Solving your own problems

THE EDITOR: When you have a problem the thing to do is to try and solve it. You may not have the critical insight to look at the nuances of the problem and arrive at a balanced judgment, taking into consideration all the different ways of looking at it.

You may just be an ordinary Joe without that intellectual capacity but you can take a commonsense approach to the problem and try to solve it.

Like the tree in your yard which has been constantly dropping leaves and branches on your old leaking galvanized roof of 30 years and possibly collapsing on your house one day, and the only way of solving that problem is getting rid of it.

You do not hear the conservationist telling you to save it, nor the neighbour saying it gives you mangoes and anchar or that it provides shade, nor do you hear the sentimental voice telling you it grew up alongside the house.

All you know is that it continues to terrorise you, possibly falling on you one day and you zero in on that reality and decide to get rid of it.

Like with Justin Mark’s letter in another newspaper of November 1 – entitled “How do we tackle greed in TT?” – citing greed as our major problem, greed for money from the sale of foodstuff or from transportation and the like, with which I couldn’t agree more.

But I was disappointed in the tone of his letter’s ending that the solution to greed is a “character cognitive behavioural transformation or other scholastic means,” again with which I am in total agreement, but what does the ordinary guy know of this long-term solution that will bring attitudinal change, and as a consequence relief for himself and his family?

Will Smith’s magnificent performance in The Pursuit of Happyness, depicting the trauma of trying to survive in a difficult world with his only son, having to sleep in toilets and relief centres as no opportunities are forthcoming no matter how hard he tries, perhaps tells a similar story of our Joe with empty pockets and his baby crying, who perhaps could never understand Mark’s profound advice on this issue.

But like Smith in the film who persevered and became the salaried stockbroker he worked so hard to achieve, our Joe must also look his problem in the eye, and if it’s a question of prices he cannot afford, he must exercise the discipline of buying only what he needs and can afford, like Arrowroot for the baby instead of those fancy names. And if its travel, he must use the bus instead of those high-priced taxis.

With this kind of perseverance and discipline he will not only survive these price gougers but will likely experience the poetic justice of watching prices fall because of the surplus on the shelves with fewer people having the money to buy, and equally so with the transport, with more resorting to the bus and leaving the fancy taxis behind.

But having to deal with greed is only one of our ordinary Joe’s problems. You can see him walking in neck-high water to save his pot-of-gold cow or weeping over why his only son could be killed just so or having to drive, his only means of living, on roads that are impassable.

Or he is devastated by his job loss and he can’t pay his mortgage anymore, or his child cannot go to school because he does not have the money to buy books or pay for transport. And if even she is in school she has to dodge bullets spraying all around her while our Nero fiddles with cameras, inter alia.

And then only for Joe to realise, even in his simple-mindedness and perhaps in a moment of miraculous epiphany, that the people whom he elected to bring him relief from such problems in fact simply don’t care or they do not have the will to do so.

And this, ironically, of his own doing since he continues to empower them with his vote, not because of their competence or willingness to help ordinary Joes like himself, but simply because they look alike and different from “the other.”

But when you are up against a wall as our ordinary Joe, you don’t have to lay yourself down and die. You too can experience your own epiphany and find the resilience to manage these seemingly insurmountable problems that we continue to face from day to day.

DR ERROL N BENJAMIN

via e-mail