Hard Working Dogs

MANY OF you readers out there are blissfully unaware of what kind of hard work goes into a newspaper. There are certain professions that demand long, gruelling hours – pilots, doctors, the employees at KFC on Independence Square – and working in the media is no exception. At night when most of you are curled up on the couch watching Everybody Loves Raymond and eating chocolates, there are people at the Newsday office beating their brows well into the night, sometimes as late as 11 or midnight. The media is a 365 day a year operation, which means that some poor soul has to get up, get dressed and go to work on Christmas Day, on Ole Year’s Night, on Carnival Monday and Tuesday and on public holidays. On Sundays while most people are liming on Maracas Beach, there are lots of hard working dogs reluctantly heading to their jobs when what they really want is to stay home, have Sunday lunch and take a damn nap.

Whatever happened to that nice image of “life in the Caribbean” where enjoyment was more important, in the grand scheme of things, than employment? What happened to the slow pace of life, where hustling and rushing was only for crazy people who didn’t understand that life is short? Life in paradise used to conjure up images of sunshine and rainbows, lounging in a hammock under the shade of a tree, sipping on a cold drink, living a slow-paced, relaxed existence where work is a necessity, but certainly not worth killing yourself over, nor giving yourself an early heart attack. Apparently life in the tropics is not so anymore, at least not in this fast-paced island, where we seem to be turning into a nation of workaholics, fashioned after the North American way of life, where work is be-all and end-all of existence, where a business must be open every day of the year in the pursuit of profit.

The world of work is mentally and physically exhausting. You spend the majority of your every day life at your job with your coworkers, so if you don’t like your job or your place of work you are guaranteed to be miserable. When you work long, taxing hours, it is easy to feel like work has taken over your life, and you start to feel like a walking robot. Wake up, go to work, eat lunch, go home, eat dinner, sleep and do it all again tomorrow, every day, for the rest of your life. Depressing, isn’t it? Apparently that’s the real world. It was Barrington Levy who summed it up nicely when he crooned, “Everybody must work – work hard!” All of us have dreams of one day winning the Lotto so that we’d never have to slave again, but in the meantime, if you don’t make the effort to balance your demanding job with the rest of your life, it takes its toll on you and everything else in your life starts to suffer.

You hardly spend any time with your family, you rarely get to lime with your friends, your stomach has gone all soft and flabby from a lack of exercise, and your skin has turned pale like a gecko on the wall because you haven’t been to the beach in months. And don’t even talk about your romance – the surest way to estrange yourself from your significant other is to get too wrapped up in your job. Well, I for one am determined to change all that and not become a die-hard workaholic, so the other day, when I actually had two whole days off to do with as I so desired, a friend and I headed down to Mayaro. Some people dread long drives, but I love the journey to the other corner of the island.

I love going down the highway, through Arima, past Wallerfield, into the mountains, passing village after village, taking in the scenery, glad to be leaving the hustle and bustle of Port-of-Spain behind. As you drive further and further into the country you start to remember that there is a different way of life in the rural areas – a simpler existence that seems to be stuck in a time warp. And when you finally reach the coastline where the swamp meets the sea, this feeling of “ahh… we reach” washes over you. During the day we walked on the endless expanse of Mayaro beach and picked up shells and sand dollars. We swam in the shallow water to cool off, and chased after those funny little fish that swim with their heads above water, like they haven’t quite decided if they’ve finished evolving yet. We ate loads of food and got “macajuel syndrome” and took a nap in the afternoon, and at night we took our chairs out onto the beach and saw more stars than I’ve seen in a long time, and counted them as they fell.

The next day we took a drive past Mayaro, past Point Galeota, down into Guayaguayare, and just took in the scenery. I can’t remember the last time I felt so relaxed. No rushing, no deadlines, no TVs or computers or high heels or ironing blouses or traffic jams or bad drives or cell phones or any of those other things that raise your blood pressure. Just a bathing suit and a towel and the beach. It was pure bliss. Even though the trip to Mayaro was just for one night it reminded me that the real world is NOT the world of work – the real world is the world waiting for you outside of the office! It is hard to make the most of your free time when you are perpetually tired – but as my favourite uncle loves to say, “Life is hard and then you die.”

Life certainly is hard, and stressful, and you only live once, so you better figure out how to enjoy it. If you just spend your days working and sleeping you may as well be dead already. You’ve got to make a conscientious effort to do more, because Trinidad is such a beautiful island, where there are so many things to see and do, that it is a shame to not enjoy it. Pick up a sport or a hobby! Go outside and take a walk! Take your family on a hike to a waterfall! Go to the beach! Go cycling in Chaguaramas! Go up to Fort George for a picnic! Go and do something, anything! Take a drive, go and see somewhere you’ve never been! Just go! Don’t waste time, don’t make excuses, just get up and GO!