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20th Dec 2016

This Poem By A Galway Girl Will Give You Serious Perspective On How Fragile Life Is And How Utterly Selfish People Can Be

Alana Laverty

Last week a man died after being struck by a train at Coolmine station near Blanchardstown, Dublin. 

The train was stopped at Coolmine and passengers were unable to alight the train for up to two hours while emergency services attended the scene. 

One person took to Twitter to voice their anger and impatience at the situation, tweeting at Irish Rail from the train. 

Readers under a Journal.ie article reporting on the incident took issue with these tweets, discussing them in the comments section. 

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Journal.ie

Where said person went on to defend their tweets: 

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Journal.ie

And was met with this: 

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Journal.ie

Laura O’Connor from Galway experienced a similar situation yesterday evening while travelling on a train from Manchester to Blackpool. 

“Whilst travelling from Manchester Victoria to Blackpool North this evening, a young man jumped on the line, resulting in train delays & disruptions. What rendered me speechless was the reaction to this news. One woman sitting in front of me’s first thought was ”Can I have a refund? Can I be compensated?” A total lack of remorse from the majority of the train. I found myself taking out my notebook & writing this poem in response to the fragility of life. I found myself thankful for every minute I had delayed, the very thought of being alive. Perspective eh? Seriously though, the world is so selfish. Spread love & kindness every chance you can get.”

Laura O’Connor

Laura’s poem:

After last week’s incident, this poem really resonated with us here in the office. And we are in awe of Laura’s words in such a shocking situation. 

Laura told Lovin Dublin:

“I had never seen or experienced anything like it until yesterday, and was totally dumbfounded by the lack of compassion in even the smallest sense. Rather than just stick in my headphones, I decided to write it down and document it. At each station I managed to get to, somebody else would be talking about it. It was like Chinese whispers and I was piecing together the puzzle in the form of a poem.”

This was a devastating accident, much like the one in Coolmine, but Laura’s touching poem gives us some serious perspective on how selfish people can be, and of course, how fragile human life is. 

If that poem doesn’t give you goosebumps, we don’t know what will. 

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