I cry out with my whole heart. — Psalm 119:145

As Caribbean Air­lines flight BW 458 as­cend­ed away from Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port with Cap­tain Andy Cheekes giv­ing an as­sured de­scrip­tion of the flight path to Ja­maica, the scenic and beau­ti­ful T&T, in all her ear­ly morn­ing bril­liance, was a vi­su­al re­minder of all that’s ma­jes­tic about the twin-is­land Re­pub­lic.

A fur­ther re­minder came while read­ing the March/April 2023 edi­tion of Caribbean Beat. The sto­ry, Lit­tle Cups of Co­coa, shared that T&T has long been at the fore­front of co­coa re­search and pro­duc­tion glob­al­ly. Giv­ing the world the fa­mous Trin­tario. The ar­ti­cle al­so high­light­ed that the hub of shadon beni pro­duc­tion in T&T is Rio Claro and that Claro is the bedrock of the T&T co­coa ex­pe­ri­ence.

I was re­mind­ed that T&T is a jew­el that has so much po­ten­tial. We have giv­en so much to the world but yet, we are at a time in our his­to­ry where we have lost our self-be­lief that we mat­ter.

Im­poster syn­drome has nev­er been a prob­lem. I took my moth­er’s ad­vice to her four chil­dren: “Stop pre­tend­ing to be any­one oth­er than our­selves. Be con­fi­dent and self-aware. In this life, peo­ple will dis­like you for ab­solute­ly no fault of your own. Step in­to your great­ness. It’s im­por­tant to own who you are”.

Here is where, in ad­di­tion to moth­er’s ad­vice and that of the old­er heads in the Bel­mont com­mu­ni­ty, sport played a big part in nur­tur­ing self-aware­ness, self-con­fi­dence and self-es­teem.

When you look at what our cul­ture, sport and mu­sic have con­tributed to T&T be­ing world-class. Add this to our Trin­tario co­coa. It’s a re­minder of our po­ten­tial as a peo­ple and a na­tion. We need more sport, not less sport. We need more chil­dren and young peo­ple par­tic­i­pat­ing in sports. We need to see all those well-light­ed recre­ation fields that are in every com­mu­ni­ty ful­ly oc­cu­pied with sports ac­tiv­i­ties. Sport teach­es chil­dren and young peo­ple to own who they are.

One mind, one pur­pose. The deaths, the bru­tal­i­ty of the crime. We must re­sist the temp­ta­tion to nor­malise this ver­sion of T&T. This is not who we are. This mir­ror im­age is not us. We have to care. We have to re­vert to our world-class stan­dard. We must not al­low fear to stand in our way. Na­tion-build­ing means, among oth­er things, that we should know our truth about our past and en­sure it isn’t re­peat­ed.

No mat­ter how dim the light may get we must keep be­liev­ing in our­selves and each oth­er. Fail­ure isn’t an op­tion.

I, well know and un­der­stand, it’s not easy but this I do know - We shall pre­vail. We shall over­come. Look­ing at the splen­dour of T&T in air­plane mode pro­vides re­newed im­pe­tus. We can make it if we try, a lit­tle bit hard­er.

Now that I have got­ten that bit of philo­soph­i­cal me­an­der­ing out of the way. I just want­ed to cir­cle back to this col­umn’s tire­less drum beat—the pow­er of sport.

Sport has be­come a refuge for many young peo­ple and should be used to help in­spire the next gen­er­a­tion of chil­dren. Es­pe­cial­ly those chil­dren who know what hard­ship looks like and want some­thing dif­fer­ent. There are so many chil­dren grow­ing up in sad­ness. It’s re­al. It’s per­son­al. They are sad through the young stages of their life, even when they look hap­py they are try­ing to find love, and some of them find love through sport, mu­sic and art.

For those who are go­ing through a dif­fi­cult child­hood, sports can save them, keep them ground­ed and be their ther­a­py. Sports can get them off the streets.

Ed­i­tor’s Note: The views ex­pressed by the writer aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly those of any or­gan­i­sa­tion that he may be as­so­ci­at­ed with.