In somewhat morbid fashion, I have been thinking lately about what it means to live a full life. This was prompted by two events – seemingly unconnected – that struck Dublin over the weekend. First, the death of Sir Anthony O’Reilly on Saturday – a luminary of the transatlantic boardroom and a bastion of Irish business.
And second, the arrival of Bruce Springsteen at Croke Park – a 74-year-old rock star in possession of a “striking vitality” (as The Irish Times critic Ed Power put it) that would look more at home on someone not yet middle-aged. The two men – one a blue collar champion of small town Americana, and the other a standard bearer of the corporate world – share an unlikely philosophy. “You win and you lose, and if you don’t know how to lose, you don’t know how to live,” said O’Reilly in his final ever public appearance at Belvedere Rugby Club in 2018.
I was struck by the humility of the statement. Figures that loom as large as O’Reilly in the public consciousness – whose work and reputation take on otherworldly qualities – can feel distant, miles detached from day-to-day reality. But O’Reilly’s statement spoke to a very human instinct, and served as a welcome reminder that behind all the lofty notoriety there always exists a real person.
There is a mode of masculine insecurity – a muscly bravado – that struggles to admit loss or defeat; that sees failure as inherently effete. This attitude is straight from the Donald Trump p.
