I don’t want to be premature and do what my dearly departed granny would have called counting egg in fowl bottom, but surely a qualifying place in the World Cup can do wonders for a nation’s spirit.
In the midst of the mayhem, a victory against Mexico says clearly to me that the fighting spirit is still very much alive.
Because it’s becoming more and more clear that the salvaging of our last ounces of dignity, national pride and an ability to walk upright and hopeful lies in the hands of our artists and our sportspeople.
The Government is surely not doing it and it seems these days that the Opposition is too busy navel gazing to actually do its job of serving its public.
Watching pictures of the stadium awash in a sea of red, I fell in love all over again with the macabre kind of beauty that is the spectacle of Trinidadians/Tobagonians of all ages, sizes, shades and political suasions.
As if the people there were washed in the blood of all the 300 or so people who have lost their lives brutally during this still unfinished year.
Surely this all-round redness is an outer manifestation of what runs inside us all without exception. It is the red that makes us the same.
Another thing that most of us seem to share, however, is this premature celebration and, subsequently, absolute despair when things don’t go exactly the way we want them to go.
Germany is a cheap train ride away, I thought bright and early Thursday morning, already starting to do mental shuffles on my next summer calendar.
Like a good Trini, I immediately made an assumption that the universe, coupled with the Warriors’ determination, would conspire to let T&T into the World Cup.
We have endless verses of robber talk, ent. We are a nation of lyrics men and women who sometimes can’t find the action to back up the words. As if we want desperately for our dreams to come true but can’t be bothered to wake up and do the necessary.
I’m trying to come around to the less old talk and more new-action way of thinking. No easy task, for sure.
And like a new convert, I’m desperate for everyone to see things from my point of view, so bear with me a bit and consider how wonderful it would be to declare ourselves champions and also do the work necessary to get wherever it is we think we want to go.
But it is one thing to make a declaration. It is quite another to believe it.
It’s so close you can taste it. Like a chow: sweet, sour, peppery. Unpredictable and making you nervous about what will come next.
I don’t know about you, but I still remember a November 19 many moons ago, sobbing uncontrollably, not wanting to believe that we had actually lost.
It had never entered my mind that such a thing was possible. I thought that my love and support alone were enough.
Lancelot Layne’s pan-sweetened melodies still ring in my ears and I wonder how different the country would have been if we’d actually won that fateful match against the US of A.
We set aside the hurt of that defeat and many others after and have renewed hope in this current incarnation of the Strike Squad.
Yet, it isn’t all that right to put all that pressure on our football Warriors. We have made that mistake too many times before. To believe too much in 11 men, humans no less, with flaws and off days and streaks of absolute brilliance.
We have, alongside our tendency to talk too damn much, a tendency to deify those brave enough to don the red, white and black; to put all our faith in them to save us from ourselves.
I suppose everyone has to believe in somebody. And when your belief in yourself is flagging, it is only natural to transfer your hopes and aspirations to people who seem to be more together.
The Warriors still have a long way to go. Beyond just qualifying for the World Cup. Beyond embodying the spirit of a nation.
They have an individual responsibility like all of the rest of us who call ourselves Trinidadians/Tobagonians to represent; to create a sense of this place that goes beyond mineral wealth and political parties.
Because ultimately, they are doing in public what all of us should be doing in private every day. Being citizens of whom an entire nation can feel proud.