peter
“I have spent a lot of time stressing about situations that I shouldn’t be involved in. This personality trait is possibly rooted in growing up with an alcoholic-abusive father, and also my career in scanning for errors as a bank official. Being hyper-focused to spot inaccuracies and mistakes, I’m unable to let them go… I’ll give you an example! Have you heard about the phenomenon called Common Travel Area? I, as an Irish man, can travel to England without a passport and an English man can travel to Ireland without a passport. It’s a long-standing arrangement. When they built airports in England, they also built corridors so people from those areas can just enter and move freely without the need for a passport check. In Ireland, you come into the airport and they stop you and say: ‘Passport!’ I could be flying up from Kerry and they’d still ask for a passport. They don’t care where you came from, they just want your passport. I began noticing how stressed I’d get walking up to the passport check. I could barely hold myself together. They would know that I have a passport, but I just wouldn’t give it to them. They would threaten me and call the guards… They would do all sorts of things. They have no right to. I was perfectly entitled to say: ‘Here is my driving license. That’s all I have to show you!’ I’ve got relations living in England, so I used to go through this madness 20-30 times a year. Imagine! This is just one example. One might think that this is an effort to highlight a problem and that I might force the corridor to be built, but I am aware that that’s not the way the world works. I know that this is pointless and harmful to my mental health. I’m still, at the age of 76, learning to stay away from the things I can’t change. I have to. I’ve been feeling uncomfortable mentally for a while now. I know that I have to get myself back into a calmer state of mind. I have to evaluate if there is a benefit to acting or choosing not to act if it’s only going to cause suffering for me. I definitely struggle with this, but I know that’s the road I have to go.“