Time marches on with such rapid haste. As we usher in 2012 in a couple of days, the global village settles into its stride to tackle the enormous challenges facing the 21st century human family.
Here in Guyana, compared to many places in the world, we have a chance to turn things around for our nation.
In this Knowledge Age, where information and news from every corner of the globe instantly assail us with ‘breaking news’ urgency, we come face to face daily with the sad state of humanity.
From the great nations to the lesser ones, it seems as if leaders of great character have taken leave of the planet. There seems to be a global crisis of leadership.
From the Occupy movements in North America and Europe, to continuing dissent in the Arab world and growing economic shocks in Asia, we see that, as Chinua Achebe so memorably states, things fall apart.
In Achebe’s own Africa, poverty, health epidemics, refugee nightmares and civil wars continue to plague the continent’s people, a decade after a new century.
Much of the seven billion folks in our world continue to grapple with basic needs like hunger, housing and health care.
Here in our blessed corner of the globe, in sunny South America, with our kind neighbour Brazil booming and so much to be thankful for, we have every chance to create a Guyanese nation that could make a great difference in this 21st century world.
How do we do it?
First, our leaders need to cultivate the kind of lifestyle that inspires visionary living.
As we face a historic year with an empowered Parliament, we want to see our Parliamentarians inspire this nation.
We want to hear conversations from the National Assembly that inspire us to look up and to dream of the possibilities of the Guyanese nation.
After cultivating a leadership that inspires visionary living, we need to plan well.
We cannot move forward without intellectual effort. We must think about where we want to go as a people, a united nation. What’s possible for Guyanese?
We need to dream and imagine what’s possible. And from that vision, write out a plan to achieve solid results.
If each leader in this country – political, academic, business and social – were to write out a plan for his or her role in the land, and commit to contribute to the best of his or her ability, we would rise as a people.
With a draft plan written out as a blueprint of what we want 2012 to look like, of the kind of results we want to see in the land, we then commit to the task of designing 2012 to be the year of the Guyanese nation.
In 2011 we had a golden opportunity to become a new nation, with free and fair elections offering so much promise. Alas, we ended up with acrimony and strife, and a Parliament facing early New Year battles for Speaker and a Budget.
Despite talk of consensus and magnanimous reaching out, the actions of the powerful against the powerless leave much to be desired.
But despite the set-backs and the challenges we must hope and dedicate ourselves to turning things around.
We must face the looming challenges of 2012 with the confidence and belief that we can make a difference, that the individual is a powerful agent, that each of us can cause a transformed social space.
With the confidence of that belief, we commit to the task at hand.
The next 365 days lie in our hands, for us to design. Each day offers choices, and we design the year based on the daily choices we make.
If we have a plan, a road-map of where we want to go, and what we want to achieve, then it’s easier to make those choices, because we refer to the blueprint.
The New Yorker magazine Journalist, Canadian-born Malcolm Gladwell, wrote a bestseller book he called ‘Blink’ that explores this phenomenon of choosing.
Gladwell found that successful results usually follow a “blink” moment, an almost instantaneous second, where choice becomes almost sub-conscious.
If we write out a plan, after effort of thinking, and refer to this as our blueprint, we become so much more prepared to make the sub-conscious choices that would bring about the results we want.
We tend to face the future with trepidation, seeing it as a mysterious fog into which we walk blindly, fearing we might hit obstacles.
But the future is like a wide open desert where there’s nothing. And we have the opportunity and adventure and fun of designing a path forward that inspires us, that causes us to enjoy the journey of moving forward.
Such is 2012 – a wide open possibility. And for this nation to sit back and expect things would happen magically is for us to live into our default future, which over the past five decades or so since political Independence we’ve seen has not been the most rewarding, or inspiring.
The Guyanese nation is now a global force. Our Diaspora members play key roles in North America, the Caribbean and sections of Europe. Our homeland in 2011 made a tentative step forward. We want to make 2012 the year of the total turn around.
And the formula is simple: think about what’s possible, write out an action plan that is inspiring to every Guyanese, everywhere, design a system to achieve the results of the plan, and commit to being responsible to make it happen.
This writer would like to see the State media restored to the people. This I am committing to make happen, for I believe that if the Guyanese nation has a CBC/BBC/VOA-type State media as their own voice on the global airwaves, the nation would be that much richer.
As 2012 rolls around, with all the talk of global economic upheavals and potential environmental disasters and so on, Guyana stands a golden chance to be a global wonder-nation.
Time marches to the tune of the music that we compose for ourselves. Let’s compose an inspiring way forward as we face a brand new year.
Email: beingshaun@gmail.com
Web: thequalpedlife.com
