Good compeñeros

By the time you read this column I will be sunning myself on a Mediterranean island with my thoughts a billion light years away from the vagaries of Irish political life and social policy. I have done more than stick firmly to my 2005 resolution to implement a new work/life balance, I have excelled at it. I may even consider giving training workshops on the subject, but then again that would be too much like work and might tip the delicate but beautiful pivot between career and carousing I have created for myself.

Thanks to this columnist gig, I can, without a whisper of guilt, justify my coffee-drinking in town, my trips to the Beara, my leisurely perusal of the daily newspapers, my late night drinking with politically aware pals as all important grist to my column's mill. To be honest, I never felt that guilty about any of the above even before I had a good excuse. It has always been in my nature "to hang out", "to chill" as our American cousins would express it, although I rather like that catch-all marketing term, "networking". Making contacts with people that will be useful or enhancing to one's work, career and sundry interests.

Networking covers a multitude of sins; standing outside the pub having a cigarette with the other social lepers – networking, being induced to stay for another drink after the meeting – networking, going to the gym and idling too long in the changing rooms listening to the gossip of well-preserved, South County Dublin matrons – networking.

I have an abiding suspicion (readers, please feel free to correct me if I am wrong) that networking is a term that was first coined by the women's movement as a means of giving value to the aforementioned undervalued and much misunderstood practice of gossiping.

There is another lovely catch-all word used in South America that I have a particular predisposition towards – "compañeros". Compañero I have heard used to describe a range of relationships: friend, comrade, lover. Compañero or, in the feminine, compañera seems to me to articulate that inexpressible connection we sometimes have with people. An affinity that may or may not be sexual, but is intensely felt and essential in our lives. It identifies the friend who is as close or closer than a sister/brother, the one who shares the same spirit, who has been there for you and never questioned why.

It names the people in one's life whom you may not see as regularly as you would like, but with whom there is a connection forged through times of hardship and struggle, the ones whom you know will never let you stand alone. It can also express the depth of a partnership built on shared values, shared desires and shared love – my compañera. The use of the same term to describe all of those relationships imbues each of them with equal weight. I like that.

Compañero transcends the unwieldy compartmentalising we are forced to use in describing our relationships. For example, "These are my friends, these are my closest friends, this is my lover, this is my ex-lover-cum-best- friend, this is the person who saved my life, this is the person who refused to let me sink, this is the person who gives me reason to hope and to laugh".

Maybe as we become a more diverse society, words and phrases from other peoples and cultures will begin to un-selfconsciously pepper our everyday vocabulary, helping us to find ways of articulating the important absences and complexities in our relations with one another.

Then, perhaps we will talk instead of something like compañero rights, in recognition of the fact that we take part in a tapestry of life-enhancing relationships based on so much more than blood or sex, but on our capacity to care, to give, to receive and to appreciate, to support and to nurture in a thousand ways that which we find precious in one another.

It is a concept I find both intriguing and delicious and very possibly revolutionary. However, I will ponder further on this notion over the next week whilst baking on a beach with several of my compañeras and networking vigorously in a number of tavernas. Who knows – my dedication to my work might well get the upper hand.