One of the legendary connections between Ireland and Scotland is the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland. As the legend goes, the Irish giant Finn MacCool wanted to out-muscle his Scottish counterpart Benandonner. The Causeway was used to cross the ocean but was torn up by Benandonner because, by one account, Finn's wife covered Finn in a blanket and told Benandonner that it was Finn's infant son. Being a little intimidated that the infant was so big, Benandonner reckoned the infant's father must be gigantic so he ripped up the causeway to insure MacCool could never cross. You would think that instead of desiring only to beat each other up, the giants could enjoy each other's company. I mean, how many giants were there hanging around? It's not likely they had a high school or a recreation center. Some company may have been nice. All I could see that Finn might have found to eat, besides seafood, were the yellow wild gorse flowers. It could be that Scotland provided some appreciated culinary diversity. Or not... What do I know about what giants think about or need?
Well, besides the miracle of the 37,000 mostly-hexagonal natural basalt columns that exist here, I experienced a little personal miracle myself. Unlike the giants, who apparentely just want to fight, as sunset approached I shared company with a companion I met on the Causeway, also named Eric. During conversation he mentioned he had found a set of car rental keys in the Middle Causeway, which I was exploring about an hour earlier. To my immediate astonishment and then relief I realized they were mine. (I had taken my sweatshirt off and stuffed it in my backpack. The keys must have fallen out of the pocket at that time.) What if he hadn't found them? Obviously, I would have been royally #$^&ed without transportation in the middle of nowhere with the temperature dropping quickly in the land of legendary giants. What makes for good legends makes for good reflection. Here on these rocks I had time to consider the passage of the 61 million years it took the Causeway to look as it did the day of my visit. Time to sit and observe a natural art installation in slow light and consider my place here at this spot on this planet at this moment. If a giant thinks and feels anything like me, he must have been content here. For Finn MacCool, it wasn't about company. He didn't need Benandonner's companionship because he was happy about his own isolated giant-ness.
I read once that in order to overcome your beast within, you must first learn to love it. In considering my own giant-ness, I first have to reflect on my insignificance. Once this is done—and what better place to do it—I can step on the Causeway as a pseudo-giant headed to Scotland and consider what it might have been like for Finn or Benandonner, rivals linked by a road across an ocean eternally trying to out-giant each other. In the end, I would like my name to be "Finn MacCool" or "Benandonner" just to be more giant-like—and potentially more popular. But that would be pretentious. I suppose even presently we continue to try to out-giant each other, strutting our giant-ness, to feel and appear more important and less insignificant than we really are. But unlike Finn and Benandonner, we might do better with each other's companionship and company, without our giant-ness, because as the population grows and grows, we all still have to get along.
