So much begins with parents. So much continues in the training grounds. The teachers who taught and inspired us. In my case at Queens Royal College in Port-of-Spain when I was a boy there were Pilgrim, Mitchell, Daunt, Farrell, Mastelloni, Hodge, Gocking. Being less than excellent was not an option. Mitchell, Pilgrim and Gocking separately told us, when Barbados was visiting for the inter-colonial cricket, that if we wanted to see something surpassingly well done, go to see Worrell batting at the Oval. “Oh, the achieve of, the mastery of the thing!” When a bold boy asked “Ghost” Farrell why he took such care in writing perfectly on the blackboard when it would so soon be erased, he was serious and intent in his reply. I used it in a poem later in my life:
There are creatures that live half a day.
Princes of the world, do you not think
They also strive to perfect their lives?
Such unsyllabused lessons last a lifetime.
John Hodge, peering behind thick glasses, neck rose-red with pimples, taught me to love poetry, taught me the satisfaction and value of writing well, the Flaubertian sentence, the ringing lines of Hopkins, the extraordinary images of the poetry just emerging from the very young Derek Walcott. Do not think of inspiration, he said; think of God-given gift honed by very hard work, first attempts constantly re-drafted. I brought him a poem I had written. He sat next to me a good long time and took me through it carefully, line by feeble line. I saw what he meant. I did a little better next time.
It was Charles Vernon Gocking, who seemed to know every author in the libraries of the world and who did not at all like clichéd thinking, who instructed me once in some after-hours tutoring not to be content with the commonplace and the simple, worthy success. He quoted Dryden: “And he, who servilely creeps after sense, /Is safe, but ne’er will reach an excellence.”
That was against my cautious nature, but taught me a counsel which I could understand and admire and with trepidation sometimes try to act upon.
And when I entered the sugar industry there was from the beginning Jock Campbell, Chairman of Bookers, mentor, life-long friend. From the start he made the absolutely vital connection between purpose and performance in achieving excellence in a life, or in a company.
Dynamic performance not linked to life-enhancing purpose was selfish and could very easily turn evil. Think of Nazi Germany’s super-efficient Panzer divisions. But also divine purpose without effective performance was a complete waste of concept and goodwill.
Declarations of glorious intent were worthless. Practical good must be done in the world. Creating profit was a good purpose but subsidiary to the greater purpose of making the lives of men and women better, more fulfilled.
I made the mistake once of reporting to him that a group of workers on a sugar estate were redundant. He sternly corrected me: no persons are ever redundant, only jobs. These people must be found work.
No doubt there are models of attainment which teach, exhilarate and inspire in a way singularly Guyanese or Caribbean. But we are measured in the end by universal and ageless standards of excellence. Whether we are scientists, entrepreneurs, artists, poets, lawyers, businessmen, bankers, sportsmen or political leaders, we must set great goals, cultivate an iron inner resolve not to be diverted and do what we are doing with a dominant concern, surely, to improve the lot and lift the pride and confidence of others.
And if we are very fortunate in life, a sense of what is excellent is bestowed on us. We are given access to the nourishing taproots and are forever blessed.
