The Tribune

By NICOLE BURROWS

I sincerely hope the press conference given by Dion Smith, Deputy House Speaker, was about more than publicly lending Perry Christie support. It seems an awfully trifling reason to engage the media, unless you have a hidden message or agenda … or maybe not so hidden … to deliver far and wide.

I wonder how Christie feels about Smith’s hunger for power. I’m guessing it was not entirely a revelation to hear him (Smith) say about Christie, “Maybe he made the mistake by not, umm, giving me more power … you know, allowing me to do more for, you know, to represent the new generation of leaders in this country ... so maybe that’s a mistake that he made.”

The reporter probably asked Smith what he thought Christie could do better, maybe what mistakes he may have made if any.

You can tell Smith realised what his ‘power’ response sounded like almost as soon as he said it, because he paused, and then shifted with a very quick comeback. Maybe he’s a game player after all?

The news report ended with the journalist saying that Smith made it clear he is a team player and will follow behind whoever is party leader. I don’t know if those were the reporter’s words or Smith’s, but I have a big concern about blind worship disguised as team playing.

Being a team player is already a twisted concept in business, very rarely meeting its own definition. Yet, everyone says they want a team player. Really what they want is someone who will follow orders. They want someone who obeys … is obedient, even docile, someone who doesn’t challenge authority for any reason, in exchange for a paycheck. I believe these people are contemporarily referred to as the ‘Sheeple’ by many a comedian or talk show host, local and international.

We all know who the Sheeple are. In the Bahamas, they are most Bahamians. You can almost hear them go ‘baaaaaaa’ when they start to talk. And they’re the star ‘team players’ in Bahamian business and politics.

As if fake team playing wasn’t indigestible enough, I’ve noticed quite a few Members of Parliament sharing a very Christie-ish comment and sentiment of late, as Smith did at his press conference: “That is as much as I would say there”. Or, the less wordy “I’ll leave that right there”... as if saying those words ends any conceivable argument about their authority or knowledgeability. In the last few months, Christie, Davis, Miller, Smith, Mitchell, have all said similar words … even Ingraham, though, he’s not a member of the Progressive Liberal Party (PLP) like the rest of them … is he?

When you politicians say things like this, the only way it comes across is that you have nothing more useful to contribute to the discussion, you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, or you are on a power trip so high that you think you can say absolutely nothing and it means something.

• • •

Boy wese pirates boyyyyy! We’ll snatch the gold from under your nose!

Chile, Shaunae girl, lemme tell you what happened, since you say your mind went blank. How it looked to us on #TeamShaunae, you was running like the wind in the northeast quadrant of a hurricane, and we was shouting, hollering for you to get your gold and hold dat Yankee!

“Go gyal Shaunae, go!”... you know… Bahamian-style.

Then, almost to the end of the race, we held our breath ‘cause we was scared you was gon drop! “Oh, geesis, she gon fall, oh lawd her legs giving out, don’t fall Shaunae, don’t fall, Allyson right there!”

And then … what the … what just happened?

It was kinda funny. You went from almost falling two steps from the finish line to being on the other side of the finish line in a fraction of a split second. We didn’t even know you could do that, much less do that and win. But chile, you knew and that was all that mattered. How did you fling your whole body cross the line like that girl? So huge a fling it was it made you sit out the relays, but we gon try not to be too mad about that.

Shaunae, you deserve your gold medal, not because your torso crossed the line before Allyson Felix’s, though that is the official measure of your first place finish. And not because you had a praise session on the ground for like 10-plus minutes and we was wondering who was gon come pick you up off the ground. But you win gold for 100 per cent Olympic Spirit. If Allyson (like she’s my cousin) had done that instead of you, she would have deserved gold, too. Because - and I am no athlete - I can see a real winner not by the medal on your chest but by the fact that you use all you have when you really have nothing left, in order to get what you set out to obtain.

In your case, Shaunae, you crossed the finish line with everything you had when your body tried to tell you you couldn’t. And with that action, you’ve made your people proud; it’s not much they have to be proud of lately, so consider that in itself an accomplishment.

Perhaps now you’ve inspired many Bahamians to give all they have even when they think or feel it’s nothing, to achieve the goals they’ve set for themselves. That is inspiring. That is an Olympian.

• • •

To those who have written to me about how or why I write, this is for you.

I know many people are taken aback by the reality of me versus the concept of me … it gets confusing for some. Allow me to explain.

They call me an introvert - antisocial, particular, OCD, you name it. I don’t know that I’m solely or wholly that, because I can break out in a crowd if I feel like it. But I guess that’s it right there. I have to feel like it.

It’s not that I don’t like people … I actually do. I just don’t like too many people around me at one time. Us inner-centric people - not to be confused with selfish or self-centred - function on feelings … mostly. We have to feel it to do it or to say it.

We have to be in the mood for certain things and talk and people, especially if they’re high energy. And that’s not because we’re low-energy, it’s just that we take in every single detail around us making your high energy even higher energy for us to absorb. We hear every word, every syllable you say, every sound you make. And we don’t just hear it, we feel it. It reverberates.

So while you think you only said ‘hello’, we get your ‘hello’, but we also take note of your intonation, to know what type of response to offer. We remember how long the word took to escape your mouth, the shape your lips made, if we saw your teeth, if any of them were gold, whether you were sweating, the smell of your breath … you see? That’s a whole lot to digest every single time. It’s why we always need time. Extra time. You’ll often hear me say “I need a minute”, usually “to process” or “to digest”. Being super-sensitive to multiple stimuli takes a minute. It’s why we need lead time.

And we also need lots of alone time.

That time is to allow for the extreme level of detailed planning we need to do so that we can be highly functional. But it’s also because after being so sensitised, absorbing every detail, we need to recover. In the vernacular, we need to “catch ourself”. And solitude is our best recovery.

We function better alone and that’s not by mistake. We actually need to be alone. We’re healthier and sometimes happier alone. We can register more detail more accurately when we’re alone. Think about what it must feel like to be high and everything is accentuated, and going in slow motion. Well, we’re operating where everything is accentuated, as if in slow motion, except fast.

Being happier or more productive alone (writers, artists, creatives of all types) doesn’t mean we don’t love our family and friends. In fact, we do that intensely too, with the same time and detailed attention. Good for you if we love you; any beneficiary of our love and affection can attest to this. But we need to ensure that our business is taken care of before we can properly function around you. If not, the whole time we’re with you, I kid you not, if we seem anxious, we are thinking of all the things we didn’t get done or done properly or all the things we have to do and how much more productive and thus happier we will be when we get back into our solo space again. The quiet, solitary space is our strength. It’s where our comfort is. And when we’re comfortable, we are better for ourselves and our own good, and good for you to be around. You can’t always be like that, if you aren’t naturally like that, but try it once or twice and see how healing it can be for you to take time in your solitary space.

And, next time, remember, when we’re at a party and we go missing, you know why.

When you invite us to an event with mostly strangers and we decline, you know why.

When everyone else is laughing and we’re serious, it’s probably (hopefully) not you, it’s us.

E-mail nburrows@tribunemedia.net, Facebook and Twitter: @SoPolitiCole