FROM Brexit to Boris, the public climate rains chaos. Both may be unpredictable or worrying. But neither is unmanageable. Neither is permanent.
Politics gets repaired. Politicians get replaced. Ideologies ebb and flow. Parties grow and implode. Government elections are inevitable and cyclical.
Democracy is altogether much bigger, and more enduring. So pragmatism and patience matter as much as high principle when facing the overt trauma of any storm front.
In the midst of Ireland's warmest summer for a generation, our society could do worse than contemplate some of the wisdom blowing in upon the unusually tropical winds. That's particularly the case in this week of presidents.
There's the arrival of US president Donald Trump on his first visit to Britain: a constant hurricane. It's the 100th birthday of South Africa's late president, Nelson Mandela: an eternal sunrise.
And the Irish president, Michael D Higgins, announced yesterday that he will seek a second term later this year, with an election likely to be held in October.
For over six years, President Higgins has absorbed the mantle of national elder in a way that transcends far beyond the boundary constraints of merely a constitutional head of state.
Perhaps he is less striking than President Mary Robinson when she broke the glass ceiling for Mná na hÉireann; perhaps less ground-breaking than President Mary McAleese in building the relationship with Queen Elizabeth.
But in his turn and his time, President Higgins is arguably more strategic, more soulful: a stable purveyor of wise and gentle calmness in a boiling sea of unrelenting turmoil.
An ardent advocate of complexity and depth in seeking to illuminate enlightenment of the hardest issues faced by this generation, President Higgins challenges the conveyor-belt production of soundbites and 'speaking points' by championing deeper explanations and explorations that seek to provoke conversations for a philosophy of genuine, generational change.
At a recent lecture in Queen's University Belfast, the president commented accurately and insightfully: "You shouldn't have to apologise for speaking more than three sentences."
He said: "...it is necessary for us also to summon the very best of our moral, even healing, instincts, as we attempt to choose our words carefully and precisely."
And in that way, through the working ideology of his office, President Higgins conjures similarities not with the 'grip and grin' culture of professional electioneering, but rather with the imposing and ancient glacial geology of Ireland's landscape, like the majestic Mourne Mountains.
In particular, the Mournes has the 'magic road' that runs down the side of Spelga Dam, where a driverless car in neutral gear is silently reversed back uphill by the hidden powers of physics. Or is it the 'little people'? (How many people even care to wonder, when they are happily inspired by the invisible power of the unforeseeable?)
Likewise, President Higgins has developed an incredible beauty with English and Irish words that raises and praises others to travel journeys of almost magical transformation - personally or socially - that, at times, may have seemed impossible to even consider, never mind complete.
Last week, he spoke at the John O'Donohue International Symposium in Co Clare, encouraging a discussion that "eschews a battle of certainties" between science and spirituality, adding: "It is in the space of wonder, wisdom and often in the silences contributed by nature that we are gifted with the capacity of recovering such a healing... Knowledge does not require a dismissal of all that is not easily quantifiable."
Few, if any, other Irish public leaders currently speak with such thoughtful depth and dexterity - and generosity of dignified respect - for the innate giftedness of each and every citizen whom they are addressing.
Of course, every nation has political moments of change where thunder claps and lightning are unstoppable. And there are winters, too, of social and economic deep-freeze where nothing seems to move.
There have also been equally legitimate criticisms of the president's style and substance, usually about specific gaps rather than gaping holes.
But we are currently at a chapter in the history of these islands where the stable, settled and warming climate of intellectual ethic and communal spirit being cultivated through the current Irish presidency is an undeniably positive influence.
President Higgins continues to provide an immense and ever-increasing public service to the people of these islands, through a leaderly commitment towards the agenda of transformative social justice and rights, and towards meaningful reconciliation as a non-partisan culture of national change.
It's a thoughtful philosophy of public conduct and personal communication from which we all could learn; a tonic of bright constitutional sunlight that cuts through all of the political rain.
