A GUY'S VIEW: Of friends and friendships
“Alas, that love, whose view is muffled still,
Should, without eyes, see pathways to his will!
Where shall we dine? O me! What fray was here?
Yet tell me not, for I have heard it all.
Here’s much to do with hate, but more with love.
Why, then, O brawling love! O loving hate!
O any thing, of nothing first create!
O heavy lightness! serious vanity!
Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!
Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!
Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is!
This love feel I, that feel no love in this.
Dost thou not laugh?”
William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet – Act 1 Scene 1.
Nothing has more elegantly inspired the pen of men than love and pain. Unfortunately, too often these two emotions seem to live together. William Shakespeare used these twin emotions to introduce Romeo to his audience.
Arriving on the scene of a just ended brawl, the love sick Romeo tries to entertain his cousin, Benvolio, with his poem of opposites. For some strange reason, this memorised discourse from my school days came to mind last week when there was an exposure of the difficulties faced by a dying man by his friend.
The target of Romeo’s love, Juliet, was young and healthy, so she never had to endure a hospital experience. In any event, her wealthy family would have been able to care for her in the best private surroundings.
One may notice that when wealthy people in Barbados fall ill, they seek medical attention overseas. Why? And there seems to be no end in sight to this practice. As long as the wealthy can flee our shores and receive the best health care money can buy elsewhere, they have no incentive to improve the health facilities and care that the rest of us may access. Barbadians must demand an end to this. A Government that has the interest of this population at heart, is duty bound to give the teacher from the Pine access to the same quality care that her parliamentary representative can travel overseas and buy.
Life can sometimes be cruel. Today, we are here and, probably, glorying in our achievements, as some are wont to do. But none of us knows what tomorrow will bring. Our fore bearers often said, “Today for me, tomorrow for you.” I have grown quite fond of “every pig has his Saturday”.
It is the height of stupidity to find happiness in the misfortune of others. Some health malady is waiting around the corner for all of us. Our long-standing philosophy of equality for all requires that we should not deny the poor the best quality care that can be provided. Every human being is entitled to the same level of decency.
But human nature can be dark. This is never more starkly demonstrated than when a friend stabs a friend in the back. If we are fortunate, we may meet one genuine friend during the course of our lives. Some friends can be more trustworthy than family, but when they deceive us, their deception can be a cut much deeper than any other wound we may encounter in life.
It raises questions of credibility when a person is willing to disparage the country’s health care system, and in particular the main provider of health services in the country, while telling the world that his dear friend swam in filth without attention from his caregivers. But who would do that just to spread political propaganda? Fortunately, I know no one who would do any such thing.
In a land as small as Barbados, most persons have acquaintances that are of different political persuasions. In fact, one could venture to say that no one has relatives that are of one political persuasion. There is no doubt, therefore, that the hospital patient whose misfortune was exposed by his friend, also had friends and relatives who did not share his political views. They too would be hurt by the fate he suffered and the exposure of his state, politics notwithstanding.
Romeo employed his poem of opposites to entertain his cousin. But it is not entertaining when one claims friendship and then behaves like an enemy. This opens the door for one to ask who was really the sick man’s friend – the person who exposed his condition to play to his benefactor, or the benefactor who he either escorted or accompanied?
When we reduce important issues to personalities, we lose sight of what is important in keeping our country a stable democracy where the rule of law prevails. We like or dislike persons for the most fickle reasons imaginable to man, so that is obviously a poor reason to form an opinion on anything. That is why it is so important to ensure that we are governed by just laws and not garrulous people.
For over a year and a half, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital has been under new management. In that time, the care has gone south. Further, amazingly, in an environment where there is no shortage of money, according to the author of the exposé, the most basic items without which there can be no quality health care, are not available. If this is true, this is a direct reflection of the managers of that facility. Could it have taken a year and a half to discover that the hospital had no bandages to cover wounds? No staples to bind letters?
No toilet paper to wipe bottoms? And the only defence of the managers of that institution is to point back to the much superior management they replaced and try to pull them down in an effort to hide their incompetence.
We are engaged in too many opposites in Barbados. People say one thing and do the opposite, and it is not to make us laugh. The people of Barbados heard the encouragement to “Give muh de vote and watch muh”, and they are seeing the results of that decision. It was frightening, therefore, when they were again told, in essence, “Give me the job and watch my performance.” Once bitten twice shy.