We create and sometimes add to our own private hell

Unknowingly, we become our own worst nightmare. We manifest our problems. Subconsciously unaware of what's happening around us, we build a life based around problems and suffering.

And we justify our suffering as part of our existence. In fact, if there were no suffering in this life, if there was no stress, no unpaid bills, tragedies, sickness; then quite frankly we as humans wouldn't know what to do with ourselves.

Countless limitations that exist only in the mind serve well to keep us rooted in 'reality', a reality that we create to a great extent.

There's obvious facts that none can deny - we will all someday die. But the question is, how exactly will we live in the meantime?

Will our lives be a stressful or a peaceful one?

Will we succumb to a physical illness and just accept it as fate? Along the way will we load up our lives with so much material possessions, debt, eating disorders, unhealthy diets, substance abuse and reckless living that before we know it, we are sick and have to spend a fair bit of time and money trying to undo our own mess.

Sometimes life throws us a curve ball in the form of sickness, but it's how we deal with that very sickness, that's the key to ensuring our survival. How do we adapt to what's out of our control?

Life has a way of sending us warning signs when things aren't going right, and the question is - do we ignore the signs and live as if nothing is happening, or do we shift our focus, try to solve our illness, and rebuild our lives in light of everything?

When I keep quiet and mull over all the thoughts in my head, even the darkest ones and counter-argue those thoughts with new ones, then I see things differently. And I see how I contribute to my own hell.

I see how I have made my life miserable at times. It's very disturbing and liberating.

I know I've just begun but at least I've found my way out of my own mental hell.

The life you knew and the one you wished for

I remember back in 2001 when I was engaged, finishing my undergraduate and working in a stable company and feeling almost absolutely unfulfilled in my life.

Now, thirteen years later, I am single, without a 'regular' stable job and other than the want of a consistent 'salary', I am living the life I dreamed of one day having but didn't know how to get it.

I am a travelling musician, with no place to call my own. I am a guitar teacher without a mortgage, no wife and kids (and perhaps that is the only thing missing) and a modest list of responsibilities.

It may seem careless, but truth be told I have the world of worries.

I sometimes look in the mirror and wonder who am I? Where and how did it all change? Would I, could I change back to a 'normal' life? What about certain milestones that people should attain by 40? I don't have those achievements. What would/do my colleagues think? Some of them have done so much better than me financially.  Knowing what I know now, would I have made the decisions back then?

And the answer is yes, I wouldn't change a thing. All the experiences I've had since 2002 to now have been an adventure beyond my wildest dreams.

I was so unhappy in 2001 that I did what I could to make my life better, albeit not more secure.

But maybe security is overrated.

The trick now is making the dream be able to sustain itself, so I can carry on living this crazy, unpredictable, fulfilling life. The kind of life that only happens from being in the arts.

Do I wish I had a more normal life with a more simple schedule? Sure. Do I wish for stability? You bet.

Do I see myself meeting and one day marrying a lovely, kind gal who would understand (within reason) this umm, 'usual' way of existence? Yes. Hopefully.

Anything is possible in this life. I know that now, anything truly is.

I sometimes look back on my life and think 'wow! I was once there wandering around lost and unhappy, and now here I am!'

It's like living two lives.

What an amazing thing. This life.

Five-year cycles

I've discovered something recently, my life runs in five-year cycles. It's a pattern. Every five years, something earth-stopping happens and it changes my entire mindset, plan and direction. It's not a subtle change, it's a drastic makeover.

Almost without fail, the last ten years have been anything but conventional, to say the least.

I'm not too sure if it's been happening all my life, I can certainly not remember what happened to me when I was five or ten, and for that matter, I'm not too sure if 'it' happens in even or odd numbers. My cycle might've started when I was three or twelve for all I know.

All I do know, is that from 2002, my life turned upside down. My 'plan' was destroyed completely. I was finishing my Bachelors degree, and going to get married. Music was a small part of my life and I had no idea how to make a career out of it, especially in a foreign land. But, in April that year, I discovered my fiance was having an affair. Within two weeks, I applied to migrate to Canada, I just had to get out of Trinidad, I couldn't stand to be here. The following year, I left for Toronto.

In 2008, I decided to teach guitar full-time and travel more as a musician. Over the next five years I would spend time travelling between Canada, Trinidad, Europe and America. It was scary at first but this apparent 'unstable' career (labelled by some friends and family) became my life. I felt like a bit of a nomad, but I got accustomed to it.

In 2013, I was diagnosed with cancer and in an instant, my life's plan was stolen, and replaced with a new one.

Now, five months after surgery. I have changed my diet, I am getting regular check-ups. I'm trying to be more aggressive than my cancer 'friend' living in my body. I am still teaching guitar, but I almost feel as if I could be doing something else musically. I'm in a strange place, trying to figure out what's coming next. A summer tour is planned with KOBO TOWN, I'm gigging with a theatre group and I just sat my DipABRSM exam, so life is still moving along, in-spite of everything.

But one thing is sure, the winds of change are in the air. And I have decided to follow the wind rather than resist it. Change is hard, it's even harder when it's being made for you, then you almost have no choice but to follow through.

I saw a former lecturer of mine the other day, he told me ''In everything, put God first, talk to him constantly'. Then he said 'Forest Gump was right, life is really a box of chocolates'.

So, I'm in the next five-year phase of my life, by my calculations my next big shift will be 2018.

Unless, of course my cycle changes to a three or four-year pattern, then I'm really screwed.

You can never go back

We all have this habit of looking back at the past and wishing we were still there. Funny thing is, we were probably not fully enjoying that moment anyway when it was happening back then. It's only appreciated when it's gone and some worse experience comes along, so in it's relative state, the past was great only when compared to the present.

It's like when we leave a place - home, for example, and dream of coming back one day, only to realize that it will never be the same. It might look the same and certain aspects of it may well be exactly as before, but it's not.

Things have changed, you've changed. Home, then outside and now you're between two worlds, with a different view.

It messes up your head, this double-sided view. You're not too sure which one is real, the old picture you had in your head, or this new reality of what once was, now all but lost to the idolized memories in your head and heart.

Your friends change, they move on with their lives, you move on, you all grow apart, you meet new friends, you change career paths, you don't see much people anymore, you stay indoors pretty often, just writing and practicing your craft. And suddenly, you look back on the last ten years of your life and wonder how many lifetimes are you living - one or three?

Perhaps it's all the travelling? It's a time-zone thing. While you're outside people at home have no real clue what you're doing. And when you're home, the outside world carries on just fine without you. You straddle two-worlds and live three places - here, there and on a plane.

You yearn for stability, but miss the fun of the road. You suffer withdrawal syndrome and homesickness, all in the same week. The old stable, 'safe' life seems like twenty years ago. Friends admire the freedom and risks but would never do anything so crazy with their lives - forego safety to pursue a dream that is not secure nor financially viable.

Your father tells you that you have to stick to the path you're on, too late to turn back now. The new you was born out of a love tragedy, you don't even recognize your former self. You wonder how differently your life turned out from what you had initially planned. But in all objectivity, it's pretty darn nifty, albeit a bit scary.

The new you loses heart sometimes and lives in constant fear of being a failure and dying alone.

But it's too late to hit reverse.

You can in fact, never turn back. This is a one-way fare your purchased and your ticket in non-refundable. The old life has disappeared and along with it, the old job, the old safety net, and a life of predictability.

Anything can go wrong at anytime and you have no control of what comes your way, only the response given.

The slate is almost wiped clean again and the road is pretty much open.

Where you go next, it totally up to you.

How scary indeed.

Life changes in a blink

I read somewhere that 'Life is what happens when you're busy making plans', but then again, nothing can happen unless you have a plan of action to begin with.

It's a bit of a contradiction really. Focused, new-age individuals will tell you that a proper plan and positive thinking will help put things in priority and then, almost like magic, good things will come your way, you will 'attract' everything you need for yourself and you will live happily ever after.

Like magic. Poof!

I'm not too sure if I ever believed in that, the whole law of attraction thing. Maybe I'm a bit of a pessimist, but I just honestly thought that hard work was the key, then the good opportunities will come your way when the time is right, when you've earned it, and you could make the most of it.

I honestly thought the messy part of life, that part could be avoided, once I had a good idea how to manoeuvre around the mess. My plan you see, was preparation.

But I was wrong, because in the midst of making plans for my life, I got sick.

And just like that, all my plans were thrown out the window of my life.

In the aftermath of my cancer surgery, my mom started getting sick. And now, in a matter of months, my life has changed almost completely. What I once knew is no more, I'm not sure if it will ever come back - my old life, the way it was, it disappeared from me like a thief in the night.

One day I was fine, next day I had cancer. One day my mom was healthy, next day she was in chronic pain.

All I can do now, is hold on to what was there before and pretend to carry on as if nothing happened. Pretend to live my life as normal as can be.

Everything is just a passing phase, that I know. But I'm not particularly fond of this phase of my life. Without warning it came. It landed on me while I was minding my own business. Without regard, respect or kindness.

That's life I guess, take the good with the bad. Turn lemons into lemonade.

To say that it is a stressful time is an understatement.

But one thing's for certain, my life changed for the worse. At least for now.

I am trying to find the reason for all this, the silver lining, the lesson that life is trying to teach me, but I just simply cannot.

This is the part of life I wish I could get a refund on, or an exchange voucher or something. If this part of my life was a movie, I would fast-foward to the good part, just to see how it would eventually make sense.

For now, it doesn't make any sense at all.

Now, all I can see are the aftershocks from the earthquake that stole my old life.

And it changed in a blink.

You never really know someone, ever

I'm always amazed when I find out something new about a person I know. Like when I hear my dad re-tell stories of his youth, I'm in awe most of the time, other times I'm laughing or crying, or both. When I hear what my mom's childhood was like, when I hear tales of my ancestry.

It makes me feel that I have so much more to learn about the people whom are dear to me, that I will never truly know enough about them.

I feel that way about everyone, and yet I never ask them enough questions, I just assume the minor details about them and their history and how it all fits in with my life.

Friday in Vermont, I was reminded of just how naive that assumption can be. The band was in Vermont to play a gig, and our drummer Rob - who has been with us from the start - the true heartbeat of this band, started to play the piano in our green room.

Usually I fumble through the opening notes of 'Head over Heels' but not Rob, he played various classical pieces, extensive, complex works. He took piano lessons for ten years, never sat any exams though. But his technique was very solid. I sat there in utter amazement, along with our bassist - Don, we were both speechless.

And then we went and played our set, and Rob became our drummer again, holding it down onstage.

But for thirty minutes before that, he was a pianist and we, for a change were his audience.

Suddenly you were gone

An old school-mate of mine was murdered almost four weeks ago.

Murdered.

He didn't die in a car crash, not by a heart attack, not taken early by disease. He was brutally murdered.

We were good friends for about two years in high-school and then we lost touch after graduation. That's part of life I guess, people drift apart and move on. We all assume rather naively that we'll stay in touch, and that we'll always be involved in each others' lives throughout the years.

He ran his own company - an anti-theft car retrieval service. He wanted to do something positive to fight crime in Trinidad. He was going to be the change that he wanted in his world. His name was Rawle Francis.

Rawle paid for that 'change' with his life.

Crime here is out of control and the most that the authorities can say is 'new initiatives are being worked on the combat crime'. Sounds reassuring doesn't it? Whatever initiatives that are being deployed certainly are not working. As of March 2nd, the murder rate for Trinidad stands at 91 for 2014, in a small country of some 1.2 million people. I'm pretty sure that's higher than the murder rate of all of Canada - a country of 30 million.

Rawle leaves to mourn a wife and three kids. The details of his murder are sketchy. To date no leads have been made in his case.

I wonder if his murderer felt any compassion at all, any remorse after reading the obituary. I wonder how could someone be so cruel, so wicked, so heartless.

At Rawle's funeral, there was a fair number of old Fatima boys - his classmates. His family look devastated. Who wouldn't be?

All the old boys greeted each other and stayed back to talk about what had happened and life in general. Some of us went for a drink in Rawle's honour. Some guys I had not seen since 1990 when I graduated.

I don't know if Rawle's killer will ever be brought to justice because of our terrible excuse for law enforcement and legal system here.

This country needs a lot of prayers and a concrete plan to combat crime on many levels, to deal with the root causes - trouble in the home, the breakdown in family life, unemployment, training and education programs for unskilled youths at risk, and initiatives to help those living below the poverty line find a better means of earning a living. Not just an increase in police vehicles. That's just dealing with the symptom and not the problem.

And yet, no government seems to have the common sense to understand our crime situation. They've all just dealt with the problem when it occurs. Like a reactive, clueless idiot they behave and hope that the country will be happy with their 'solution'

God help us all, because the government doesn't know how to save this country.

Rawle, rest in peace my brother. May your death not be in vain and may your killer be brought to swift justice.