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Saturday, July 12, 2025

No longer happy like pappy

by

20121005

I sup­pose I could just walk away

Will I dis­ap­point my fu­ture if I stay

It's just a day that brings it all about

Just an­oth­er day and noth­ing's any good

-King of Sor­row, Sade

Trinidad and To­ba­go is sad. I mean like, re­al­ly re­al­ly sad. So sad in fact, that in the world we've been ranked No. 136 out of 151 coun­tries on the Hap­py Plan­et In­dex. Ac­cord­ing to this new in­dex, com­piled by the Lon­don-based New Eco­nom­ics Foun­da­tion (NEF), they're not just fo­cus­ing on GDP, but al­so tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion life ex­pectan­cy and en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

"The Hap­py Plan­et In­dex mea­sures what re­al­ly mat­ters-long and hap­py lives now and the po­ten­tial for good lives in the fu­ture," said Nic Marks, cre­ator of the in­dex, in a press re­lease. So the fact that we're ranked low­er than the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Re­pub­lic of Con­go is re­al­ly not a good sign. Even in the face of years of civ­il war and oth­er not so nice things, they still feel more op­ti­mistic about their fu­tures than we do.

Ja­maica, one of the coun­tries in the Caribbean we like to treat like our poor re­la­tions since we've got oil and they don't, is ranked sixth in the world and Cu­ba is ranked twelfth. It seems that for all our oil and gas and Car­ni­val and win­ing and skin teeth we can't get our acts to­geth­er and just be hap­py. Just imag­ine that. How could a coun­try so blessed be so de­pressed?

Maybe my granny was right, in­grat­i­tude is worse than witch­craft. And maybe we're so un­grate­ful about all the bless­ings we have that we just can't get it to­geth­er to be hap­py. Ei­ther for our­selves or for our fel­low cit­i­zens. Maybe we're so ob­sessed with the neg­a­tives that we don't even no­tice the pos­i­tives.

It cer­tain­ly chal­lenges that idea of Tri­nis be­ing hap­py like pap­py. We clear­ly aren't and the ev­i­dence of that is the news­pa­pers every day. And the me­dia are as de­pressed as the rest of the so­ci­ety be­cause all it can see is the bac­cha­nal and the fail­ure and the death. Sad­ness, like yawn­ing, is in­fec­tious.

And it's not the kind of sad­ness that mo­ti­vates us to cre­ate our best work. Like how you feel when you lis­ten to Shad­ow, you don't know whether to laugh or cry, be­cause there's so much pain in the mu­sic but it is so gut-wrench­ing­ly beau­ti­ful that through your tears you can smile and hold your head up and move on. No, our sad­ness is in that un­reach­able place. Too far down be­hind our piles of sus­pi­cion, our eth­nic fa­tigue, our con­stant con­test to prove that we are the most op­pressed.

It's too deep in our DNA. Like the song my great-grand­fa­ther used to sing to my moth­er: "None to wipe my eyes, none to dry my tears, I alone in sor­row, I must go." The dirges and ele­gies that live in our blood. So that every time I hear the Lara Broth­ers I feel to weep rather than dance for all the un­re­solved hurt and long­ing for home that lurks in the mi­nor chords.

We have re­ports about op­pressed Hin­dus. And re­ports about no deaths in one com­mu­ni­ty. And re­ports about ris­ing fu­el prices, as if we nev­er want to wake up from the drunk­en stu­por that is cheap oil, that prompts us to leave our cars run­ning while we get our dou­bles. Maybe it's all of these things. Or maybe it's none of them. What makes peo­ple hap­py? Is it mon­ey? Is it na­ture? Is it the hope­ful­ness they feel from the peo­ple in pow­er?

Should we blame the Gov­ern­ment for our sad­ness? Or should we take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for our com­mu­ni­ties and for our men­tal health and for our chil­dren so that our lead­ers would have to fol­low our ex­am­ple. Of choos­ing to do the right thing. Of choos­ing to be of ser­vice to the com­mu­ni­ty even when no-one is look­ing. Even when there is no rib­bon to cut and no tax re­bate to col­lect.

We seek hap­pi­ness in all the wrong places and maybe that is the prob­lem. I've seen peo­ple in Eng­land tap in­to the Car­ni­val joy vein in a way that most Trini­bag­o­ni­ans have for­got­ten. Too fo­cused are we now on be­ing seen, or how many pre­mi­um drinks our all-in­clu­sive band mem­ber­ship can get us.

Be­cause the fac­tor that prob­a­bly most ac­counts for our low stand­ing is en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The large­ness of our eco­log­i­cal foot­print is the one of the most sig­nif­i­cant dis­as­ters that we are yet to come to terms with, and which will af­fect many fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.

We can cry about the ris­ing cost of fu­el all we like. But how come we don't cry for all the dam­age these cars and the oil ex­trac­tion and man­u­fac­tur­ing process­es do dai­ly to our coun­try? That's the scari­est part. And the part that makes me the most sad.


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