Dear Editor,
In my early days growing up on Aruba in the Village, when the postman came to deliver mail and among the envelopes there was a yellow one, there was sudden anxiety. Those yellow envelopes were telegrams and telegraphs and were almost always sent in connection with death overseas. I can imagine that a great deal of your readers would be asking themselves “What is he talking about?” because technology has rendered almost all these things obsolete or given them another name. Texting and email have taken over, not to mention video calls.
Sadly to have to mention though, that because negative news spreads faster and goes a longer way than good news, it seems as if there is more bad news than good news. So, at the same time and for the same reason, secrets are also exposed quicker and also spread faster. When I opened my WhatsApp this morning to check out my greetings, there was a text from Curaçao which was not so nice. and in which three prominent citizens of this part of the kingdom, including St. Maarten, were mentioned in connection with not so admirable behavior.
What I was taught and the way I have experienced life, I am convinced that no one is above God. We are taught to turn the other cheek and to forgive because of Romans 12:17-19 and Deuteronomy 32:35. I have seen this play out in life. For years now I have been trying to highlight that the Netherland Antilles are too small. Everybody knows everybody and at one time sooner or later, “what goes around comes around” is going to come in play. It will happen here quicker than larger nations.
We tend to always ignore what the old people used to say. Anyone who is into doing mysterious things should not ignore sayings like “the longest rope has an end” and the Dutch one “Al is de leugen o zo snel, de waarheid achterhaalt hem wel”. Again it is about the money. My father used to tell me, money is not a cure. Money can get you a lot of things but it cannot cure things. I used to be an altar boy, and in so doing attended many funerals in the church over the years. The majority were open caskets and I cannot remember ever seeing money in a casket yet.
There is a joke that a very rich man requested in his will for his wife to bury him with all his money. She did. She wrote out a check for a very large amount (eight billion) in his name and put it in his suit pocket in the casket. The text that I received mentioned the millions of guilders that these three persons accumulated over the years, but it also hinted that these persons operated like a green snake in green grass. No Genesis 3:19?
One of the things that shaped me and that I will never forget is, before I started to sell the newspapers and I asked my father for some small change, he would always look for some chore for me to do and give my mother the money to give to me. Genesis.3:19. You have to work for what you want. And I have never regretted that.
Work does not kill anyone, he would say. People kill each other, people die in motor-vehicle accidents, people die from illness, people die from drowning, but work does not kill anyone, and every one’s job is as valuable as the other’s.
Sharing is mentioned in many different ways in the bible. Luke 6:38 is one of them. I believe that sharing and love go hand in hand. My question in this whole matter is: What plays around in one’s mind who behaves in this manner?
My father used to say, “The only time I see myself is when I look in the mirror. And because I know that we are all equal, I have to look for the positive in people and hope it reflects in me.” It took me a while to understand what he meant. Over the years it made a lot of sense and trust is one of the things one develops when looking for the positive in others.
Would it not be great if people would use their talent for doing the right thing?
Russell A. Simmons
