I’m a control freak – power matters to me. It is of intense interest to me who is running the gaffe and how well they’re doing – whether that’s a country, a company, a school or any other institution. I can usually find glaring faults in any leader who has any power over me. Time was when this was mingled with a seething sense of injustice, and a shadowy raging desire to undermine and subvert. This has mellowed over the years, with the realisation that I was projecting a lot of my own crap on to others. Take more control over your own life, and the rest of the world ceases to be quite as threatening. Stay in victim mode, and everywhere you look there is someone abusing you.

The truth is that there is only so much we can control over our lives. As any twelve-stepper knows, serenity in life is gained by knowing the difference between what we can and cannot change, and having the courage to go for what we can. As citizens of a small republic, we have few illusions about what we can do to change the world. But what we have managed to do to change ourselves, especially over the past ten years, is phenomenal, by any standards.

To remain chained to a dream of unity, of perfection, of a mystical perfect past, is a common psychological trait; it can lead to bitter disappointment with the present, an entrenched infantilised victim outlook, and an apathetic disengagement with life. It’s a feeling of profound impotence – nothing can be done to return to the mythic golden age, so it’s not worth doing anything else. From stagnant impotence crawls all sorts of vengeful horrors.

Irish republicans suffered from this big-time. It is a mark of profound maturity and self-empowerment to move beyond the dream and work creatively with what is, to accept restrictions, such as a border and giving up arms, and to move on. To grow up, accept each other’s differences, and to get on with the business of living.

The peace process is by far the most important political event on these islands since partition. Did I have a say in it, as a voter in Ireland until 1993, and in the UK since then? In party political terms, not much; only in so far as I voted for parties and individuals who supported it. But then the real change, the really painful growing up, happened in Northern Ireland itself, backed up by a steadfast Irish government and an enlightened British one.

But in one important way, when politics is not just about budgets and committees, but about symbols. I feel my vote for Mary Robinson was a vote for a deep change in my country, on so many levels – and the result was close enough, and surprising enough, to still give me a glow of pleasure every time I think of it. She it was who shook hands with the then pariah Gerry Adams in a Belfast community hall – the first high-level political figure to do so publicly on either side of the divide, putting the “inclusivity” manifesto commitment of hers to the litmus test, beginning the essential process of bringing hardline republicans in from the cold. She was the first Irish president the Unionists could have respect for, for she had proven in her previous political life that she had respect for their views. And, on a personal level, she was “Contraceptive Mary” who was actively involved in the movement to decriminalise me as a gay man. She was a symbol of revolution that began the dismantling of the theocracy. I could not have wished for a better candidate to vote for on the ballot paper to represent me; I could not have dreamed that she would have done so well in the job.

I miss voting in Irish elections. I believe that the system, flawed as it is, works. I exercise my power as eloquently as I can with my PR vote, and it can make a difference. Because of that, I accept the results of Irish elections, even if I hate them. I relish the sheer pleasure of starting with giving someone my last preference, with murderous intent, via a fanciful journey among also-rans and no-hopers, up to the serious contenders, juggling with them, and finishing with the crowning numero uno. I love the process of checking the transfers in the papers the day after, to see if I made a difference on the nineteenth count. If I didn’t, I don’t resent it; that’s Irish politics.

In British elections, I feel impotent. I can’t vote for Head of State, so, as fond as I may be of old queenie, I have no means of registering my republican views. I hate the first-past-the-post system – as a quirky voter more likely to vote for greens and independents and radical thinkers, I have not a chance in hell of anyone like that getting elected to represent me in parliament. While giving Tony Blair ten out of ten in the way he has handled the Northern Ireland peace process, there isn’t a way I can effectively register my protest against Labour’s foreign affairs and transport policies, the two areas closest to my heart. Living in a safe Labour constituency, my vote does not give me a real choice. Having just voted in local government elections here, it still staggers me that not one piece of election literature was posted through my door, not one poster was displayed anywhere, and when I surveyed the list of prospective councillors, not one name was familiar to me.

There’s a lot to be said for parochialism. In Ireland I’d be binning the leaflets on a daily basis, I’d be smilingly shutting my door daily on rosetted activists. I’d know their names and I’d have some idea of their personalities, and how much of a party animal they’d be. I’d be able to ditch an individual and still stay loyal to a party, if I wanted to. In Ireland, politics is personal. Voting is personal. Sure it ends in horse-trading and backroom deals; sure we might have more say in world affairs if we could elect the board of Microsoft or Esso. But in Ireland, we can decide how much say Microsoft or Esso has in our lives, by legislation, if we so wished. Supply every school computer with Linux installed, or build acres of offshore wind farms and insist on quotas of electric cars. Politics is all about what’s possible, and in Ireland, anything is possible. I believe.

Get personal on election day. Be grateful you don’t have a French or American presidential ballot paper in front of you. Be grateful you don’t have a British general election ballot paper in front of you. And, most of all, be grateful you have a ballot paper in front of you at all.