The Irish broadcaster, Colm Flynn recently tweeted about a lovely TV news report he worked on back in 2019, about a postman, Mike Sheehan, in a very small, remote Southwestern Irish village of Goleen, in County Cork. As the story goes, he spent 42 years cycling up to 30 miles a day, delivering the mail to his neighbors.
Interspersed with a short TV film from 1975, Flynn interviews the old timers in the villages who remember him fondly, as well as Sheehan’s very proud son, who’s now well into middle age.
Sheehan was the very last of the cycling postmen, who never switched over to cars and vans like everyone else. He had his shtick. He liked his shtick. So he kept with it.
As Flynn’s report says, he was far more than a deliverer of mail, he truly helped people. Many folks didn’t have cars back then, but if you asked him, he’d happily deliver essentials like milk or bread to neighbors who needed them.
It’s hard not to be utterly charmed by the whole thing. What becomes apparent right away is what a strong, old, powerful culture he was a part of. For many of us in big cities, it’s VERY seductive because it’s very unlike our own lives.
So what’s their secret? Places like that or similar remote villages in say, Normandy, Austria, or Eastern Tennessee? What makes their culture so strong?
Short answer: Interdependence.
Not to romanticize small towns, but to thrive in a place like Goleen, you have to be committed to the people. Not only do you have to get along generally, there is a certain duty to help people out when they need it. Not only are these your people, you have to actually treat them that way. And many do.
What we often take for granted is the fact that this is what makes people happy. Being part of a group in a meaningful way. When we cut ourselves off from that, it can make us miserable. Which is why, even though Mike Sheehan never made a lot of money or hung out with rock stars, there’s something about him that makes us outsiders envious.
And what’s true in West Cork is just as true in our shiny-big offices and big teams. A great company culture without a sense of committed interdependence and community, doesn’t happen.
