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Everyone seems to be gloomy, and angry. The far-flung wishes for merriment, good health and prosperity making their way into our spaces seem regular enough, but if you have a conversation using voices, you can hear the bleakness.
Things are tight financially (at least in my circle), relationships are floundering, children are rebelling, workplaces are toxic—and that’s on people’s personal level.
Going outdoors is scary because of crime and gigantic potholes. At the local and international levels, is like everyone tripping on some kinda crazy seed.
We are in a global era of vicious warmongering, wrought by extraordinarily vapid minds.
Did we really vote for these people? Did the human collective put aside intelligence and decency to knit itself a gnarly noose to hang everything in sight?
It’s a chilling descent into barbarity.
I am writing this on Christmas night and at 7.08pm, I could hear a spray of fireworks, just saying.
Managing director of FireOne Fireworks, Andre Abraham, had extolled the civic-mindedness of his company’s “buy one get one free” sale on Boxing Day.
“We don’t do this just for sales. This is how we protect citizens and the market,” he told Newsday. “This Boxing Day sale is to wipe out any bad products… when we give away something of equal value, it makes it very undesirable to buy a product outside of the FireOne universe.”
You have to marvel at the conscientiousness of this good citizen and his benevolence to the fire-working public by ensuring they buy his superior stuff.
(Courtesy Flickr.)
But to return to what I was saying before the interruption shifted my thoughts, I try not to let the external dramas dampen my outlook.
Social media is no longer a puddle of rants, it’s a maelstrom of racist hatred. It’s better to avoid it.
I have a stubborn belief in personal ownership of what I allow to affect my stress levels. I have learned at great personal cost to my health how damaging it can be.
It is easier to focus on things that bring joy. In that regard, I find there is a surprising community of like-minded souls.
Photo: Gerard Paul Photography
Chatting with a dear friend in Tobago we shared our delight in being around nature, listening to birdsongs, the restorative feeling of simple, free indulgences. My nephew itemised those sounds and sights as the things that brought him quiet pleasures on mornings.
If I could wish one gift to humans generally, it is to have the capacity to inhale the scent of simplicity.
In this season of celebration, people are full of stress trying to create the ideal Christmas based on the capitalist notion of consumption. Marketers have certainly succeeded in convincing us that it’s about having things and baubles and an absurd cast of fripperies.
On Eatahfood’s YouTube channel, Cornelius Carlos Felician, a tour guide from Paramin, described that bygone appreciation of things—simple childhood experiences that were treasured because they signified that something special was happening in their lives.
He talked about balloons, pastelles, an apple sliced into four quarters to be served with two grapes and a few Planters nuts, and Danish cookies.
A Tobago woman being interviewed by CNC3 news as I write, talks warmly about her memories of getting a dolly made of cloth. They are from an earlier generation—and while they might be wistful for those past times, at the core of what they were saying is the message that there is beauty in the philosophy of finding joy in moments, not things.
The man from Paramin mentioned the idea of community tourism and he made a point that it is not about people ascending into their space to have a parang fete just to say they were there. He felt that true community tourism can happen when people know and respect the culture of each place.
A couple days ago, Jackie Hinkson sent a greeting accompanied as usual by one of his paintings, this one of parranderos. It is actually what I wanted to write about.
For decades, our octogenarian has steadfastly depicted our society, our people, our landscapes, our buildings, seas, flora and shown us ourselves with a fealty that has been unwavering. His murals have been massive commentaries on the way we live.
Image: Jackie Hinkson.
He keeps on going and he keeps showing us ourselves. How does he?
During this season, I automatically turn to Scrunter, Owen Reyes Johnson, whose corpus of music, not just his Christmas offerings, depict a similar swathe of our lives. His lyrical constructions are faithful renditions of the way we speak that invites us to inhale that scent of simplicity.
Most of all, Scrunter’s music invites us to partake in that spirit of community, that same feeling from Paramin and Tobago and the landscapes that Jackie gives us.
They are of a past generation it is true, but they invoke memories of homeliness and belonging. They remind us of the marvellous things that we have created right here, with scant resources and mighty creativity.
We didn’t buy happiness from Amazon packages. We constructed our own realms of contentment.
As we enter another year, it is worth reconsidering this preoccupation with the hatemongering that is tearing our society apart.
Despite our real and imagined hurts, if we can keep our focus on building rather than destroying, we can rejoice in what we have in such abundance.
After all, what kind of society do we want?
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Vaneisa Baksh is a columnist with the Trinidad Express, an editor and a cricket historian. She is the author of a biography of Sir Frank Worrell.
