Ian on Sunday

Ian On Sunday Modern man has miraculous powers. He flies to the moon and soars beyond the sun.

The extraordinary value in everythingAll my life I have had an urge to preserve the extraordinary value of everything that I experience.

Ian on Sunday Why this glaring discrepancy between prowess in the short versions and generally abject failure in Test cricket?

Meteors How is a great poem created? It is a mystery.

Ian On Sunday Education is important not simply for the implantation of specific information about specific subjects but, perhaps more importantly, for the passing on of a whole ‘culture’ of learning, attitudes, and behaviour – a variety of distinct ‘languages’ of understanding including self-understanding.

Inconsolable loss Of all the expressions of inconsolable loss I have read concerning the death of anyone greatly loved, the following lament by Henry James, the novelist, when his older brother, William James, the scientist and philosopher, died is one of  the most heartfelt: “I sit heavily stricken and in darkness – for from far aback in dimmest childhood  he had been my Elder Brother; and I still, through all the years, saw in him, even as a small timorous boy yet, my protector, my backer, my authority and my pride. 

Ian on Sunday Experience comes to us not just through our lives but as much, perhaps more as we grow old, through reading.

Ian on Sunday Why should flesh and blood men and women, with feet of clay like anyone else, presume to think for us and act for us and push us around and mollycoddle us and punish and reward us as if they were inherently superior beings?

‘No ill or wrong will overmaster this’ There are some things that keep out the darkness that continually threatens in anyone’s life.

The addiction of competition And here is fascinating thought. Medical studies suggest that in situations of great stress, great danger, in a battle, for instance, with death a fraction away, the body is able to generate something akin to heroin.

A blessingPerhaps my oldest memory, I must have been two or three, is of my mother hugging me at night when she put me into bed and holding the palms of my hands together while she said a simple prayer which I soon learned by heart.

Ian on Sunday Running anything – whether it is a national government, vast state industry, world-circling multi-national, small family business, or private club – involves making choices.

The view from seventy-six With shocking quickness, another year has gone by in a blur and I am suddenly seventy-six.

Fulsome words, faltering deeds One of the most serious aspects of life today is the widening gap between talk and action.

It is all a dreamMy father died nearly fourteen years ago at the age of 89.

Too many of my good friends are overwhelmed with work which prevents them living more peaceful, varied, interesting and fulfilled lives.

Ian on Sunday When you go well past three score years and ten you are in overtime and a penalty shoot-out looms which you know you cannot win.

Ian on Sunday In Guyana education some time ago deteriorated to the point where parents had little confidence that the formal system would or could produce results.

Faithful to the causeI venture to suggest that there is no West Indian cause so sacred as the success of the West Indies cricket team.

The overmighty centre Any practical person in charge of anything periodically asks the question: ‘How do we get things done most effectively?’