A good friend had cause to re­mind me that "un­easy is the head that wears the crown".

His was a time­ly re­minder as his call came a few min­utes af­ter I was re­flect­ing on feed­back in re­spect of a pos­i­tive com­ment made about a par­tic­u­lar achieve­ment.

I have long gone pass stew­ing about how some­one can in­ten­tion­al­ly mis­rep­re­sent some­thing that is said or writ­ten. Peo­ple cre­ate is­sues and then try to avoid the con­se­quences of their ac­tions or words.

It's al­ways a chal­lenge but if you said it or did it stand by it. If you are wrong too, ad­mit it and com­mit to learn­ing, grow­ing and im­prov­ing through mis­takes.

At times it can be a bur­den or bur­den­some as is­sues de­vel­op and take on a life of its own and be­come all-pow­er­ful based on a fo­cus on egos and per­son­al­i­ties.

And it's a re­al­i­ty that egos and per­son­al­i­ties can ei­ther hin­der or ham­per de­pend­ing on the emo­tion­al in­vest­ment. It's the sim­plest of things that be­come pow­er­ful in­flu­encers.

Over time based on ex­pe­ri­ence, one will learn if you can re­main ob­jec­tive that it makes no sense not even a lit­tle sense to al­low peo­ple to draw you in­to their per­son­al dra­mas.

Per­son­al dra­mas are a dri­ving force be­hind many of the prob­lems hold­ing lo­cal sports back. T&T is a hotbed of per­son­al dra­mas hold­ing back progress.

Why are so many peo­ple al­low­ing progress to be ham­pered by per­son­al­i­ty-dri­ven turf wars?

What ex­am­ple are we set­ting for the younger gen­er­a­tion?

What is the war about? Why are so many war drums beat­ing?

Who are the peace­mak­ers?

One fire is doused an­oth­er one is lit. What is fu­el­ing all the pet­ti­ness?

You would think we will know bet­ter. Why are so many peo­ple in­tent on mash­ing up the place if they can't get their own way?

Pet­ti­ness, pet­ty-think­ing, pet­ty-ac­tions and the sad truth is it's very con­ta­gious this epi­dem­ic of pet­ti­ness.

Some­times the dis­trac­tions and war drums are so loud and pro­nounced press­ing mute be­comes a re­al­is­tic but short-term so­lu­tion.

We all need to be re­mind­ed that we can't be a war­mon­ger one day and then the next day be preach­ing peace. Life is no game, it's re­al and while we may make light of things and say jok­ing­ly, T&T isn't a re­al place, life is no game and where we are right now in T&T, it's not a com­e­dy hour or laugh­ing mat­ter.

There are some se­ri­ous things hap­pen­ing and we need to get re­al.

Ed­i­tor's NOTE

Bri­an Lewis is the pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) and the views ex­pressed are not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of the or­gan­i­sa­tion.