Before I tackle anything that I feel is a bit overwhelming in life, I say the following words to myself. They aren't the words of Wilde, they don't have the stream of consciousness of Yeats and they certainly don't have the wordsmith-ery of Wordsworth.
But they mean something to me. They are the words my father said to me before I headed into my first Leaving Cert exam. And they are best said in a soft Kerry accent with a half-smile. 'Ah', he said as I stared maniacally at my notes for English Paper One, with every single word dancing and radiating off the page, glowing with luminous yellow highlighter, 'just give it an aul bash'.
And those words have stayed with me. They don't mean that you shouldn't try your best or that whatever task you're undertaking isn't serious, they simply take the sting out of the worry.
It reminds me that life shouldn't be taken so seriously that you forget that we are just passing through, that it's all just a weaving dance with steps that we don't really know. We stumble, we add in an extra step here and there, and if you find yourself going left when everyone else is going right….then just keep going left, there might be something more exciting over the other side of the communal dance hall.
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And as those 57,000 students receive their Leaving Cert results today, most of us can remember that anxious wait (I played Radiohead's 'Fake Plastic Trees' on teenage angst repeat as I waited outside the headmaster's office to get my slip of paper. And to this day, that song brings me right back to that moment).
But the static rote learning of log/verb/periodic tables isn't really the most important lesson to take away from the Leaving Cert. It's just one step of the dance. Yes, it's a big step, but it's not the jazz hands be all and end all.
So if you are collecting your results today, take a breath, remember it's just one part of the dance. And just give it an aul bash (but for the love of God, don't twerk).
Do you remember the day you got your Leaving Cert results? Did you get the results you wanted? And did anyone give you some great advice that you would like to share with the Beaut.ie class? To the comments!
