Check this carnage; think with your heart!

Jan 04, 2015 Countryman, Features / Columnists

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By Dennis Nichols

It was a dread year! We’ve just said goodbye to 12 months of criminal and muckraking mayhem. Some are wondering what fresh salvoes will be thrown at us in 2015. I, for one, am soberly aware of the high level of apprehension flooding the hearts and minds of Guyanese already bruised and browbeaten in 2014.
Forgive the skepticism and pessimism; hopefully it’s temporary, but strange things happen around this new year transition period as people take stock of their lives, the state of their country, the immediate past, and the foreseeable future. For too many of us, bleakness overshadows and distress grabs hold.

Is Guyana some kind of man-made hell? The question arises simply out of the inexplicable, head-shaking disbelief people found themselves experiencing over the last two weeks of 2014. During that period, death stalked our land with arbitrary and mind-numbing frequency, as no less than 34 Guyanese, many of them potentially-productive young men and women, lost their lives atrociously, sometimes over what appeared to be petty differences, avoidable accidents and bizarre circumstances.
For me, this traumatic time-span began on December 15 when two men, an ex-policeman and a University of Guyana graduate, were shot and killed by the police during a supermarket robbery. Not your regular or stereotypical bandits. That’s where the head-wagging disbelief came in, to which was added the mind-numbing aspect of the sangfroid with which such tragedy is accepted following the first gossipy shock.
After that, the madness was ramped up. There followed, in a two-week period, almost three dozen murders, fatal accidents and suicides. In a country of three-quarter million people, tragedy after personal tragedy bludgeoned the senses. Some of them had to be taken in stride to avoid mental and emotional burn out. Others tore at our hearts and exhausted our emotions. With no natural disaster to be accounted for, this has to be some kind of national, if not international, record for a peace-time nation with such a sparse population.

It’s far too easy for any such death to become simply a statistic, a name; a news bite; an incidental blip on the mind’s radar screen. Life goes on, and it’s understandable that we cannot allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by bad news. But it has also been theorized that we are part of a collective humanity, an etheric consciousness that binds each to other and expresses itself in empathy and amelioration.
So what is the appropriate response to this death spree? You and I can write a book on what we think should be done, and what has been attempted, in stemming the tide of fatalities, through laws and law enforcement, education, sensitization, reorientation, rehabilitation, and appeal to just plain common-sense. Not much seems to have worked so far, although all of the above are worthy executions. Now here’s my ‘heartfelt’ suggestion.
Think with your heart. I’m not talking simply about emotions and subjective feelings here. I’m talking about what science and medical research seem to be discovering about the intuitive intelligence of the heart, how it communicates with the brain, and how it ‘beats out messages’ and responds to positive emotions like love, gratitude and appreciation towards others.
Researchers say the heart, not the brain, radiates the body’s largest electromagnetic field, and from this, much data can be gleaned. This ‘information’ seems to suggest that through heart/brain interaction, we humans, we Guyanese, can choose to have positive thoughts, followed by positive emotions, and positive actions, towards others.
Needless to say, it would then become that much harder to rob, rape, batter, or kill another human, to cause psychological and emotional harm to someone else (especially in domestic cases) to drive recklessly and endanger the lives of other road users, to take your own life leaving surviving family members traumatized, and to be unaware of your environmental safety as well as the safety of others.
Of course, all of this depends of the individual learning how to access and use heart intelligence. Or on practicing the biblical ‘Golden Rule’ of doing unto others what you would have them do unto you.
Of the ‘untimely’ deaths that occurred in the latter half of December, four of them touched me most poignantly. The first was Felicia Hussein’s suicidal leap into the Demerara River from the Harbour Bridge. The next was Lawrence Reid, the nine year-old boy electrocuted after stepping on a live wire not far from his Pattensen home. Then there was the murder of 14 year-old Tiana Raghbeer at Canje, Berbice, and a day later, the reported suicide of 62 year-old Alfred Branche, in apparent remorse over causing the death of his teenage daughter, Yonette.
In each case, positive and compassionate thoughts, emotions and actions may have prevented those fatalities or, at the very least, softened their sting. Did Felicia have someone she could talk and relate to about her mental and emotional well-being? And if she had ‘problems’ did anyone notice signs of instability or imminent threat of self-harm? Was there a redemptive moment, a brief glance, or a tear-streaked face overlooked by a fellow bridge traveler?
Someone most likely placed that live wire on, or close to, the ground where Lawrence was electrocuted for their own benefit. Did that person/those persons consider the danger posed to passers-by? Did they care enough to insulate it or ensure that it was beyond human contact? Were they aware that residents used the path? Or was it, as the boy’s mother suggested, a deliberate act of vengeance?
Revenge, said Tiana’s father, was the probable motive for the heinous murder of his teenage daughter. But was he too uncaring in allowing his daughter to consume beers before she skipped home? Were her murderers aware of her youthfulness and naiveté, and did they think of her as a sister or daughter, or did they take advantage of the circumstance? Did she beg for her life only to have her killers react with callous indifference?
Finally, the heartrending tragedy that befell the Branche family. Was there no one who could console Alfred with the idea that he wasn’t responsible for the death of his daughter? And even if he was, didn’t anyone notice his depression and seek counselling or professional help for him? Certainly they must have seen his tears of anguish. Did anyone follow him to the backdam in his disconsolate state? And was Alfred himself impervious to the further trauma his death would cause to his already devastated family?
The answers to these, and a dozen other questions, may never be elicited. Life must go on for the hundreds of thousands of Guyanese too wrapped up in their own cocoons of crises to spare more than a passing thought for the wretched dead amongst us. And some undoubtedly perceive those who have died as being in a better place than those left behind. Certainly seems a valid notion.
In the end, this article is more about the living than the dead. And as the remaining 361 days of 2015 stretch before us, it is we who have to deal with the aftermath of the last year’s horrors, in particular the last days of 2014, and brace ourselves for whatever comes at us this year.
Felicia, Lawrence, Tiana, Yonette, and Alfred no longer face the adversity and the angst many of us do simply by living in Guyana. General and local government elections loom, and with them the possibility of having the worst aspects of our individual and collective personality revealed. Bigotry, hatred and intolerance simmer just below the surface. But don’t be afraid. Think with your heart.

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