OF PRACTICE 2023
RESOLUTIONS are the aspirations that we, in sober awareness, must condition our minds towards the perseverance of “the Will.” However, the ‘no man’s land’ before us at the moment may defy its reality or purpose through inspiration towards any near reality, yet hope, like faith, must be sustained on works, even towards the assumed the simplest goal. I always maintain loyalty to ‘What I have experienced, witnessed, and therefore, now know’ and I share this perspective without hesitation. Another year is gone, and we have learned lessons from the more valuable experiences, our own failures, disappointments, and why? We must place in context what we did not do, as well as what we termed a failure, whether it constituted the warning concept of the saying my father often repeated to me: “Don’t wake up and see the enemy in the mirror.” Translated, that means do not betray one’s peace of mind or values to any proposed, enticing shortcut towards achievement. Another fact I learned a lifetime ago, I was not yet 20, resides around the inability to explore in your own interest.
Back then, I had finished some illustrations and the poetry to go with and was trying to get my stuff published. Advice led me to an office in a government ministry. After some waiting, I was engaged by a gentleman who is still in the media field today. His assertive advice (I was there to seek guidance) to me was a lecture on how Guyana did not need creative writers nor artists, then he looked at my pencils and Bic pen drawings and called a lady to impress on her the inadequacy of my bad spelling. I left almost broken. By that early stage of my life I had learned not to cry, at least publicly, I was conditioned that men cried in secret, then take a bath, don some “threads,” and face the world with a smile or a “screw face,” but walking down the step of the ministry, the very lady — back then we viewed an early 30 as a big girl — purred quickly to me, pssst! I turned, and she gestured for me “to come” with her fingers. She quickly told me to go to Queens College compound, ask for Curriculum Development, and Mr Oswald Kendall, and show him your stuff. She wished me good luck. I was thinking before going to Bovell’s Printery, and printing my stuff in the future; because I had no money then. At the folk in Queens College compound, I was in a different Guyana. After a welcome and a brief outline, based on the following year’s budget, they would print my stuff. Mrs Hamilton, the late ‘Mr Oswald Kendall’s (as headmaster of Christ Church, he was called SHAFT, a tremendous human being) secretary, outlined to me the procedure of editing and proofreading that went into publishing; that’s how I got my Voyage Book of Verse published.
The gist of including this piece of biography is that because I had resolved to embrace what talent I had and make it work, the determination revolved around a resolution that previous Old Year’s night, because I didn’t like the other options that seemed inevitable; I wanted some control of my life. Incidentally, talking some years ago with novelist and journalist Michael Jordan, he also was sent to this man and was told the same depressing narrative, “Why was he at that desk was our question?”
Resolutions could be based on what is even, challengingly practical. It seems that once you embrace an idea that you at least have the core skills to develop the path to its success, we humans can sink to a level where we feel that sitting at a successful “other’s table” makes you compatible. There are things that I cannot write about, that should not be a resolution considered or entertained, frustration and its stress most times are generated when we ignore the famous poem by Max Ehrimann, ‘Desiderata.’ It’s good for self-conversation, as well as modern poems and books of current struggles, that keep you grounded in the reality of whatever you want to do and are aspiring towards; knowledge empowers you, get ‘Trade Literature’ that can give you background as far as permitted. From the time you make that Resolution on New Year’s Eve, the disposition of your path is no-nonsense fixed. Nothing is instant, so as the saying to talent goes, “keep the day job” where we, each human stands, does not define the world. My resolution back then has given me a platform, but the act is not complete. A productive 2023 to all.
