We have been battered and bruised all year and to many, our pain and suffering is nothing more than our lot in life.

We have loved our leaders, hated them, loved them some more and then we signed off on casting them into that final pit of detestation. At some stage, we have to focus on ourselves and ask that terribly unpleasant question. What can I personally do that will have some measurable effect on life in Jamaica?

Measurable effect? Probably not, but to quote a long-held cliché, captured in song by the O’Jays in the late 1970s, “We are all in this thing together, we gotta work it out.” Your effort and that of your neighbour across the fence, and mine and my neighbour’s next door are all important. This time more than most.

Jamaica is at a bad place, but for the Christmas season let us plan, conspire and hatch a plot to make just one more person a little bit happier. I know this sounds like so much sweet stuff, thick syrup laid on, and it is probably easier for me to spread it on because I am not hungry and I have identified where the next meal is coming from. For now.

Some are not so lucky. During the tough year that this has been, some of us have lost a loved one by way of that great equaliser known as death. Someone suffered through a painful divorce and in a few families, the fragmentation reached critical limits. Still, others like myself, just one year short of 60 are having, all over again, a healthy appreciation for one more day, one more year, one additional moment to participate in that thing called life. The only existence we know of.

If we can at this time, let us grasp the opportunity presented to us by the reality of Christmas to take one more person into our circle of love. I am no guru and although I have climbed many mountains and reached to the top, I am forced to tell you, as if you did not already know, that there is no great secret at the top just waiting there to liberate us. The formula remains the same: hard work, determination, more hard work. If you approach being the best in whatever you do, people will find you, flock to you, but a little marketing will not hurt your cause.

When I was a child I lived in the “country” for a spell, I was fascinated by older people talking about “Spanish Jar” or “Pannia Jar”. The Spanish Jar was supposed to be a relic of the Spanish occupation of Jamaica. It was filled with gold coins and hidden and many were the tales behind that jar. The man living on the hill in a big house with many servants? “‘Im fin’ ‘Pannia Jar.” In my time I never looked for any, but it did occur to me that if I should luck upon such a treasure, it would probably bring me more pain than pleasure, joy and true happiness.

It is difficult for me to smile or laugh while others are quiet, sad and oppressed either by their own lack of education and opportunity or because they just joined the unemployment line. But at Christmas I urge you to share with someone who has little. I know it may be asking too much of you, simply because you have your own problems and headaches, and the temptation is to go into lockdown mode and say, “You’ve got your troubles baby, I’ve got mine.”

Many are castigating the government for telling us before Christmas that next year will be painful. According to some, the government should have held back its announcement until it was upon us in January. No one loves bad news but if all that can be announced is bad, my choice is, give it to me now.

I remember some years ago, back in 1972 when I was pulling out all stops to woo the first great love of my life, my first wife. We were working at the same company, a little place on Harbour Street. I was a shade over 21 and she was 19, plus a little. She went on leave and had travelled to Canada where her first love had emigrated.

My fear was that she would come back and announce to me that they were about to get married. For the entire two weeks, I wrote her poetry and letters and kept them in a shoe box. On the Monday she came back, I could hear my heart beating in my chest. I wanted the news but I was hoping it was purely good news. I had carried all of the bits of “correspondence” I had written to her and I had given them to her early that morning in the hope that she could browse through them at lunch time.

For the entire half-day at work I was a total mess. I was then a young trainee marine cargo surveyor working at an agent for Lloyds of London. She was a typist and file clerk. After lunch I watched her, trying to read something in her body language. At that time we both wore afros and believe it or not, I did have hair then.

She went to the water cooler and I watched her as she turned and gave me a toothy smile. What the hell did that mean? Why was she playing with me? Give me the news, woman, before I roll over dead at my desk.

She came over to my desk and said, “Hi Mark, I read your letters. You made me cry.” Then just before she left, she handed me a little note. After waiting for two weeks, then the entire morning, I now found that I could not summon up the will to open it. For the better part of an hour I left it unopened and unread.

I was a smoker then, so I went downstairs and dragged hard on an unfiltered Camel, a harsh, strong cigarette. I was tempted to steal across the road to a J Wray and Nephew retail branch. Summoning some strength, I rushed back upstairs and headed towards her. Standing in front of her I said, “Don’t play with me, woman. Don’t be a coquette.”

She began to laugh. “You have not read the note, have you?”

“No,” I said.

“Go and read it,” she said, smiling.

I rushed across to my desk and fumbled while opening it. It was a one-liner. It read, “I love you and always will.”

At Christmas our minds must run to the kinder, gentler days of the past, but we cannot dwell there. We must find something in us to rekindle the better times. It was once the norm that at Christmas even poor families would share with an ever poorer family. Today that spirit of sharing has waned significantly and we have placed distance between ourselves and our neighbour. This day and tomorrow I implore you to share the little you have with someone who has only a tin of mackerel and a pound of rice. Charity certainly has its enemies, but at Christmas let it flow like the love you have for yourself.

May you find peace in your life and have, against all odds, better tomorrows.

observemark@gmail.com