Peace, love, and brotherhood

Sep 17, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – On Monday as a country we celebrated the birth of the Prophet Muhammad a day designated by our Muslim brothers and sisters as Youman Nabi.

Prophet Muhammad stands as a stirring example of the difference one man can make.  The changes that one can bring about leave us awed and inspired.  It makes us want to do whatever little that we can do at the individual level to change the world in which we live, to make our times better.  In a time of major developments in Guyana, of monumental changes, we cannot go on as we always have, through reliving the failures of the past.  We must prepare to do our little that contributes to meaningful change, impacting nation and contemporaries for the better.

Peace, love, and brotherhood are some of the ingredients of Youman Nabi.  As Guyanese, we would do ourselves justice in our reflections to cut through the noise of warring voices and get to a place of inner peace, and when we achieve that inner peace, then we are better positioned to spread its serene grace wherever we go, before whomever we come across.  The voices at war in Guyana are many and they are loud, so it is an uphill battle to go against that tide, but try we must in this ruptured land.

We have been blessed with so much and in so many ways that they leave in wonderment.  There are more natural resources than our neighbours, and still there is only limited awareness of the magnitude of our gifts.  Other than for floodings, this country is less exposed to the forces of nature, which batter this region annually almost unfailingly.  For such circumstances, only gratitude can flow, and there must be the determination that our thanksgiving extends to all (and for all) who share our space and our new dawning Age.

For a truth must be looked at, regardless of how much recoiling it brings.  We are supremely rich in nature’s gifts, of that there can be no question.  Yet we are so dirt poor on those matters that mean the most, which include how to exist in a peaceful state, that state of love and brotherhood that has escaped us.  It is because we have never really tried to confront our nightmares, and work through them to see where they lead, and what possible light could be waiting ahead.  Our national journey has been rocky to twisted to downward for most of our existence, but there is the faith that there is some higher ground somewhere ahead, no matter how slight.

It is why we keep struggling against the odds, against the resistances, against slippery territory underfoot to find that space where there is understanding.  For understanding is a moment for appreciating, and from there are the first solid planks for tolerating, rising to higher ground.  Unless we come to grips with the wisdom that tolerating and including are what will empower us to extract the most from the riches that have come our way, then there may as well be no oil or gold or timber, for all that they would come to mean.

Instead of seeing each other as competitors for a piece of the pie, our position is that it is much more rewarding and nationally enhancing to look upon one another as partners.  Our energies must be devoted towards the fulsome, so that we can replace the quarrelsome and wearisome. We are bleeding, and all that we seem to be capable of is slashing each other some more.  We have not really given any other way a chance.  It is definite that we must make the sturdiest efforts to do so now: peace, love, brotherhood.

• changes, example, monumental, Muslim brothers, Prophet Muhammad