September 10, 2008

AN old friend, now deceased, told me that he once met Albert Einstein. It was at a very prestigious event held in New York in the 1930s for top scientists, authors and thinkers from around the world.

My friend was just a bookbinder of humble stock, certainly nothing of notoriety to justify his presence amongst such luminaries. As a result, he was questioned by Einstein, who was curious why my friend was at such a gathering.

In summary, the dialogue between the two ended as follows:

"Well, Mr. Einstein, I must clearly confess that I know nothing about your theory of relativity and my mind does not begin to comprehend any of it. But, if you ask me how a human being will respond to human situations like stress and duress for example, I think I can contribute to that subject, because I am human and need no further qualifications."

Einstein was impressed by that answer and thought to ask one more question. "Well then," he asked, "what do you think of scientist like me?"

My friend's response was: "People like you know just a little bit more about nothing than I do".

Einstein was even more taken by that answer. He kept repeating audibly, "but you are right," before leaving my friend's presence.

On that premise, let me release you from the presumption that thoughts, feelings and opinions need to have professional or institutional certifications in order to have legitimate sociopolitical validation. In my travels, people often ask how Bermuda is doing. Of course, I offer a brief history before I come to the more important question: how the people feel. If we consider that there is such a phenomenon as state of the nation, draw upon your senses to ascertain on scale of 1 to 10 what the level happiness is amongst our countrymen.

I personally would give an overall average for the Bermuda populace of 5. Some might say that a 5 out of 10 is not indicative of failure. Well, I should add that my sense is also that the mood is sinking, and there isn't anything visible happening that could turn it around. Yet even if it were not sinking, I think a healthy mood should be at least 7 out of 10.

A happy person has a positive outlook, self-confidence, with dreams, goals and visions of success. A healthy person is thankful and giving, full of love and compassion towards others. By extension a society made up of happy people reflects all those positive behaviours. The society has hope and ideals, celebrate their visionaries and is steeped in potential.

On the contrary a person that has a rating of 5 is not bursting with self-confidence. Perhaps he or she is functional but could be prone to a slight depression, hence is tentative, less giving, critical or at times jealous of the success of others. When we have the society at that level of happiness, trivial issues can spark pandemonium. The old maxim says that where there is no vision the people perish.

We either create an environment filling the marketplace with our arts and ingenuity in a spirit of fair trade and benevolent competition. Or, we create an environment where we fill the market with our sense of despair. Maybe Bermuda hasn't as a community ever experienced true happiness, or maybe it's the heritage of a generation that has long passed? More important, however, is the question of where we are heading. What spiritual sense will guide us and our youth towards the future?

I know there are those who feel things have never been better and conversely those who feel things have never been worse. The two disparities are manifestly apparent. I step aside and seek the view of the proverbial moral majority, average Mr. and Ms. Bermuda.

I was born during a time when revolutionaries were spawned. I remember once being told that in times of great hunger and desperation, a revolutionary can give up his struggle for a bowl of soup.

There are great writers whose hands now have spasms and pens that have seized to write. Great intellects have turned their insights to out-of-sights. Former would-be revolutionaries have become as functional as old World War Two unexploded bombs, which have become relics of a bygone era.

This bygone era was a time when people wanted to see great governance, equality and a better world. It is not leadership that fails or destroys the country, it's when the good people become complacent, when the revolutionary doesn't die from hunger but rather dies because of too much to eat. That's why a country gets demoralised: it is because the people who would otherwise be called to fight for justice do nothing but take care of their own appetites.

KHALID A. WASI

City of Hamilton