before mobile phones entered the scene, before I had met the internet, before AI and all its promises.
What might Patrick Kavanagh think of Ireland in 2024?
Don’t worry. This column is not about how sick or lost we are, made ill by screens and excess. It is not about our mindset of scarcity — a mindset that can’t see or notice or have enough.
No, this column is a hopeful one, guided by Kavanagh’s poem. As I interpret it, Advent is a very hopeful poem. It celebrates what makes us well, what gets us back to that place of abundance and wonder.
Before this hope bit however, Kavanagh’s poem loses me for a while. I am a rootless, churchless sort of Christian. The dark advent room he invites me into is too much — too austere. I am not moved by how “the dry black bread and the sugarless tea,” might save me.
Sorry, Patrick Kavanagh — not for me. I have had enough of penance. I have my luxury mince pies stocked in the freezer for the week, I permit my senses pleasure without shame.
But then comes the line that does give me hope, and a plan:
What knowledge? In 2024, could it mean online hate and madness? Could it mean an uncritical devotion to technology and AI? I believe it could.
There is no way of escaping technology. I will spend time on my phone over these Christmas holidays. Multiple group chats have interrupted the writing of this column already. I will have too much screen time, as will my three children. I’m not going to concentrate on feeling bad about that.
Instead, I am going to pay most attention to the times when that is not happening, times when I return. I am going to celebrate them in the hope they multiply.
The AI world we are entering is only frightening if we lose sight of our greatest asset, and that is one another.
I listened to an On Being podcast this week with Krista Tippett. The expert being interviewed by Tippett was adamantly positive about AI, describing its development as the "co-evolution" of technology and humanity.
I don’t deny that we are entering an AI world. I know we are. I will use it like everyone else, and I know it holds unimaginable power to improve education and health.
But I will never see us as co-evolving. No, because humans are one thing, and AI is another. Humans die, and grieve, and love, and live every day with the knowledge of their mortality. AI does not.
AI enthusiasts say AI is merely a mirror of humanity. But it can’t be that when such a fundamental difference of identity exists.
Kavanagh tells us, in his own way, that we need to return to simplicity, come back from a knowledge that is useless in certain ways. There is a shame in his poem I reject, but I accept the simplicity bit.
The knowledge we stole but could not use.”
For him perhaps, it has more to do with God. For me, it has more to do with people. For me, in the age of AI, I interpret the poem to mean that we need to return to one another. We need to do far more of the simple thing of looking at one another, being with one another, sharing time and physical space together. Humanity is full to the brim with wonder — that is the guidance he offers.
I don’t think it’s very motivating to concentrate on the things we’re doing wrong all the time — buying too much, eating too much, wasting too often. They may all be true, but if we concentrate instead on the one thing we do right, we can get better.
I’m going to be present this week. With loved ones, I’m going to touch their hands and kiss their faces and hug them tightly. Every time, I’m going to remind myself that what I’m doing is healthy and good. I don’t need to feel bad about the worst things in the world all the time. I am going to focus on celebrating basic human interaction, something technology can never replace — something precious, and too easily snatched by violence and greed.
I want to feel wonder. I want more of it in my days and in my heart. I want to carry wonder around with me. I think the only way to gather it in is to devote more time to other humans and the natural world.
The world is so changed, and it is so much, and I sometimes feel afraid and often, I feel overwhelmed.
I started crying as I read Advent to my parents that morning. I should say, they’re not huge poetry fans. They had been tolerating my recital whilst eating their boiled eggs, and half listening to Brendan. They looked up, on hearing my chokes though, observing me the way my dog does when I dance in the kitchen — their heads to the side, bewildered, ears almost twitching.
When I finished, my dad helpfully advised me against reading the poem in public.
I agreed. I have no interest in being all doom and gloom this Christmas. Selfish or not, I find myself seeking joy in a more furtive way than ever. I need it, crave it, and I want to share it with family and friends.
This is the simplicity Kavanagh prescribes, and I will accept that gospel.
This Christmas season, right up to New Year, I’m going to look around a lot. People may twitch back at me, wondering if I’ve had too much to drink, but I will keep on looking.
“Won't we be rich, my love and I,” once we “have thrown into the dustbin the clay-minted wages/Of pleasure, knowledge and the conscious hour- “ And then his line. That wondrous, hopeful, dripping wet with magic, line:
We must not underestimate human love.
Christ for me is other people; I’m excited for the blooming.