Sunday, May 11, 2025 at 10:01 AM

At some point in our lives, we all have “some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life …,” as F. Scott Fitzgerald describes it in The Great Gatsby.

We begin planning our future in high school and work towards those dreams in college, if one is lucky enough to get into a college. Some of us know at a very young age what we aspire to become as adults, and for those with that knowledge, their dreams usually come through and true. They have the upper hand on the rest of us, we, who were still struggling to find our way, our purpose, our place.

Do any of you remember when we had to take our entrance exams to get into our preferred high school, if our parents could afford it? Do you remember the exhilarating experience you felt upon being accepted? I don’t know if kids still have to go through that process, but after all these years I still remember it all, and fondly so. I was accepted into high school at 13, and was done by 16. I was never an “A” student, but I had that heightened sensitivity that Fitzgerald wrote about; it gave me an opportunity-seizing attitude about my future, and it paid off, in so many ways. I’m neither rich nor famous, but I have lived a full life. That is my reward.

I write this as we go into another State of Emergency for the next 6 months, to curb the mayhem and murders that are overwhelming law enforcement, and are making the public uneasy about their state. Losing these kids and adults who are dying unnecessarily, including one of the latest with whom I’ve had some third person connection, is unsustainable in a country of 400,000. These kids, whose heightened sensitivities are spurred by the violence and poverty that surround them, their way of life. No mentors, no guidance, no hope. Wat a ting!

Tomorrow is Mother’s Day. I think of all those mothers who have lost their children to the senseless violence and slaughter that seems to permeate and metastasize in certain parts of our city, of our country. We are ready to judge these young men; we are ready to put the mark of Cain on their foreheads, without ever thinking that as a society maybe we could help curb the causes of this cancer, which is rapidly spreading in every corner of our precious Jewel.

This is not a Belizean phenomenon; it is worldwide. The disadvantaged, those born in poverty with no hope, will usually lash out against a community that does not acknowledge their existence, or only does so when it is too late. When local and state governments do not lift a hand to help those that need it most. When there are no role models, or when not enough people show care and concern and love for the lost and confused among us. It is easy to say that they are bad, to blame their parents, or the neighborhoods or their color. It is easy to say, let them kill each other, until they kill someone close to you.

I believe that government, and businesses and community leaders, have to get together and work out a solution to this situation that is quickly getting out of hand. It doesn’t matter how many SOEs are put into effect. Unless we get down as a society to the roots of this genocidal fever, it will keep escalating like a tropical depression transforming into a hurricane. And then what?

We should make promises to the youth of our country. We should let them know and see that we have their backs. Sure, there will always be those who are irredeemable; but I believe that the vast majority of them have that heightened sensitivity. It is up to the rest of us to guide them in the right direction, in order to fulfill those great expectations.

I know. I dream a lot.

Glen