On the eve of In­de­pen­dence in 1962, then-Prime Min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams di­rect­ed one of his most pow­er­ful mes­sages to T&T’s school­child­ren.

More than six decades lat­er, his ex­hor­ta­tion to them about car­ry­ing the coun­try’s fu­ture in their school bags, still res­onates. It was a call to em­brace ex­cel­lence, to study hard and to use their tal­ents in the ser­vice of T&T—a call that still needs to be heed­ed to­day.

The school­child­ren to whom that mes­sage was di­rect­ed all those years ago, are now se­nior cit­i­zens who have lived through the chal­lenges of a de­vel­op­ing na­tion, in­clud­ing the eco­nom­ic booms in much of the 1960s and the sec­ond half of the 1970s, fol­lowed by years of aus­ter­i­ty in the 1980s.

They al­so ex­pe­ri­enced the tur­moil of the 1970 Black Pow­er up­ris­ing, the Ju­ly 1990 at­tempt­ed coup, and the down­ward spi­ral in­to crime and vi­o­lence that has plagued the coun­try for more than two decades.

They can re­call mo­ments of cel­e­bra­tion for the sport­ing vic­to­ries of Hase­ly Craw­ford, Ato Boldon, Bri­an Lara, the So­ca War­riors and many oth­ers. They re­joiced over the in­ter­na­tion­al beau­ty ti­tles won by Janelle Com­mis­siong, Giselle Laronde and Wendy Fitzwilliam. These were mo­ments of joy and na­tion­al uni­ty.

In­de­pen­dence Day 2024 finds the na­tion at a crit­i­cal junc­ture in its de­vel­op­ment, since it is yet to see the com­plete ful­fil­ment of the hopes and dreams enun­ci­at­ed by T&T’s first prime min­is­ter in his speech to the school­child­ren of 1962.

It is a vi­sion that must be shared to in­spire the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of school­child­ren, who not on­ly car­ry T&T’s fu­ture in their school bags but al­so their elec­tron­ic de­vices.

Of­ten, it seems the pop­u­la­tion has lost touch with the de­sire for na­tion­hood and the quest for a unique iden­ti­ty ex­pressed by the lead­ers who steered this na­tion out of 165 years of British colo­nial rule.

The ex­cite­ment and an­tic­i­pa­tion felt by the thou­sands of peo­ple who gath­ered in the fore­court of the Red House, on Knox Street and in Wood­ford Square, to see the T&T flag raised for the first time, seems to have fad­ed over the decades since 1962.

Love of coun­try is of­ten in short sup­ply. The Mighty Sniper’s por­tray­al of T&T as a na­tion “small but over­whelm­ing in worth” is now over­shad­owed by un­re­al­is­tic, in­ac­cu­rate com­par­isons to old­er and larg­er so­ci­eties that do not share the same cul­tur­al un­der­pin­nings.

This is a so­ci­ety still strug­gling to break the chains of psy­cho­log­i­cal colo­nial­ism, still haunt­ed by the ever-present spec­tre of race. A sober­ing re­minder of that was served up at this week’s first pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on stat­ues, mon­u­ments and sig­nage.

T&T still strug­gles to em­brace its racial di­ver­si­ty, not see­ing it as an as­set, along with all the oth­er unique el­e­ments that make up our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty.

Too eas­i­ly, we for­get that no oth­er na­tion can claim the cre­ativ­i­ty that gives us the unique dis­tinc­tion of be­ing the birth­place of the steel­pan, ca­lyp­so, so­ca, chut­ney and lim­bo.

Sad­ly, that view of T&T has been ob­scured by the crime, vi­o­lence and po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sions that make it dif­fi­cult to see the beau­ty and ex­cel­lence that ex­ist here.

The hopes and as­pi­ra­tions shared by Dr Er­ic Williams in 1962 are still with­in reach. It is a vi­sion of na­tion­hood on which fu­ture peace and pros­per­i­ty can be built.

Hap­py In­de­pen­dence day and may God bless our na­tion.