On Tues­day, a day heavy with sad­ness and anger, Paramin vil­lager Ernest Con­stan­tine’s hon­esty added the sil­ver lin­ing to the dark clouds hang­ing over T&T.

The 20-year-old pro­vid­ed a wel­come piece of good news when he found a bag con­tain­ing thou­sands of dol­lars and re­turned it to the own­er. The sto­ry, which has since been shared thou­sands of times on so­cial me­dia plat­forms, stood in sharp re­lief to the var­i­ous trag­ic events that un­fold­ed on that day.

What is par­tic­u­lar­ly re­mark­able about this young man is his ca­pac­i­ty to look be­yond his per­son­al strug­gles and do the right thing. He bare­ly makes ends meet do­ing odd jobs around his com­mu­ni­ty and ac­cord­ing to Cor­nelius Camp­bell, the farmer whose mon­ey he found and re­turned, is not held in high re­gard.

Mr Con­stan­tine’s will­ing­ness to rise above his press­ing needs made all the dif­fer­ence to that Paramin farmer, his fam­i­ly and the work­ers who would have gone with­out their wages were it not for his hon­esty. It was a sim­ple act and a pos­i­tive ex­am­ple, a source of in­spi­ra­tion amid all the trag­ic loss­es and blood­shed that have dom­i­nat­ed na­tion­al head­lines in re­cent days.

It is an un­der­state­ment that this coun­try is go­ing through a rough patch. The worst of it was the dis­cov­ery of the body of two-year-old Ky­mani Fran­cis in a riv­er not too far from his Point Fortin home on Tues­day. Hours ear­li­er, 12-year-old Levi Lewis and his moth­er, Abeo Cud­joe, were chopped to death in Pe­nal and at that time the na­tion was al­so pro­cess­ing the cir­cum­stances in which Care­nage moth­er of five Stephanie Cal­bio was fa­tal­ly stabbed. As a re­sult of the lat­ter in­ci­dent, six chil­dren are with­out their moth­ers.

That seem­ing­ly end­less tide of tragedy and bru­tal­i­ty is hav­ing a neg­a­tive ef­fect on a pop­u­la­tion still strug­gling to emerge from the tra­vails of a pro­tract­ed COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. In­stead of re­lief, the re­open­ing of the econ­o­my with the lift­ing of pan­dem­ic re­stric­tions has led to an up­surge in crime and vi­o­lence, touch­ing com­mu­ni­ties in every cor­ner of the coun­try and spilling over in­to school­yards.

Politi­cians on both sides seem too caught up in fin­ger-point­ing to de­tect the un­der­cur­rents of anx­i­ety, hope­less­ness and pent-up rage, or to in­ter­vene with ef­fec­tive so­lu­tions.

At times like this, or­di­nary peo­ple who do ex­tra­or­di­nary things serve as bea­cons of light to pierce this vast dark­ness. Cit­i­zens like young Mr Con­stan­tine, who choose to go against the tide of neg­a­tiv­i­ty, are of­ten un­recog­nised and un­re­ward­ed.

How­ev­er, thanks to Win­ston Eu­gene of the Paramin Men’s Min­istry, his no­ble deed was post­ed on D’ Life of Paramin’s Face­book page and has been wide­ly shared. All the ex­pres­sions of ap­pre­ci­a­tion and ap­plause for his hon­est deed should mo­ti­vate oth­ers and re­mind those who are dis­il­lu­sioned over the state of T&T that there are still many good men and women around.

Cit­i­zens like Ernest Con­stan­tine prove to us that no mat­ter how much suf­fer­ing there is, there are still those who we can count on to make the right choic­es. Hope­ful­ly, he will get the en­cour­age­ment and sup­port he needs to con­tin­ue along a pos­i­tive path.

In these tough times, T&T needs more he­roes.

Paramin man, 20, finds thou­sands of dol­lars, re­turns it to own­er