You know when I started this blog, it was really to write about the more positive aspects of what was going on around me. I figured there was enough negative crap out there, why add some more. It's not turned out that way I'm afraid. There are many days when I face my keyboard and rant. One of the reasons I don't post so often is that it's very easy to get caught up in a cycle of ugh and not so much the other stuff. And I'm trying not to do that.
Today, I reluctantly ventured out into the streets of Port of Spain. Having teetered from the Library back to my office yesterday, wearing four inch stilettos, canary yellow if you must know, I was loath to experience the capital city up close and personal again. Let's face it, the sidewalks are bad and the addition of vagrant do and vagrants can be hard to take. But out I sallied, admittedly today's shoes were a tad more practical. Comparatively speaking that is, they're brown suede, peep-toe wedges. And gorgeous they are too.
Port of Spain used to be a nice looking city before it was overrun by ugly concrete monstrosities and the ever present stench of drain and vagrant. But clearly we like it like that or we'd make someone do something right. And as I made my way up the narrow, cracked sidewalk, constantly having to move out of the way of hordes of surly, ill mannered, "prestige school" going children hogging the entire pavement, I wasn't really surprised that we allow our capital city to look like a dump. If the so called cream of the crop were so rude and ill trained why are we amazed that no one holds anyone to account. But I don't blame the kids, after all, they're just emulating their lovely parents who have been known to park indiscriminately on both sides of the road. Who stop dead without warning in the middle of the street blocking all traffic, to fling open their car doors to either let off or pick up the little teenaged darlings. This behaviour is repeated around the corner at the primary school as well. Start them early I say!
These and other like rituals are enacted daily around our fair country. Women drivers who do not acknowledge when someone stops to let them out, or drive so badly they make you wince for them. Taxi drivers, clerks who steups at you, the list is endless. Buddhists believe (to simplify) the world is a mirror, what you put out comes back to you. The more negative you are, the more toxic your surroundings and I believe there is truth in this. Think about it. Isn't your day a whole lot nicer when someone does something nice for you or acknowledges when you do something for them? Of course. So when you have a bunch of rude, awful, unkind, discourteous folk what might you get. You think?
3 comments:
I so love you!
I need to respond to this properly but not now...soon
I read this post, and it felt as if you were describing Lima. Don't get me wrong: I love my hometown as much as you love yours (that I can tell!). And it's precisely for this love that it annoys me to see how people around me mistreats it.
But I'll take your advice and focus on the positive aspects rather than the negative ones.
Would you authorize me to translate this post into Spanish? Or at least part of it. It's for my blog. I want to compare some situations in Lima with those you wrote about in Port of Spain. Of course, you'll be very visibly credited.
Regards!
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