THE FIREWORKS have spent themselves, the bottles of bubbly are empty, the fancy feasts are now nothing more than a memory and the little black dress and other exquisite duds are back in the closet.
Old Year’s Night, as we term it in this corner of the world, has faded into history and it’s time for a healthy dose of reality.
And it could not have come with a more sobering jolt. The year 2015 was only hours old when police were called to a shooting incident at Vauxhall in Christ Church that resulted in what is being classified as the first murder of the year.
That certainly could not be a statistical first Barbadians wanted to deal with so early.
Just last week in this space we drew attention to the fact that the island recorded only 23 murders in 2014, which even though it is a number we wish we did not have to deal with, still represented a situation that suggested our conduct has been far less violent than that of a number of our neighbours.
We are thankful that more Bajans did not die in such acts of violent lawlessness, but perhaps this more recent killing will help to drive home the point that nationally we need to do something to build a greater respect for the sanctity of human life.
Yes, there will always be instances when provocation is so severe that not even an individual with the patience of Job will be able to withstand the urge to lash out, but at the same time it does not take a lot of analysis to conclude that self-control and tolerance are becoming increasingly scarce across our society.
It seems so difficult for so many of us to say we are sorry, even when our actions that hurt others are unintentional; and in the same vein, accepting an apology when it is given even with the greatest of obvious sincerity can seem just as challenging.
How did we reach this point? How do we retreat from it on a national scale?
Why do some of us feel it is so necessary to defend to the death our perceived “territory”, whether that territory is “the honour” of a parent or some other loved one, a $300 pair of shoes, our concept of our physical space or some other factor that will continue to exist without us after we have been locked away in prison.
Perhaps at the root of the problem is that we are placing value on the wrong things in our lives. This, we believe, can be particularly so when those who are at the receiving end of this violence are our siblings, other family members, partners and others with whom we have had “loving” relationships for many years.
We do not support or condone violence when it involves matters relating to gangs, drugs and the like, but it is much easier to fathom them than to understand or accept why a man would live with a woman for many years, father her children and then in the blink of an eye snuff out her life.
Equally, it is hard to comprehend the circumstances that would allow someone to grow up with a family member, literally eating and sleeping with them for a lifetime, and then suddenly during a moment of disagreement draw a gun and end that life.
In the final analysis, though, unless we are able to come to some understanding of what is driving this growing tendency toward violence in our society, not too long from now we could be wishing for a return of the good old days when 23 murders per year was a matter of grave concern for Bajans.
