The Day God Rested

In my more thoughtful moments, I consider it wiser not to resent a curse that afflicts us all. In the final analysis, who can reasonably complain about something which could potentially make a victim of anybody? Some receive little pain from it, others overcome it quickly, and there are those who seem to have received nothing but a boon from it. I refer, of course, to our experiences in our childhood. I am not going to tell you of a childhood comparable to the horrors suffered by many people; on the contrary, my childhood was generally pleasant and largely free from incident. However, one Sunday many years ago, everything changed. On the day of the All-Ireland hurling final in September 1990, I experienced a dread that has followed me the rest of my life. I realised then, as my mother prepared everything for school the next day - and as Cork caused an upset against Galway -  life was taking my freedom away. I would not be returning to the safe bosom of the mixed school I had attended, with gentle teachers and lots of kinaesthetic learning. Instead, I was moving next door, to the more academic boys’ school, a place I knew little about except that it was attended by big lads and my day would be longer. Since then, by the power of association, one seventh of my life works against my ability to relax and enjoy myself. I know, and many of you also know, that any effort to make Sundays good is futile. If you try to enjoy yourself, you hear the ticking clock, knowing well that you are up early the next day. Have you ever gone drinking on a Sunday? Your sense of fun and obligation lose out equally. You could try to do nothing, but what a sinful waste of such precious free time. Sundays mean little more to me than early closing hours, fewer transport services, and the alienating feeling that accompanies trying to work on a rest day. Going to church makes so much sense to me in this context; the day is made for begging on your knees for protection from despair. “Go worship me on this day”, commanded God nonchalantly, when humanity asked what to do at the weekend. Even He didn’t wish to contend with the seventh day.

I have also come to see parallels between the working week and the myth of Sisyphus. Monday to Friday is the hard grind of pushing the boulder up the hill; Friday evening and Saturday are the perceived moment of glory, the self-deception that one has final finished with the grind; Sunday is watching the boulder roll back to the same position you have pushed it from all those times and the realisation that you have to do it again tomorrow. But it’s more than that. It’s the end, poisoned by the feeling of inevitable doom. The mind adopts the malign meaning from this day, and it spreads to other aspects of your life. By the time I was ten, I was dreading the unknown perpetuity of the afterworld that awaited me after this one. No human mind has the capacity to bear the weighty meaning of eternity; it overwhelms our finite minds. It kept me awake one night, twenty years ago, for reasons I didn’t then understand. Thankfully, this dread has long since passed, assuaged by the apocalyptic-like fear of a one-way ticket to infinite oblivion. If you ever find yourself awake at night, anxious about your future, or in a near- asthmatic state that nostalgia brings (or both, God help you!), check what day it is. I’ll bet it’s a Sunday.
 
Those of us from Ireland know the anthem of apocalyptic Sunday horror: the Glenroe theme music. When that tune played, we knew it was the last chance to get our homework done. Incomplete homework stained the soap opera with the association of impending doom. Memories of childhood Sundays have largely evaporated through the passing of time, yet the feelings of anxiety and the theme tune of a rural drama remain. They remind us of the reality of existence, and how we are faced by two- and only two - possibilities: a meaningless life eternal, which distorts everything in its limitlessness and seems torturous in length, or eternally not being anywhere, never returning. Technology won’t save you. Even if you imagine yourself outliving the sun, the expansion of the universe is bound to get you. In any case, if you lived to see your trillionth birthday, it’s virtually zero when it stands beside eternity. Elimination is certain. Dinny is dead. Teasey is dead. Even Miley is dead (four years already!). The game is over, virtually before it’s begun. And worst of all, my best tool for depicting the deep sorrow of our vulnerable, transient existence is a dated soap opera about rural Ireland.

And it gets worse...