AT­TIL­LAH SPRINGER

Do some good to­day

And wipe away your de­struc­tive at­ti­tudes

Do some good to­day

And to­day make pre­pare your virtues

Do some good to­day

And wipe away your de­struc­tive at­ti­tudes

–Do Some Good To­day, Siz­zla

I die a lit­tle death of ab­ject shame every­time I read some­thing of mine that's been pub­lished with a gram­mat­i­cal er­ror. Or worse when some­body else points it out to me.It hurts me to the core. It's as if some­body was stand­ing un­der my starch tree revving up a chain saw. I can't deal with mak­ing mis­takes that can be avoid­ed if I give my­self enough time in­stead of rush­ing head­long in­to a dead­line and meet­ing it at the last pos­si­ble sec­ond.

Writ­ers, I sup­pose, will un­der­stand what I'm say­ing. Or any­one who is re­al­ly ob­sessed with the work they do. Their art. When you are ob­sessed with ex­cel­lence it's hard to come to terms with mak­ing a mis­take. And yes, to err is hu­man and every fault could be a fash­ion. But to wal­low in medi­oc­rity, well that's just a sin against your own ca­pac­i­ty for ex­cel­lence.

But medi­oc­rity is big busi­ness in Trinidad. Okay is okay. It's okay to just put in your quo­ta. To just do the bare min­i­mum, es­pe­cial­ly in pub­lic of­fice. Make the least ef­fort and be praised for it. And get paid plen­ty mon­ey for it too be­sides.So many of us suf­fer­ing from "I nev­er thought I could get a sweet con­tract where some­body will ac­tu­al­ly pay me mon­ey," that we start to be­have dotish. We start to get cocky and ar­ro­gant and de­fen­sive and wrong and strong.

When I was in uni­ver­si­ty I could nev­er un­der­stand how there were peo­ple get­ting top marks for es­says in which sub­ject and verb were al­ways in dis­agree­ment and en­tire pas­sages were lift­ed from text books.I guess they ticked all the box­es in the eyes of their lec­tur­ers.

And now, when I have con­ver­sa­tions with my niece and nephews about their school work, I see the ways in which main­stream ed­u­ca­tion is just train­ing us to an­swer ques­tions so we could get a wuk and live out pre­dictable cap­i­tal­ist lives work­ing for a cor­po­ra­tion or for the state cor­po­ra­tion.No­body wants to take the ef­fort to make sure that learn­ing is hap­pen­ing. And that lack of in­ter­est in com­ple­tion of tasks, in do­ing it over and over un­til you get it right, is a na­tion­al pas­time.

So re­al­ly, who cares if a na­tion­al mon­u­ment has a mis­take on it. I mean who tell his par­ents to give him a hard-to-spell name in the first place? At least there's a mon­u­ment, right?I would rather there not be a mon­u­ment than a mediocre one.What Mr Mac­Far­lane can't seem to un­der­stand is that we get so few things right these days that even the sup­pos­ed­ly lit­tle things take on huge sig­nif­i­cance.

Right now we have to fo­cus on the mis­takes that we can erase and cor­rect. All the seem­ing­ly in­signif­i­cant things that in their small way con­tribute to the pile of prob­lems that seem so in­sur­mount­able.Un­for­tu­nate­ly we can't take back the sex­u­al favours grant­ed to many men by young women traf­ficked by a po­lice­man whose job it is to pro­tect women from sex­u­al preda­tors.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly we can't bring back all the peo­ple who have died be­fore we no­ticed that we need­ed to give them re­spect and say thanks for their con­tri­bu­tions.Un­for­tu­nate­ly we can't erase the last two and a half years of shod­dy lead­er­ship and so many mis­takes that it would be like paint­ing an es­say with liq­uid pa­per.

But we can make sure that Hase­ly Craw­ford's name is spelt right. And if it isn't, we should feel an ap­pro­pri­ate amount of burn­ing shame and go to all lengths to cor­rect it be­fore our chil­dren no­tice and hold it against us, or worse, be­gin to think that be­ing mediocre is okay.We should have an ap­pro­pri­ate amount of pride in every­thing that we do to ho­n­our those who rep­re­sent us, make us beat our chests and get the show-off smile that all Tri­nis re­serve for spe­cial oc­ca­sions.

We are go­ing nowhere fast on the medi­oc­rity road. And Mr Mac­far­lane in all his right­eous in­dig­na­tion does not un­der­stand that the whole point of a mon­u­ment to Olympians is the quest for ex­cel­lence, is the de­mand for per­fec­tion, is the push­ing of your­self to su­per­hu­man lev­els so that you can come out on top. There's noth­ing mediocre about win­ning a gold medal. There's noth­ing mediocre about win­ning a bronze medal.

We should at least do our­selves the ho­n­our of self-re­spect. Of spelling our names right. And hum­ble enough about the work that we do to ac­cept crit­i­cism with grace. Our chil­dren will not for­give us for the mis­takes we leave be­hind un­cor­rect­ed. Our chil­dren will wear our mis­takes too, and take them for the truth.