It becomes increasingly harder to be happy rather than hopeless in our miniscule corner of the universe these days. Even the Buddhist realisation that there is no pain like this body and that without the illumination of enlightenment, suffering is the reality of the human condition, with its attendant ignorance, anger, hatred and greed, is little or no consolation to all of us sufferers.
I'd like to say "Season's greetings;" but, however hard I attempt "Be of good cheer," the words stick in my gullet. I feel ashamed to be cheerful in what is rapidly emerging as the season of the slaughter of the innocents. Laugh that one off if you can. Or if you want to prolong the denial and delusion, remember it's the time of giving–licks for every little boy and girl. Isn't there a hideous irony that Trinidad marked the International Day of the Child, with murder?
So there you have it, or rather, we all do. While we note with sociological studies and a concomitant complacency the collapse of family and community, or wail in the wilderness of our own construction/destruction, what only now a corpse can deny is that family has mutated horribly in too many instances from sanctuary to killing field.
And yet I continue to hear that pathetic pathological platitude that "Nutten ain't wrong wit licks, look me." But the rain of blows is self-perpetuating and violence can breed nothing less than violence. To suggest otherwise is as smart as denying that if we put flame to gunpowder there will be no explosion.
http://www.guardian.co.tt/digital/new-members