Enda O'Doherty's message is one being embraced by sports clubs and schools nationwide.
Time with Enda O’Doherty is time well spent. The De La Salle teacher, recently appointed as an Assistant Principal, is also putting his powers of oratory to good use as a motivational speaker.
And when we spoke about the other, non-teaching, non-washing machine carrying string to his bow on Wednesday last, what I suspected might have been a half-hour chat happily ran beyond that. Four times that, even!
“Even putting the Pieta Challenge completely to one side, the journey really has been something else,” said Enda, as we sat down to a cuppa.
“Whether I’m working with a sports team, in school with students, with a business or with an individual, you can’t bullshit people. You can’t talk inspiration. You either live up to your own words or you don’t even dream about sharing those words with anyone else. You’ve got to be the message too, if you know what I mean. You have to prove it.”
Last week, during a talk with parents in a north Dublin school, Enda ran a four-minute film of his epic June trek from Belfast to Waterford which saw him walk nine marathons in eight days, complete with the country’s most famous washing machine on his back. He demonstrated his own inspiration.
“I told those parents that anything was possible, and I think the film fed into that message. I could show what I had done. It was a major challenge but I took it on and I got through it. We all have different challenges – in school, in sport and in life. But challenges don’t have to be impossible. Obstacles don’t have to be insurmountable.”
Enda added: “I spoke to a principal of a school in Portlaoise today – and I’ll be going there to speak to students – she asked me how I’d gotten out with the washing machine – so I gave her the spiel, and it’s a story I can’t imagine I’ll ever grow weary of sharing.
“I told her that the idea to take this on initially saw me end up in the European Parliament, speaking to the Irish MEPs about mental health expenditure in Ireland, and that was the week before I did the walk.
“A small spark of inspiration, followed by buckets of hard work led to an amazing journey, and it set a ball rolling, and thanks to that, we’ll have Pieta House up and running in Waterford before the next Darkness Into Light walk next May.
“So for me, having done that, and, essentially being a performance artist given what teaching entails, that’s all fed into the message about how an idea, even an improbable and zany one like the Pieta Challenge, can become a reality. And then to see the way it inspired other people during the week of the walk and since then – it’s a story worth sharing, I feel.”
With his motivational speaking hat on, Enda was asked by one De La Salle student was he “the mental man” in the Waterford hurlers’ dressing room during the League and Championship campaign. To which Enda replied, with a wide grin breaking out across his face: “Well I’m not sure about the phrasing, but I do try and look after peoples’ mental strength. I was also involved with the Waterford Ladies Footballers this year – I got involved after they’d lost the National League Final (to Sligo) – and to see the way they responded to that, to see their physical and mental strength develop so brilliantly and culminate in their winning the All-Ireland title, that was incredible.
“And to see them winning and singing the way they did in Croke Park – that was beyond elation. They had sacrificed so, so much.
“To give you an example, I spoke to them for two hours when they were on a training camp in Kilkenny, and I mentioned to their manager, Pat Sullivan how sharp they were – this was at nine in the morning: he told me they’d already been training for two hours by then. Now this is the sort of commitment no-one hears about. But all their hard work paid off, and it was such a privilege to be in Croke Park that day.
“So what I try and bring to such an environment is some imagination. I know what a really terrible struggle is personally and I know what it’s like physically thanks to the Ironman events and the Belfast to Waterford walk. And when people look at me and possibly think, well if that chubby, grey-haired fella can do it, then why can’t they when it comes to whatever they’re facing?”
Enda’s got an incredible great way with people, and his passion for the speaking gig is palpable.
Otherwise, how can one explain a man, with a day’s teaching behind him at 4pm, getting into a car and drive to, say, Dundalk, break out his laptop and sound system in a school hall up there, give a presentation to a class, then pack it all up and drive home to Waterford again?
“I get paid for the talks, of course I do, but I’m not doing this for the money. I get a real spark out of the speaking and if I didn’t get that spark from it, I just wouldn’t give the time to it.
“And when you see the faces of parents visibly changing, like they did in that school hall in Dublin last week, over the course of an hour and half, and people shaking your hands afterwards, that’s incredibly validating.”
That Enda O’Doherty can talk the talk having walked the most remarkable of walks should come as no surprise to anyone.
