This is perhaps the most difficult column I have ever had to write, for the simple reason that the true contradictions of this day and its significance weigh heavily as I sit to gather my thoughts about how one is to be happy in the midst of gloom and a deepening sense of hopelessness. God-fearing people would say Christ was born to help us overcome that terrible, sinking feeling derived from man's ills and that Christmas celebrations are an antidote.
Indeed, Christmas Day is supposed to be a day of celebration, one that remembers the day that the child Jesus Christ was born in very humble circumstances to a carpenter, Joseph, and his virgin wife, Mary. Every year, this day marks the threshold of a new beginning for mankind, at least according to majority Christian belief. The paradoxical stories of religions and the men and women who are their protagonists are always much more complex and sophisticated than religious order encourages us to believe, although the men who wrote the scriptures deliberately made the contradictions of Christ's birth and existence and the lives of those close to him inherent in them. I find that simple insight very helpful in trying to deal with the sense of loss and emptiness during this period that focuses on receiving and giving and feeling full of love and hope.
If this reflection could have been written on the morning of its publication it might be different in tone, but at this particular moment (midweek), only sadness prevails. Less than 48 hours ago a person who was a friend, though not a bosom buddy, was murdered during a robbery at his weekend home. Mark Pereira was an extremely kind and generous person who often tried to help others when they needed it, and he was a leader in his field of the arts. The obituaries have cited artists' eulogies about the difference he made to their success and the role he played in helping to create an ecosystem in which artist and art lovers could relate. His friends loved him dearly and everyone else admired him, even those who did so begrudgingly. The wastefulness and senselessness of his death make one reel.
The question we all ask is why does a robbery have to end in death for the victim? Answering the question heightens the creeping despair about the state of the human spirit in our country and elsewhere at this time. It is almost certain that Mark, militarily trained, would have fought his attackers, as he had done on the previous invasions of his homes in Port of Spain, except that on those occasions the intruders did not carry guns, or at least they never got a chance to use them, if they did. He lived as he wanted to, facing all possible dangers, boldly, refusing to be cowered into half a life. For many of us, half a life is about all we feel we can manage, given prevailing security concerns. The mounting fear of violence relegates many others to much less than that.
The manner of Mark's death, and that of another close to 600 people in TT in the last 12 months, has raised the volume of the
