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Inner peace
(Kaieteur News) – Ramadan, a month of self-denial, searching for a closer connection to God. A call to fasting and prayer, of caring for others. The best in men and women responding to the divine hand inside of them, and seeking to live better lives. President Irfaan Ali attended worship celebrations, shared refreshing words with his audience, and beyond.
Part of his Eid-al-Fitr day message had the hum of a violin. “When we achieve inner peace, we are able to spread peace with those around us. We are able to lift others up, spread joy and teach patience in our own lives.” When “we achieve inner peace, we are able to spread peace”, lofty paths are traveled. We thank the president for his thoughtful words on a solemn day, and encourage him to think some more about what he said, what those words mean, how they apply to many Guyanese in a land that exists in a sea of oil.
Inner peace comes when one’s feet are firm on the ground, one’s head is clear, and there is contentment that life, despite its challenges, is livable. Inner peace is not fostered when the flames of need and hunger bite deeply and constantly. From where will the inner peace to be achieved of which the president spoke so blandly come? When there is the perception that life is unfair, that the riches that belong to all Guyanese have been hijacked for the benefit of a few? It doesn’t inspire peace, when there is awareness that most of those in the ranks of the few well-connected are from within President Ali’s inner circle. Among his listeners, those absorbing his meaningful words, there had to be those struggling to cope with survival in a harsher and harsher Guyana environment. They must have been wondering, looking for a connection between the president’s words about “inner peace”, and the grimness of their own reality, and that of their neighbors and community.
There is sure to be the inner peace that the president urged, maybe of a different kind, in the hearts of the Guyanese billionaires close to him. But what peace of any kind for the many who straddle the devastating poverty line in Guyana? A mother who does not have enough in her purse to purchase basic food items today for her family, and knowing full well that she has to repeat that cycle tomorrow, what inner peace is there for her? What inner peace can she or her partner or her children achieve, when there is distress that Guyana has so much wealth and there are many like them who are in the same boat?
The president’s preference may be to pretend at not knowing, or burying his head in the sand, like an ostrich, from any such knowing, but there are Guyanese who are angry. Their anger and disgust are likely intensified when they hear him preaching to Guyanese whose stomachs twist with pangs of hunger, and anxieties that come from knowing that they are losing their battle with making it in an oil rich country. We think that a fair question that many of them could be asking themselves is whether the president is playing some funny game with them, mocking their condition. Where is the inner peace going to come from? From where when so many Guyanese live with a sense of being tricked and cheated by a government that is callous, often disdainful, of their circumstances?
For all Guyanese to “achieve inner peace” that President Ali made a central pillar of his message during Eid-al-Fitr celebrations, there must be fair and equitable sharing of Guyana’s rich patrimony. When conclusions in the national space are that his government’s policies enrich Guyanese life, and that all are able to cope comfortably, then he doesn’t have to issue the call about achieving inner peace and spreading it. Guyanese will spread that peace on their own. Because their own conditions inject that state of mind that prompts reaching to others in a spirit of fraternity and not hostility. Guyanese will not look upon other Guyanese as competitors, nor those who benefit at their expense. Inner peace flows naturally, because there isn’t a divided Guyana, but one.
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