Be the best version of you

“Mummy, you think the tour lady at the pitch lake was telling the truth when she said the pools on the lake were dry? I think she was just lazy and didn't want to take us,” my son asked and answered his own question regarding a recent visit to the Pitch Lake in La Brea, during which our paid tour of the lake lasted less than 15 minutes all because of a phone call. And not even an emergency call.

He and I had excitedly joined three friends, one a tourist, on a visit to the lake, one of the many places of interest in TT that overflows with the history of the First People. The lake is a tourist attraction and approximately 20,000 visit it every year. We left home early, had breakfast of doubles and saheena in Debe, bought pineapple chow in Rousillac and arrived at the lake looking forward to the tour and taking a dip in one of the sulphur pools that are reputed to have numerous healing powers — relieving from joint pains to skin conditions.

After a short visit to the museum upstairs the small administrative building we were ready to hit the trail with our assigned official tour guide, despite the threat of rain. She started off well enough, delving into the rich Amerindian history of the lake and its re-discovery by British adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh in 1595. Even as the rain made good on its threat she went into the legend of how the lake swallowed an entire tribe of Amerindians after they had eaten humming birds, which were believed to be the souls of their departed ancestors. She explained how the pitch was turned into asphalt and its uses. Even the many cashew trees and pretty water lilies that grew on lake became part of her trivia. Along the way there were a number of small puddles of warm sulphur water, through which we we eagerly dragged our feet.

Not long into the tour, we came upon what is called the "mother" of the lake, a soft spot that she explained can swallow anything, including an adult human, in a matter of seconds. She used a piece of stick to lift some of the pitch from the mother and we watched as the black substance billowed in the breeze. My son and two other children who formed part of the tour group happily tried their hands at it.

And then her phone rang!

She answered and the tour went downhill, or rather back to the starting point, from there. Whoever was calling must have had something really important to say because she declared the tour over and headed back to the main building, leaving us staring in disbelief as the "official tour guide" sign at the back of her shirt disappeared in the distance. "The pools only have water in the rainy season," she said before she had hastily made her exit while talking on her phone.

"That's it?" #1son asked. "I thought we were supposed to go out there by the sulphur pool?" he pointed further out the lake to where a group of secondary school students had just been. You see, this was not his first time there so he knew what to expect. Two years ago we had done an official lake tour, which had played out in a much different way. That tour had taken over an hour because we had been given the full monty. That day he had been a bit nauseous on the drive to the lake and had vomited a few times, but a combination of coconut water on our arrival at the lake and a good soak in one of the sulphur pools had done him well. Up to today he swears by the therapeutic power of the pool and was really looking forward to getting in some therapy time after a hard school term. But I think what was stood out most in his mind was the fact that the tour guide had not done her job to the best of her ability because she was "lazy". We the adults may not have been severely affected by her poor work ethic, but she had certainly set a poor example for the three children she was supposed to educate about the lake — an example they may very well store in there memory bank and to which they may refer later in life for better or for worse.

As adults we frequently complain about the poor work ethic of this generation, but we often do not stop to consider some of the examples we set. When we make it a habit to arrive late for work and meetings, or when we drop the ball and leave someone else to pick up the slack. When we frequently allow our personal business to take precedence over the company's work during company time, or when we submit work that is mediocre at best. It may seem insignificant to us, but our children are watching. We may tell them what to do but the fact remains that most times they will do what they see us do.

I have a habit of telling my boy, "Try to do it as best as you can the first time around so you won't have to do it over." Do I take my own advice? Not all the time. I am a procrastinator when it comes to certain things, and when I have to rush to meet a deadline it most certainly will not be my best work. If I cannot be the best versions of me, should I expect my child to be the best version of himself? Should any of us? The bottom line is that no matter what type of work we do, we ought to try to do it to the best of our ability.

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, “If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”