[dropcap]A[/dropcap]long time ago when he resided in Germany, Arnold Schwarzenegger and I met by arrangement backstage at a London theater. He was then about nineteen going on twenty, some ten years younger than I, and his English not nearly good enough to be understood without assistance. On the remembered occasion our interpreter was Helmut, a fellow bodybuilding star and mutual friend from Austria, Arnold’s birthplace. Flanked by Arnold and me, Helmut sat on a couch that had known more butts than an ashtray. He had introduced us a few minutes earlier at the behest of Arnold, who turned out to be full of questions, more than a few only indirectly related to the bodybuilding life, as opposed to regular living. Among the first tossed via Helmut was: “Do you think a man can get out of life anything he wants?”
With little thought I quickly determined the question had everything to do with the naiveté of youth. I chuckled. In measured tones, I replied: “No, Arnold, people must be aware of their limitations.”
And he said: “Limitations? What’s that?” He listened without interruption as Helmut explained, then addressed me again: “But don’t we place limitations on ourselves?” Obviously, I had misjudged the man who would be James Cameron’s Terminator and Governor of California. So much for vision and perspicacity being synonymous with age.
“Okay,” I countered, somewhat deflated. “But you have to admit we all come into this world with our respective talents. Some of us are more blessed than others.” Admittedly, a loaded retort. Twice had I won the Mr. Universe title he hoped to take back to Germany at the end of the day. I chose to believe the glint in his eye was proof he’d felt the sting of my riposte. Determined to keep the whippersnapper off balance, I took another swipe at his ego. “What about you?” I asked.
“You think a man can get whatever he wants out of life?”
He flashed that characteristic Schwarzenegger smile that in time I would come to recognize as his way of declaring checkmate. “Sure he can,” he said with overwhelming self-confidence. “It all depends on whether he’s willing to pay the price, whatever it might be!” I left good enough alone, reminded Arnold he had another contest ahead of him and needed to prepare, mentally and physically.
Several years later, around 1987, I was invited to deliver at Sir Arthur Lewis Community College a motivational speech before some 30 students, 17-20 years old, male and female. At one point I asked them the same question my friend had put to me so many years earlier in London, when I had been so recklessly presumptuous as to judge the quality of his intellect by his date of birth.
“Does anyone here believe it’s possible for a man or woman to achieve whatever their hearts desire?” It must’ve sounded like a trick question. For several seconds the sound of silence prevailed. Then a young woman put up her hand. “Are you saying that if I saw a beautiful diamond ring at a store, and I truly wanted it, that I should steal it?”
Now it was my turn to lose my voice. When I recovered from the shock of the lady’s question, I said: “Well, I guess if you had to have that ring at all cost, if your life depended on it and there was no other way to acquire it, you’d have to steal it.” More silence. And then I did my Arnold shtick: I smiled, then said: “Just keep in mind before you smash that showcase that the price for stealing the ring could be several years behind bars.”
As I drove down the Morne from the college at the end of my lecture I reflected on the recalled episode. What was it I said that had caused the young student even to consider burglary as an option, instead of, say, working two jobs, saving up, making personal sacrifices, arranging a hire-purchase agreement . . .? Why had it not occurred to her that nothing, not even a diamond, was worth paying for with prison time? Obviously, I’ve not forgotten my recalled experience at Sir Arthur—and at other venues where I had also posited the same question. As for what I learned in consequence, it is this: somehow we’ve taught our people, or permitted them to convince themselves, that life is strictly about the cards they were dealt at birth—and about survival. Not about stubbornly, passionately and confidently pursuing worthwhile goals.
Back in the day, without much thought, I had reacted instinctively to Arnold’s loaded question with a loser’s answer: People must know their limitations! But how does one know one’s limitations before one has even entered the race? Why have we not learned that what we get out of our endeavors depends on what we invested in them? That success depends in great part on one’s ability to get off the ground with a mouthful of dirt and keep going!
Why had I talked to Arnold about absolutely untested limits? About places never ventured: terra ignota? This cocky Austrian kid, when first we met, knew exactly where he intended to go, regardless of how rocky the road. He was determined to be the greatest bodybuilder of all time—whatever that took—and then to make his way to Hollywood, his then grotesque accent be damned! The thought of meeting and marrying a Kennedy was not yet among Arnold’s fantasies, let alone his entry into American politics and a spell at the Governor’s Mansion in Sacramento.
As I now think about it, I had myself traveled from High Street in Laborie to success as a champion athlete of international repute. Also as a recording artist, if not nearly as revered as my idol Elvis. As a writer, too, published by prestigious St. Martin’s Press in New York. I had every good reason to feel absolutely secure. The notion that certain doors might be closed to me had never burdened this Laborie boy’s psyche. I had broken color barriers, in England and yes, in America too. And yet, when the not quite famous, admiring Arnold (a fan, for crissakes!) asked me his unforgettable question I handed him the wimpy response of a loser. Why?
I think I know the answer, following that remembered session at SALCC. Life in our country has almost always encouraged our youngest, therefore most impressionable citizens, the majority born into poverty with its countless destructive tentacles, to be grateful for whatever they are handed; never to be “over-ambitious”; always to be “humble”; never to hang their hats “too high”—always to know our place. As a child growing up in Laborie I could not stop myself absorbing some of that poison into my system, if only for a short time. Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations!
And now, more and more, some of us are going out of our way to convince the more deprived, uneducated, unskilled among our population to blame their sorry conditions on everyone else. And by “some of us” I refer to the very people who had sworn on the bible to do everything possible to improve our living conditions. Alas, our politicians are more than ever convinced the only way to hold on to their lofty positions in our broke and broken society is to turn our people one against the other. They survive thanks only to the spoils of war—an unending war of their own creation, for their own selfish purposes.
As earlier noted, we have been taught to be suspicious of success. Women in our society are given few opportunities to succeed, contrary platform rhetoric notwithstanding. The random rapes, for one thing, are proof of our mindless need to keep women in their place, subservient to men. The relatively few women who somehow have managed to establish themselves in enviable positions are dismissed in the worst way—including that they had prostituted themselves up the ladder of success.
Such as Sir Arthur Lewis, the genius twins Roddy and Derek Walcott, are denied deserved true respect and appreciation. When we need an inspirational quotation we turn to Google and unfamiliar sources; not to Lewis or the Walcotts. Truth be told, we resent heroes—unless foreign. By our own hands we have stripped our most prestigious awards of their earlier value.
The politicians have always known the root of our recurring problems, social and economic. The evidence is to be found in their annual budget addresses, wherein are identified the stumbling blocks to a better life. Every year the problems are underscored. What is never fully accounted for are the millions of tax dollars allegedly invested in ostensible remedies. In his time John Compton spoke incessantly about the fate awaiting countries as well as individuals who habitually spend more than they earn.
The desperate cry for reason has been repeated by every prime minister since Compton. But while all have talked the talk, none has walked the walk. Our most voracious gobbler of government revenue, said Compton way back in the late seventies, is the public service that depends for its own survival on the heavily-taxed private sector. And yet it is the public service that guarantees members every conceivable perk, including pay increases in the worst of times, not the private sector.
Our work force cannot access available jobs for lack of appropriate skills. So said Prime Minister Kenny Anthony in 2016; so said Prime Minister Vaughan Lewis in 1996—as had John Compton in 1989. All our prime ministers in their time had also said tourism would be our main source of sustenance “for the foreseeable future.” And yet what is there at our schools to be learned about the business of tourism? Keeping in mind the associated problems of outright racism and “colorism,” what are we teaching our young people about tolerance? What are we teaching them about self-confidence and the skills required to land the tourist industry’s higher echelon jobs now supposedly held chiefly by non-nationals? Which is not to say this writer sees this country forever profiting in the last analysis from tourism. The price for success in this industry is heavy: we are up to our ears in untreated human waste, an old problem made all the worse by the very figures indicative of tourism’s success.
But I must pause until another time. For now let us understand our house is near irreparable. Pretending it is bad but not so bad as to be considered an emergency is self-delusion. And self-delusion is what has brought us to our sorry state. That, and our evident willingness to pay any price for our killing inertia!
