Dare to be different

Let me begin by apologising to my readers and others for not wishing them a season full of hope, love and expectations full of spiritual fulfilment. The omission occurred because of a mix-up between myself and my editor. My apologies once again.

It is usual at this time to talk about resolutions and plans on how to keep them, and there is no problem with such a resolve. It’s the same old practice of regurgitating the same old grandiose resolutions we make every year only to break them in a few weeks.

We usually resolve to do better in many areas like being more diligent at work; greater savings effort; better home behaviour; becoming simply a better person. Somehow these never seem to work out and we resign ourselves to failure and abandon them as pie in the sky.

This year should not be the same. Can we dare to be different in 2019? Can our New Year resolutions be more in concert with humility, love and care for the unfortunate?

A good start would be to encourage or take a family member or friend to weekend Mass. Probably you can serve as a catalyst to get more people to attend weekend Masses either by example or by suasion. With the Church’s diminishing membership, wouldn’t it be nice to pledge, as hard as it might be, to take someone new to church on weekends? Something to think about.

Our country seems to be very angry and upset at this time and we all have varying reasons why this is so. Given the high murder rate; the spate of kidnappings; regular and violent home invasions; bullying in schools; loss of respect for people and institutions; the alarming increase in the sale and use of drugs; erratic driving on the nation’s roads; the heavy backlog in our courts; and a variety of other lawless acts have caused this anger because people can’t seem to be able to change the paradigm.

I think it can be changed if the population makes a concerted effort to replace this burning anger with love for our fellowmen. We seemed to have lost the art of loving one another.

Members of families are at odds with each other; neighbours who just can’t agree; and conflicts in the workplace. Many of these infractions show that we have lost the art both of being compassionate and helpful, and a lack of empathy to our brothers and sisters. It is all fuelled by GREED. Abominable greed.

With the society in such turmoil we can base our New Year resolutions on the old values and traditions seasoned with plenty of spiritual mores and fostered by a healthier and meaningful life. We can start by vowing to love our neighbour as God commanded us; to help our incapacitated neighbour or friend; the unfortunate single and teenaged mothers; and more generally God’s people that need help in any form.

You can have your own version of ‘Adopt a Family’ or for that matter ‘Adopt a Child’ by pledging, if to nobody else but yourself, to help and by so doing love a family or child. The help need not be purely financial, but certainly the love and helpfulness that will emanate from such a relationship will bring resounding results to both parties.

Little acts of kindness and genuine expressions of love will yield fantastic results. You see, the seething anger and rage now being experienced by so many people in this society by all the contributing factors of criminal activity—the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer should not be the norm, but rather love and care for all the people would serve as a satisfying panacea in helping Trinidad and Tobago climb out of the ditch of corruption and criminality in which we find ourselves.

A blessed and bountiful 2019 to all my readers.