Quantcast
Channel: The Trinidad Guardian Newspaper
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 18762

Life is a series of fluctuations

$
0
0
Published: 
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
MENTAL HEALTH MATTERS

“We teach competitiveness at every level of life. Never cooperation. Never getting along.

Cradle to grave is dog-eat-dog.

Win or lose. Mines not yours. I better than you. I deserve, you don’t. I get, is you to ketch. Sow the wind. Reap the whirlwind.”

That was author Barbara Jenkins, just over a week ago, responding to a post about another mother who was murdered. It felt like such a great summary of my frustrations with how callous we continue to be and become in T&T. It capsuled all the emotions I felt/ feel and highlighted most of the underlying elements I have entertained about how and why we are so judgmental and increasingly wicked as a people.

It took me hours to remember to which posts Jenkins was responding so I could quote her. About 1.30 am Monday, long after busting my deadline, I finally remembered that the way to find anything on Facebook to which you have reacted is to use the Activity Log feature.

That exercise in itself made the point about the point I’m here to make: Life is a series of fluctuations. There was a time I was so “sharp,” I could not imagine such an obstacle to my schedule. Now, I tire easier, forget more, and have delayed synapses in many situations, all which came much easier before, but now demand that I work harder to remain focused.

When, or if we realise and accept how circular and cyclical life is, and how someone else’s today’s circumstance can be ours tomorrow, I wonder, would we temper our desire to be judgmental?

Someone said to me I was being a bit harsh when I described us in T&T as Cretans.

I came upon the reference in the Bible decades ago, where the Apostle Paul, in instructing Titus on the administration of the First century church, and the particular issue of the Cretans’ character, wrote: “Cretans are always liars, brutes and lazy gluttons.”

Paul had quoted Epimenides of Gnossus, a seventh-century BC poet; a Cretan himself who characterised his people this way. There were others who made the same observations about the people on the island of Crete.

And so, for about a decade of T&T’s decadence, debauchery and large-scale derision, I have been harbouring that reference.

Then I voiced it in response to my bewilderment about how callous, murderous, and desensitised we are becoming as a population.

And, of course, it is the minority of us in some of these negatively characterising behaviour, but consider that when another country puts out a warning to citizens about T&T they never take time to speak of how beautiful most of us are. We are characterised by the prevalent or perceived prevalent behaviour.

Some of this current conduct work to promote long-standing prejudices. And in the case of myths and misunderstandings about mental wellbeing, given the abundance of access to so many fora for discussion, and so little educating, there is a feeling that the ignorance is being compounded.

Our desire to be better than the other, as Jenkins stated, is to me one of the most brutish behaviour. It is not that we are really attempting to be better, at times, but wholly trying to ensure we ill speak, debase, and ridicule others to the place where, in our clouded judgment, we appear better.

To my mind, that manner we seem to be adopting, which rushes to waylaying anything we feel free to deride, suggests we easily forget life is a fluctuation; that today’s fortune could be tomorrow’s sorrow; that today’s wellbeing can be tomorrow’s ill health; that the rain falls on the good and evil; that what eh meet you eh pass you; that “one day one day congotay” is an everybody adage.

We need to unlearn the belief that there is a “fine line” between sanity and insanity.

Life itself is the fine line on which exists various stages of sanity and on which anyone can find themself at any point.

Mental wellbeing, similar to the ups and downs of life, is a fluid state. Today’s circumstance of good wellbeing can easily be erased by a moment of grief, hurt, or any kind of trauma internal or external. And we can recover and again be derailed by another of life’s fluctuations.

When or if our wellbeing is better than another person, that is never a reason to gloat over the other’s misfortune. Reflecting on the opening of this piece though, I despair for the change that is necessary.

I feel our humanity slipping away without sufficient efforts at the individual and national levels to take the bite out of our judgmental attitude, as we “sow the wind and reap the whirlwind” where we need to sow love, peace, empathy, and sympathy and reap positive benefits.

Caroline C Ravello is a strategic communications and media professional and a public health practitioner. She holds an MA with Merit in Mass Communications (University of Leicester) and is a Master of Public Health With Distinction (UWI). Write to: mindful.tt@gmail.com


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 18762

Trending Articles



<script src="https://jsc.adskeeper.com/r/s/rssing.com.1596347.js" async> </script>