Making our Child Minds work

By Renton de Alwis

This prescript is added on hearing of the hospitalisation of Nelson Mandela, leader par excellence, who, in my opinion, possesses a child mind. We witnessed how he was able forgive and forget. He shared love and brought sanity to a once tormented nation. I join, likeminded human beings, to wish him a fast recovery and long life!

Written and published in late 2009 before the last Presidential elections, the intent of this column was to urge those in conflict to forget, forgive and work together for the good of our Motherland. Today, observing the gimmickry taking place in battles for dominance, calling it empowering of the ‘people’s will’, the same call is made to forgive, forget and work together for the good of our Motherland.  

Seeing what is happening around us, I can not but refrain from quoting from a book I wrote and released just the day before the Presidential election of 2005. It was a collection of regular weekly columns I wrote in a Sunday Journal over the previous year, intending them to be a socio-political commentary of our times. The chapter I am quoting from is titled; “Time to make our child minds work” and it read “Remember when we were children. We fought. We made up. We forgot. We forgave. We got up each morning to a new day. We carried no baggage from the past. The child mind is amazing. It is non dogmatic, is caring, is immensely creative, is innocent and most important of all, devoid of lasting hate and is full of love and the capacity to love. When all else fails, what we need in times of crisis ….is may be to appeal to our leaders to put their child minds to work. Never mind the complex processes, strategies, plans and schemes to outdo each other. What they now seem to need is a full dose of innocent silent meditation to look inwards. Focus on the back to basics of why they are there, to do what for whom”.

Sowing seeds of disunity

Seeing the Sunday newspapers and reflecting on the musing about a ’common candidate’, driving deeper divisions between people who contributed actively to end the reign of the brute terrorists that were the LTTE, in my mind, will only drive this nation towards more disunity and further division.

It will certainly not help in uplifting the quality of life of our people, bring the various races together to think as Sri Lankans or help regain the lost glory of the nation, before it entered the dark age of conflict and mistrust. Although these are the stated objectives of most of those who claim to serve us, their actions certainly do not heed what they have preached, or have stated in their policy manifesto.

Good of the nation

This consistent veering away from the promises will only bring us all more misery, undo any good that has been done and further push the nation towards disharmony and even chaos. What we need now is to focus not on ‘what is good for me or for my party, but on what is good for our country and her people’. Like it did in 2004, when I wrote my column “Random Thoughts”, it pains me as another caring citizen of this country, who does not have any political party alliance, to observe that there is still no end to the pettiness among and around us. We are yet to see genuine concern from most of our leadership. What we see, in my mind, are mostly opportunistic political manoeuvres by politicians claiming to be leaders, craving to regain lost ground by forming strange and uncharacteristic alliances or attempts at taking on ‘below the belt’ punches without having much credence to support them. Never mind who did it first, but it is time to turn a new leaf. 

 

Reason prevailed

It is true that we have a history of intrigue and betrayals dotting our nation’s history and one can argue that it is unrealistic and idealistic to expect it to be any other way. But then, there are examples even in recent world history where the tide has changed, to make rationality and good sense the victor. I believe that a good majority of the American people chose to put their child minds to work when they elected President Obama, to hold the highest office in the land, defying all odds. At this time in our history, when we ignore and disregard the teachings of Gauthama the Buddha, Jesus Christ, Prophet Mohamed and social activists the likes of Mahatma Ghandi or Nelson Mandela at our own peril, this recent feat stands out to offer some hope for us and the world at large.

Assert our will

What we need now to do as a nation is to put our own child minds to work. We must dust off any cobwebs we have and take off the many colour tinted glasses we wear and look at our own future with clear vision. We must assert our own will and judge our ‘leadership’ on what they say, have done and are doing for the good of the nation and sieve away those who work with petty personal and partisan agenda.

The real issues we need to focus on are many. Upon the ending of the reign of terror of nearly 30 years, there are the issues left of re-establishing the rule of law, rebuilding trust among the different racial communities seeking true unity within our diversity, ending corruption, raising the living standards of the poor, ensuring an equitable redistribution of development and regaining the nation’s lost prestige and honour as being primary among these.   

Hold accountable

The President as the head of state has made several significant statements and provided policy guidance directed towards achieving most of them, since taking office. Undoubtedly, an excellent job was done on the war against the LTTE with a singular focus on the objective of defeating terrorism, maintaining a strong momentum in the allocation of resources to the defence forces, delegation of authority in the management of operations and maintaining morale through harnessing of popular support for the effort.

Now that it is behind us, we need to believe that the other war on rebuilding the nation as a unified entity, where all can live with dignity and honour is being taken on with equal efficacy. Our role as concerned and caring citizens should, I believe, is to support and contribute to these efforts to the best of our ability, hold those responsible for giving it leadership accountable at all stages  of the process, provide constructive and substantiated criticism and ensure that the end objectives are achieved as intended. This I believe, is a responsibility each of us have, to ensure that our country moved ahead towards prosperity, no matter where we stood in the system of our political alliances and/or creed based loyalties.

Rule of Law

Very rightly, several of our civil society leaders are making strong and loud calls for the re-establishment of the Rule of Law, having a true sensitivity towards the plight of other races in this country and ending exploitation of the weak and corruption of all forms. No one has the right to take the life of another or to take the law unto their hands without due process being adhered to. The recent gruesome incident on the shores of Bambalapitiya, where a mentally deranged person was forced to drown and the reaction of most among us, raises some very basic questions on where our nation’s collective psyche is placed.

No looking the other way

It is time now for us, not to look the other way. As Mahatma Ghandi once said “You must be the change you seek to see in the world”. It is time for us all now perhaps, to put our child minds to work and demand the same, from those who claim to be our leaders.