Crisis Management

My mother did her best. She worked two jobs for most of her life to support herself and children without much help from my father. She would not approve of this post as it puts family business out there, at least I don’t think she would approve. My life feels in crisis though and so I have to try something unusual to bring a solution. The President yesterday called for an “out of the box” approach to the nation’s problems. He also said the nation is in crisis.

            I can’t say that I don’t feel that his analysis is wrong as the indices that led to the conclusion may not be the only ones that should be considered. In his inaugural address, a histrionic call to action, Anthony Thomas Aquinas Carmona, spoke to issues that gauge governance. I have never felt that crime and unemployment were good measures of a society’s standing. He mentioned the former treading dangerously close to the political tenor that can embarrass a government.

            All hands are needed on deck, he said, to save Trinidad and Tobago. It is inherently flawed as it is a top down approach. Really must I feel compelled to now consider how to reduce crime when all it seems to do is determine how good the state is managing our affairs? He reinforced this belief when he said that as a nation we are one: it means our goals are shared and too our responsibilities. We may be an independent nation but I am apparently not free to determine what it is I want to achieve.

            Thinking about the speech I realised that this is what is wrong with my world, it assumes for me what is important, taking me away from what I feel is important. We count corpses in Trinidad and Tobago and no one counts the stifled souls, the snuffed dreams, the unrealised ambitions and the impossible that faces so many of us.

            Everyone is saying that the President’s speech inspired hope. I peruse the social media sites like FB and twitter and see nothing but fit-to-print reactions that hail the address as what the country needs; I am left lost for comfort.

            It’s not like me to challenge the voice of the nation’s highest office holder. I dare say this is not what I imagine my mother had in mind when she made me. I’m not sure that a lot of what I do could have been imagined by parents. I do know, though, that desperate times call for desperate measures and I know what my responsibilities are. I hope this also means that for all her efforts my mother has at least made a citizen that is not afraid to take a risk, do the unimaginable and fly in the face of authority in an attempt to make life better.