Ian McDonald

If you can, every now and then it is good to escape the reality which you have settled into.

Like nurses anxiously watching the pulse rate and temperature of patients in an emergency ward, for a long time we were schooled to observe movements in Gross Domestic Product as the indication of whether a country is healthy or ailing.

At 80 years old I do not think I can be criticised for writing about ageing. 

Emeritus Professor Ken Ramchand of the University of the West Indies at St Augustine, eminent scholar and literary critic, the other day sent me the address he gave as Chairman of the Project Committee at the opening of The Naipaul House in St James, Port-of-Spain, on 10th February.

It is being noticed more and more – President Obama and Pope Francis are currently making it a theme in their speeches – that inequality is growing and that the already rich and powerful are becoming even more obscenely rich (the President and Pope are too diplomatic to use the word obscene but it is the right one) and even more unchallengeably powerful.

The feeling of joy is a strange emotion. It can derive from momentous events – winning the great championship, realising a long-nourished ambition, owning one’s own home at last.

It is generally accepted that self-righteousness is a most unpleasant personality trait and character flaw.

I have a dear friend whom I admire in all things and who herself writes beautifully and clearly but who has what I consider a blind spot.

‘The unexamined life is not worth living’ – Socrates.   When I was no more than twelve or thirteen the feeling grew in me that it was important not simply to live life day by day but somehow to give greater meaning to it by recording what was happening every one of those days and by planning how I should shape and what I should make of my life in the future.

Recently I paid a visit to Trinidad and while there made a remarkable discovery.

Today marks the 100th birth anniversary of A J Seymour, Guyana’s greatest man of letters.

Some weeks ago I enquired what had been gained by small and vulnerable countries like ours in the recently concluded World Trade Organisation deal.

Who can doubt that in Guyana in 2014 clenched fists of the past must be opened so that hands can reach out across embattled ground for the good of the nation.

Writing a column on the celebration of Christmas is a little like trying to illustrate the scope and scale of Shakespeare with one or two quotations; you can succeed about as well as the man who tried describing the marvellous cathedral at Chartres by showing a carved stone and single piece of stained glass as specimens of the building’s majesty.

The World Trade Organisation announced recently that a deal has been reached to which all 159 member countries have given their assent.

It is strange how the words sport, game, play, which in the dictionaries are associated with fun and frolic, have more and more lost their original meanings.

I find it hard to accept that old age has come upon me.

Intermittently through the year, and especially during memorable times up the immense and soul-redeeming Essequibo, I like to read Shelley – as we all should do from time to time since he is pre-eminently the poet of hope.

The spirit grows weary with the weight of woe in the world at large and here at home.

By what values should we strive to live in order to achieve a community in which differences are accommodated, a community where there is diversity of discourse but a recognition of the common good regardless of politics, religion, race and personal beliefs?