It is a useful practice, as we stand on the threshold of a new year, to look backwards at the journey that we have taken, and to look forwards to the path that lies before us.

Looking backwards at our journey in 2024 can be a difficult exercise for many citizens. Our country’s battle with crime continued, culminating, as the year ended, in the declaration of a State of Emergency. We suffered the avoidable demise of loved ones as a result of road accidents. We reprised the grief of losing relatives to industrial accidents on the seas, as a search mission shrunk into a recovery effort. And the entire nation joined in unspeakable despair at the tragic death of a Parliamentarian and her children in a household fire, just days before Christmas.

For many of our citizens, it is difficult, in the face of experiences such as these, to regard the year that has gone by as anything but painful. Still, those of us who have been left standing know that we are called to find meaning in the seeming abundance of grief and sadness. The question that we all have to answer in 2025 is, how do we do so?

Perhaps it is in turning our attention, from time to time, away from the sadness around us, and towards the divinity that inhabits all of us – to the spirit deep within that enlivens each of us, when all around us seems barren and dry. Perhaps it is in identifying those moments in 2024 when, in the depths of the temptation to curse the darkness, citizens chose instead to light a candle – like our young pannist Joshua Regrello did, in his bid to establish a new world record by playing our national instrument for in excess of 30 consecutive hours. Perhaps it is in realizing that our lives are very much like the music that is born of the steelpan; and in understanding that our lives, too, are often the product of hardened sticks striking against unpliable steel – capable of absorbing the steady blows struck against us on the outside, and turning them on the inside into melodies that can enchant and inspire. Perhaps we take our cue from young Mr. Regrello’s triumph over physical and mental exhaustion, and try to turn the difficult and challenging experiences in our lives in 2024, into something that raises us higher in 2025, rather than allowing those experiences to hurl us into even deeper despair.

As we come to terms with what 2024 has been and has meant for each of us, my hope and my prayer for our country are that we can tap into the divinity that lies inside each of us, and find the strength, in the face of all of our adversities, to step into 2025 with fortitude and with courage. My hope and my prayer are that we can find within ourselves the determination to make of 2025 a better year than the one just past. And my hope and my prayer are that when, at the end of 2025, we are called upon to engage once again in that useful practice of looking backwards at the journey that we have taken, and of looking forwards to the path that lies before us at that time, we will be able to say that both were and are better than we ever could have imagined.

And so, my fellow citizens, as we take stock of the last 12 months and enter a New Year, let us step forward with courage, optimism and confidence that we have what it takes—resilience, faith in ourselves and in our fellowman, and love of our country – to overcome our challenges and to multiply our blessings. As David Rudder put it in his masterpiece “Dedication (A Praise Song)”, let us remind ourselves in 2025 that, between the wrist and the rubber, there is a new truth to discover – a new melody, a glorious song of songs. I believe that better days are ours and I look forward,with hope and expectation, to working along with the national community to make our days ahead better than those that are now behind us.

My husband and I extend our best wishes to Trinidad and Tobago for a strong and a resilient 2025.