I AM reminded of the day I gained possession of my first car. It was back in the day when the reconditioned car market was booming in Guyana. I negotiated successfully too, to get it spray painted burgundy to stand out from the common white colour in those days. So, I got my first set of car keys and drove in the direction of home proudly, then, as I approached the home-stretch I promptly got one tire stuck in the mud pot hole just a few yards from home.
Try as I did, accelerating or reversing as hard as I could, nothing that I did could independently get that wheel unstuck from the mud. The mud pot hole just got deeper and deeper. The wheel just kept spinning and spinning, a vicious splashing up of a continuous stream of mud and going nowhere. That image always comes to mind when I think of our politics, more or less.

What is striking to me is the number of senior influential politicians from all political parties who have died since I began paying attention to local politics. People live, make their contribution, die and this wheel is still spinning in the mud going nowhere. In my case, as I was trying to accelerate out of an impossible situation, I noticed people who live in the street coming to help, even the vagabonds came forth.

Together, they did what was necessary and the problem was solved. There is one thing that I know for sure about Guyana, regardless of what we think or how much we want to go it alone, no person or group is standing alone in this country.

We have a present day reality to face: we are a plural society. We have to make a decision about what we are going to do about this. Are we going to accept that other ethnic, religious, social, political, secular groups are present? They are not going anywhere. They are here to stay.

Are we going to go beyond acceptance and lend support? Or are we going to continue to work to undermine unity to partition the country to make Little Indias and Little Africas so we can continue continental strife and squabbles ad infinitum? Or are we going to strive to keep the country whole because we ‘big-eyed’ but dominate it in some way, shape or form?

How ready are we, the people, to accept the existence of the plural make up of our society and engage with it with nobility? Acceptance replaces fear and mistrust – an actual physical transformation that causes ease in the heart. Psychologically, one cannot genuinely accept another unless one can stand self assured.

It’s commonly stated that one cannot love/accept another unless one first loves/accepts oneself. In any partnership, one cannot also neglect oneself. In order for good relationships to stand, it is necessary to support the needs of both self and other. I have also, ,recently, come to understand that we cannot trust others until we can first trust ourselves. ‘To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night follows the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man’.

As simple as these statements sound, the psychological processes necessary to bring hurt minds into states of self assurance and balance are tremendous. We know that this can take years and generations. It is also commonly appreciated that hurting people hurt others. It is no secret that our history has been traumatic and each major group in this country, be it religious or ethnic, had to undertake an intense identity search, and that this is an ongoing process.
If we were to do some stock-taking, how self assured are we all feeling in our individual (and multiple) identities? If not quite self-assured, could we be at a tipping-point?

I recently had the pleasure of meeting an African born in Senegal. His interest was in Indian philosophy and mine was in West African spirituality and philosophy. The conversation was so natural and spontaneous. This is something that my generation has never really truly had the freedom to enjoy in Guyana, at least at a political level. Our conversations always seem to have an unnecessary tinge of competition or a degree of self consciousness. How securely can we now stand?

And how outdated is pure competition in today’s post-Nash equilibrium world? Even businesses (and partners in crime and corruption are typically colour blind) today have moved beyond win-lose paradigms where they try to extinguish the competition to win-win strategies of collaboration and complementing each other.

It’s a realisation that ‘you don’t have to blow out the other fellow’s light to let your own shine.’ (Bernard Baruch) Conflict is ultimately unsustainable (Imperialism, Apartheid, Cold War, Berlin Wall) and cooperation does evolve ultimately out of repeated games of competition (Game Theory for the new-age scientists and economists and politicians among us.)
The gentleman from Senegal was all excited about his momentous upcoming trip to India to attend his friend’s sister’s wedding in South India. How does the average Guyanese of African heritage relate to India?

What kind of conditioning has been going on for us? How does the average Guyanese of Indian heritage relate to Africa? Or are we still preoccupied with our own identity issues and our poverty that we can’t really spare the space to consider others as yet? How important is it that we are able to have conversation about cultural heritage or at least relax about it?

I recently observed some Nigerian students in communication with each other in a university setting. It was loud in a quiet environment, the people around started to look up and shift uncomfortably. But on closer observation, what was going on was drama in natural conversation. It was a form of oral communication with dramatisation of life. Each person was relating a story of some sort with lots of laughter, hand movements, pauses for effect. Yet, this innocence was perceived as threatening to some of different culture.
A backpack together with a beard on a man in a train in London can cause havoc. How reliable are our perceptions? What we hear about Africa in the press is not what Africa is. What we hear about Iran in the press is not what Iran is. How reliable are our perceptions and ideas? And consequently, how susceptible are we to manipulation in the creation and support of strife?
I read a little story by Swami Prabhupada, founder of the Krishna Consciousness movement in the west. He said some people say ‘we will believe in God only if we can see God’. He wondered if people have the eyes to see God? If the light goes out in the room and it is in complete darkness, they can’t even see their own hands. How reliable are our senses even? My intention is not to cause us to lose faith in our senses and perceptions but to help us to relax with the attachment to our perceptions and ideas and more importantly, to see our susceptibility to manipulation and the importance of leaving some kind of space for deeper understanding. Can we learn from our experience? Can we really learn? If we can, we are a boon to mankind.
Even more interestingly for me recently was an experience at a Christian meditation session. As the only brown person in the room, during lunch I found myself at a table first and others came around. It turned out that the others (British, white colour) had a connection with India. They did not previously know each other, but were drawn and gravitated towards the table with the Indian looking person.
One lady over eighty years old was born and raised in India during the time of the British Raj. Even though she looked like an average British person, her sensibilities were Indian. Even her art she says is Indian. How useful is colour of skin as an indicator of a person’s sensibilities, beliefs and interests? Even the colour of my skin lied to them because I am not from India though perceived to be that. What can I say, I am just skilful at smashing boundaries all the time! Seriously though, can we relax with the perceptions and let people reveal themselves? It’s tough to do because the mind constructs a reality for us and this is why we have so much conflict in the world. It takes effort to build peaceful societies. Can we in Guyana leverage our historical conflict? What have we learned? And what can we build? What can we teach the world?
If we look around the country without our filters, we will see that we cannot even provide an assurance for life itself. Our present dilemma is indeed a physical security dilemma. Who can feel safe in Guyana? Safety is an essential ingredient to human progress. It is what Europe and the USA have provided themselves. We cannot underestimate the importance of creating a safer environment for ourselves to enjoy and within which to nurture the future generation.
The greatest hindrance to our personal safety is political instability and the second greatest hindrance is the international political economy.
Let’s focus on what we can control and stabilise: political instability. Who does our disunity aid? Certainly, not us as a people or as a nation. Who supports our disunity? We do. We are therefore destroying ourselves and others in a vicious feedback cycle. What drives, supports, feeds this feedback machine? We might want to reach for the blame game and say PPP, PNC, Americans, British, white people, black/African people, brown/Indian people. But, the way that I have come to see it, it is more fundamental than all that.

We are feeding hatred, anger, greed, mistrust into the machine which extinguishes human life with drops of blood and tears coming out the other side. On every occasion where we say ‘PPP did this’ or ‘PNC did that’ or ‘they so and so’ or utter various forms of belligerence, it is a cover for hatred, for blame, for anger, for resentment and it is a dumb emotional reaction that feeds the cycle, for it leaves no space for the good stuff. None of us will agree that these are good feelings to harbour. We think that we are loving kind people, but unconsciously we are expressing hatred, anger and other foul emotions in disguise and causing great harm to others, and by virtue of that, to ourselves.
Holding onto anger and hatred has been likened to putting a smouldering hot iron rod down one’s own throat. Holding onto resentment has been likened to holding the hot iron rod in our chest keeping it for the enemy. How does one get past this roadblock? By looking after oneself first and foremost – let it go. Forgiveness doesn’t help the enemy. Letting go of resentments, anger, hatred protects our own internal organs (not to mention decreased productivity in the bile production department!) Letting go is necessary for peace of mind which is a precondition for unity of mind. In the letting go, there is liberation from the emotional pain and the mind is free to look at the problem in a different way. Suffering is an aspect of life. Managing that suffering is an art.
One of the most politically inspiring songs that I have heard came out of Trinidad and Tobago’s Pichakaaree, composed by Raviji. It starts like this, if I remember correctly:

Jao…
I am sending you on a mission
To the Caribbean

Go…
I am sending you on a mission
To the Caribbean

In our case of course, we were ‘sent’ to South America and ‘we’ connotes plurality. But, what is our mission? What is our rallying cry? What is the higher purpose? Who can answer this question? All the Saints among us know that it’s not for this life only but for all eternity. Can our mission be larger than our life itself? How long do we mortals live? What are we supposed to do while here on the planet and can it be done under and with grace?