An Arab Spring

What I learned working with 'high net worth' Irishmen in the desert.

Feb 27, 2025

I’m staring down another retreat this weekend and the compulsion is to clear the decks. Much to be done and the coffee is destabilising my focus. A short, but priceless window. Three kids gone for the morning. Siobhán gone too. All in school, taking up various roles.

A ‘workawayer’ clambers in the kitchen below. Dubh Dubh, the hound, is beside me, not trusting the sun outside yet, even as the Spring frost fades.

This day last week I arrived in Dubai for the first time since 2008, when Etihad came in to sponsor the hurling Championship. The Railway Cup, contested between the four provinces, once a titan of the calendar, was played in Abu Dhabi. We evaded team security to get into Dubai a couple of nights before the final versus Connaught, and the last I remember is leaving the Irish compound with Nemeton’s Maidhcí Ó Súilleabháin, locked arm in arm, belting out ‘An Poc Ar Buile’.

The invite this time was equally obscure. Flown out by a company to run a Men’s Retreat in the desert outside of Dubai. The owner of the company had been following my work, and he took a shot in the dark. I was uncertain, but grateful to keep the Winter wolves at bay ‘til the end of Spring.

My uncertainty stemmed from my judgements. Dubai. Rich Men. The Desert. The human rights abuses associated with the extravagance of the area. A long way from the Burren or Cape Clear, noses in the dirt with bodies enriched by the sapid smell of fire and forest.

We are Wild Irish. We stand against excess, for the waste that accompanies it, and against inequality for it’s vindication of the monetary system. Yet here I was. In complexity and contradiction.

But the invite was pure and the flow, flawless. So I had that to hold on to.

I suggested we have a check-in call before meeting for the first time in person. The imposter syndrome came in as expected. What do I have to offer these lads given the position they occupy, followed by the question; do I want to offer them anything anyway?

The call happened and the idealism faded.

Men. Just Men. Keeping it going as best they can. Open, early, buíochas le Dia. Soft. Capable. Uncertain. The same stories as any of the men that sit with us with Nature of Man, far off in the Wicklow Mountains. No buoyancy in the bulging bank account. Men keeping the show on the road. Men stressed to within an inch of their lives. Men standing up to the baddest groups on the planet because of their unwillingness to be beaten. Men disconnected. Men seeking. Hoping. Thriving.

I have some reflections on the weekend that may be valuable, and I want to integrate and move on to the space we’ll create with Nature of Man this weekend. I also want to promote my work. I want to shout from the rooftops that this work, this mixing of inner work and the joy of being in the physical body is necessary at all levels of society. It is next step.

The first lesson was most transformative personally.

I have something to offer these men. And what I have to offer stems from the time I turned to face what I was running from. That time in my life where I bowed out, headed off to West Kerry and lived on little more than the breath in my lungs, is now one of the richest resources I have. I have viewed it with shame in the past. But no more.

As Lisa O Neill put it in ‘Rock the Machine’';

‘As the cold wind blows, I will rise,

With gold enough to win back time,

With gold enough to win back pride.’

There’s much talk about stigmas in relation to the catch-all phrase that is mental health. It was said that I was courageous for being open about my struggles. I didn’t find it so because I was asked questions and I answered them simply. I had clashed with who I was and I had work to do to figure it out. I didn’t give it a title. It wasn’t depression and it wasn’t poor mental health. It was a necessary time to go in and resolve.

But as the game intensifies and I seek opportunities in higher offices, I wonder do the holders of the cheque books look on thinking, ‘maybe he’ll break again?’.

Who cares, it’s all changing. Not the stigma. Everything. It’s all to play for. Every minute. It’s ephemeral, Maybe it’s there maybe it’s not. It’s none of my business. What matters is that that time in West Kerry has instilled a sense of place, culture and self in me that was otherwise dormant, and the time has come to share it. And having gone in to it, I am finding a richness of resource that I would otherwise have missed.

What do I have to offer these fellas? Let’s have a look.

Busy men

They support people, families, staff, investors, friends. Serious responsibilities. No place to soften even momentarily. Few places to have a real conversation that welcomes all aspects of themselves. So that’s what we shared on the first call.

Their canvas is the grown up world where decisions matter and one must be well presented, well considered and well thought of. It has laser focus. Certainty. Order. We walked through the desert trying to find a ‘pitch’ we’d seen on the map, but hadn’t visited prior, to play hurling on. My experiences have taught me that ‘not knowing’ in these situations is hard to hold in the body, but ultimately, an invite to trust. The antithesis to the order they’re accustomed to.

But some doors have to be left open for the spirit in all things to come in.

My wild ways were vindicated when we walked in to a colosseum to play hurling that could easily have doubled as a film set. The Emmy winning director in our company was sure it was so. I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that blood was shed here. It was perfect.

Like boys

12 of us, wandering in the desert. Hurls slung over the shoulders. Like boys. It’s between the ‘workshops’ that the workshops happen. Fellas fall in to step and friendships are forged over shared problems, shared opportunities. Like boys. Boys they had long forgotten about since they pulled on their man pants. Boys that had dreams, that faced struggles, that were too young to understand the nature of struggle itself, boys that prayed to God that the situation they were in would someday resolve itself. Connecting with that boy and remembering his hopes and dreams, and sometimes his struggles, is a significant part of the work itself, the kind of work few of us are shielded from.

Pride

I was proud of them and their stories. My internal judgements fading in the softness of seeing, I was proud of them as Irishmen, bar a Sage from Oman and a delightful Pakistani man, I was proud of how they had left home, left their stories here and went out and did battle with the big guns, from Russian tycoons to desert warlords, they dug in, represented the ‘clann’ and made it to the top. Drawing on their heritage, their Cavan ignorance or their Kerry cuteness, they stood toe to toe in the fight. I felt great pride in listening to their stories.

Connection

The value of connection was undeniable. I saw a quote from the great investor Charlie Munger in the week that stuck. ‘With riches’ he claimed ‘there is no need to depend on anybody else’. He wore the loneliness of that position as a badge of honour.

To be connected is to be witnessed. And we depend on that to know that we are useful to the tribe. Any form of need is denounced. But we depend on the tribe to reflect our value back to us. Independence, be it financial or cultural, is a step. We arrive here dependant. We move on when we’re ready to independence. And when we’re psychologically ready, which Munger, despite his millions, clearly isn’t, we graduate to final eureka, interdependence. Interdependence flies in the face of a modern life that champions independence, but interdependence is mecca. And it’s as necessary in the depths as it is in our heights.

With the Spartan setting of the retreat, no airs no graces, a fire, a Bedouin tent for serving food, another for practice and for shared sleeping quarters. A wide based barrel for a generous fire. And sand. These settings facilitate interdependence as a rule, not as a show.

Manifestation

What we put out we bring in. These lads knew this intimately. In a fireside conversation that would be denounced as ráméis among the modern day spiritualists and hippies, they understood through experience the value of manifestation. They believed in it and they practiced it. I said that I wouldn’t have thought for a second that they were thinking in these terms, my judgements necessarily laid bare.

They laughed, welcoming the perspective, but were undeterred in their commitment to the idea that what you put out to the universe you get back. Clear vision. Alignment at a cellular level. Inner orientation towards a full and abundant life may or may not be the deciding factor, but it could not be dismissed. That was their lived experience. Harsh as that may be for people who feel they are orientated towards abundance but it hasn’t come about in the way that they hoped, it remains the truth of these lads in the reality of their situation. What else have we to rely upon?

Help is available

I struck up a great connection with one of the men who has done very well for himself. Beyond very well. I’m currently trying to figure out how to buy our home, with connected land and outbuildings in order to create an Irish language retreat centre, in a relatively short space of time. He listened and was undeterred. Despite the vast gap in the numbers we were talking about, he wanted to help. He wanted to advise, to shape and to continue contact in any way that would bring me forward. I was assured he meant it by one of the other men and he might even be offended if I didn’t carry on the conversation. I was embarrassed by the scale I was talking about in a financial sense. But he wasn’t. He just wanted to help because as he said himself, ‘I was helped along the way and I want to return that where I can.’

And though there is more, I’ll finish on this one.

Stony Grey Soil

Our diaspora need to hear from us. From what I observed, the Ireland they left is the Ireland that they carry with them. The Stony Grey Soil of our past, a poem read at the fire, serving to justify as much as remind what had been left behind, the stony grey attitudes that sometimes crushed the creative spirit of young men and women seeking to be something in the world. It is like a spirit that endures in their somatic memory. I noticed something similar in America in my time there amongst the ex-pats, so though it’s not a hill I’d die on for fear of relegating these men to a movement of my mind, there’s at least a hint of truth in it.

Diarmuid’s Substack

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