As I’ve mentioned before, for many years, living abroad, I have kept a kind of informal journal not as a record of daily events but as a storehouse of various thoughts or ideas or observations that come to me during the course of a day. We all have those random thoughts, but most of the time they arrive in the middle of some other activity and are of a fleeting nature, and generally we turn back to the task at hand and forget them. I therefore took to the practice of jotting them down, sometimes using a single word as a reminder, ensuring they wouldn’t be lost. It was fascinating to go back into this computer journal, years after I had written in it, and see the sometimes intriguing, sometimes ridiculous things, that had crossed my mind. In particular, 
I began to notice how often it turned out that years after I had written something as gospel, I could now look back on it and see it as not so at all. Looking back on the collection, recently I was humbled by how many times I had come to see my early confidences misplaced; that in fact, how many of my assumptions turned out to be not so.
I used to think, for example, that given the chance, one on one, I could always explain things and make them clear to the important people in my life….persuade them that they were wrong about a particular aspect or reaction or view. Now I see that while sometimes it worked, most of the time it was not so. Everybody, you and I included, comes to a situation or a process with our opinions on most matters reasonably well established, and, particularly if the person is well into adulthood, their positions are often set in stone and, after a rebuff, your repeated attempts to persuade only lead to resentment, and sometimes even a good busing. If you think you have things figured out, think again. Indeed, looking back at some of your original opinions, you will find them at times idiotic. Here are some other ‘not so’ entries I encountered recently.
If someone I’m close to, or in frequent contact with, is being unfair or hostile to me, I can’t walk around with it; I have to confront the issue, and I used to assume everybody did the same. Not so; many people don’t. They may feel the injustice, even grumble about it, but they don’t confront the person and thrash it out. In retrospect, it is human nature, many times, for us to avoid the confrontation because of the rancour it can bring. Indeed, I had learned that lesson myself previous to the entry, but the fact that I made a note about it in the journal shows that I forgot.
When you love somebody deeply, constantly letting the person know of your love – by word, deed, touch, look, writing, etc – this will overcome any small hurt you may cause that person. Not so. More often than not, despite all your backpedalling and regrets, the person remembers the hurt, and will even, on occasion, remind you of the episode and make you feel remorse all over again.
After the passage of considerable time in a relationship, you get to where, despite the bumps, you feel content; there are no surprises coming; not so. It is human nature again; incidents will happen in people’s lives that they keep buried for various very personal reasons – this can extend for years – until one day something you do or say provokes a reaction and you are witness to a tirade that leaves you in shock. Where did that come from? He/she does not behave like that. Sorry, not so.
Because you love someone deeply, you will always convey to your lover precisely what you feel, and you will always grasp precisely what your lover says. Not so. Comprehension, and following that, acceptance, is a complex process with different criteria for different people. Even though you take the most care in your approach, the understanding you assume will follow is often just not there.
I used to believe that fundamental attitudes or behaviours in a person would always be visible to you if you’re close to that person. I clearly remember when I learned otherwise. It involved the Trini drummer Kelvin, Tradewinds first drummer, a very affable guy who often expressed his admiration for what I was aiming at with my music. But on the very first Tradewinds Caribbean tour in 1968, after the band hit, we arrived in Bermuda on a Friday evening, to play Saturday, and then travel to perform in Barbados, St Lucia and Trinidad. Kelvin woke me in my room late Friday night to tell me he was leaving first thing in the morning to return to Toronto; he had decided he could not stay away from his family. I was flabbergasted. How could we find a replacement drummer in a few hours? I pleaded with him to delay his decision for two weeks until the tour was completed, but he was adamant. He hated to put me in a bind, but he had to go back immediately for the sake of his family. If you told me six weeks earlier Kelvin was going to pull that, I would have said, “That will never happen that way.” But it did.
Finally, I used to believe that a person who shows very little signs of being corrupted will take that disposition with him/her wherever that person goes, and would maintain his/her integrity regardless. I was shocked to find it not so in Grand Cayman, when a close friend of mine I won’t name (we would spend hours debating the ethics in Caribbean political matters), whose positions and values I admired highly, threw his hat into the political ring in a national election and ended up a Minister in the government. Inside of a month, unnamed tossed his high-minded principles overboard so as to remain in good standing with the ruling cabal. Power corrupts even those who seem immune, and in light of the various surprising actions of some of our local politicians, it appears to be so whether the Georgetown is in Grand Cayman or Guyana.
