The regrets I guess I will always live with

Oct 30, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Here is what I wrote in last Friday’s article; “I will do a column (maybe tomorrow or the next day or next week) on the things I have regrets about. And certainly Guyana’s backwardness will be all over the article. I am simply pained that I did not enjoy a modern Guyana when I spent 26 years teaching at UG. It is this kind of backwardness I regret and deeply so; it is the angst it brings that has tempted me to do a column on the things I regret in my life now that I am over sixty years of age.”
Well I am doing that column right here, right now.
Obviously it will take thousands of pages if I were to describe my regrets, and I guess that goes for most people. Life is not determined by our will, instincts, desires and dreams only. Life intrudes on our world and shapes and distorts it in ways we live to regret.
I accept the existentialist fulcrums on which human existence rests. But our existence is always spoilt by the intrusion of bad luck, other’s people’s action and unforeseen, unpredictable forces. There is a literary phrase for it; “the vagaries and vicissitudes of life,” We don’t always enjoy the rendezvous we enter into. That’s life
Almost all human beings dead and gone had serious regrets. All of Planet Earth’s living souls live with regrets. Some are incapable of transcending those unholy moments; some of us do not let the scars determine our happiness. On the personal plain, I have my share of unfulfilled moments. They are countless, but only two are worthy of mention because of space.
I painfully regretted that my mother did not live to see me work to give her a few pennies. I hate myself for not being able to even “shake a leg” much less dance. I would have loved to dance from childhood to old age. I adore music.
Here is a confession you may find odd. One of my biggest regrets is that I did not dance to Barry White’s fantastic instrumental song, “Love Theme” with my wife.” This is the song I would have loved to spend countless hours dancing with my wife. It is a unique song where classical strings are fused with pop rhythms and the crescendos in the song take you beyond imagination. That is the tune I select for a man to dance with the woman he loves.
I have endless regrets about Guyana, my country, the land I belong to; the land that gave me birth, my parents, my wife and daughter. One of the permanent pains some of us live with in Guyana is that there is a daily juxtaposition of what we enjoyed in the outside world and what we endure at home.
I attended two Canadian universities that were superb, philosophically gratifying and modernistically phenomenal. I came back to Guyana, spent 26 years teaching at a university that did not and does not have a bookstore. I never had a phone in my office.
These are things you regret as age catches up on you. One day, I was going down the escalator at City Mall and the young people going up were so buoyant; the ambience in the mall reminded me of Canada and Europe. Those ambiences I would have loved to enjoy after a hard day’s work at UG. But in my 26 years at UG, we had to settle for a lime on the seawall. I did say in that Friday column that Guyana’s backwardness would be all over the article as I look back at my life in this country.
Many persons I know, some of whom I was close to, some I had ongoing familiarity with, have died because our levels of medical science, science in general and technology are very low. I would visit a friend in the Georgetown Hospital one day, and the next day, I would hear he/she has died. People I know got murdered and our forensic capabilities were so low, their killers were never caught. Those things pierce your psyche.
When I lived abroad, my Christmas gifts normally would be books and music. I returned in 1984 and up to this day, you cannot buy an original CD or DVD in Guyana. Our economy would not support the cost of the original. You can give someone a CD through an Amazon order, but the cost of shipping from the US to Guyana would be ten times the price of the CD.
As you grow older in Guyana, these are the regrets you have to abide with. Your children from nursery to university lived with blackouts. That one will go on forever.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News