We Are Responsible For Our Own Happiness

I remember a few turning points during my mental health recovery back in the year 2001.  I had just told a new friend about some of the things that had happened to me in life.  His eyes widened and he said like an awe-struck child, Why aren't you bitter. (please forgive the punctuation errors, Gentle Reader.  Blame Microsoft and Windows 10)  I cannot remember what I said.  I think I was a bit gobsmacked because I had never seen myself in this light.

I didn`t see myself as a particularly forgiving individual.  I had been seriously wounded and traumatized by people I trusted the most, family and friends.  I had also survived couch surfing homelessness.  I felt very vulnerable and frightened at that time, kept to myself a lot but for a few trusted friends, and was too unwell to work fulltime.  I think I was also in shock.  I did appreciate the need for forgiveness and reconciliation and also the importance of holding certain people`s feet to the fire till they were ready to apologize or make reparations.  I had also learned that I have certain inalienable human rights.

Really I just wanted to be left in peace and get on with my life.  Perhaps that`s why I unconsciously eschewed bitterness.  It would only darken my life, shrink my soul and further incapacitate me.  I spent my days doing what was best for me.  I studied Spanish, painted, marketed my art, and went on long walks everywhere.  It was when I found a white eagle feather in Stanley Park that I first felt visited by a sense of hope for my life and promise for the future.  I was still further traumatized and was at times incapacitated for two months at a time.  I soldiered on, knowing that only by moving forward would I get well.

In my way I was happy.  Despite the wounds I carried I took care to not let them fester.  I did my best to cultivate an attitude of love and forgiveness.  For a period of time I wrote letters to heads of state and government ministers of human rights abusing nations for Amnesty International.  Focussing on defending people facing torture or worse in horrible dictatorships helped put my own sufferings into context.  I tried to maintain my focus on being a part of a much greater whole, of the absolute interconnectedness of all life and all nature and humanity.  It was as though my sufferings had torn away a veil that had divided me from God and from other people.

More than anything, despite my extreme poverty, despite the horrible things that had happened to me, I chose to take responsibility for my own happiness.  I knew it was futile to rely on anyone else, be it family (in my case nonexistent), friends (almost never available when I really needed them) and lovers and significant others (nonexistent to me for so many years, and being asexual anyway, I had to become emotionally self-sufficient).

I used to be an anti-poverty activist.  Don`t get me wrong, I am still hugely anti-poverty and still try to raise awareness about homelessness and poverty in my part of the world.  Where I got weary of the activism itself had to do with the chronically negative mindset of many of my cohorts.  There appeared to be a culture of self-induced misery that could only be alleviated by getting more money from the government.  This isn`t to say that they shouldn`t hike welfare and disability rates.  In both cases they should be at least doubled.  Likewise, restrictions need to be relaxed or eliminated in favour of introducing a basic minimum income for all Canadians.  The culture of misery, however, has got to go but when that changes it could introduce new complications.

I am reminded of a conversation I had with a particularly hapless and miserable client of mine, an individual who has been through tremendous suffering.  I told him, based on some past experiences that I shared with him in common that ultimately he is responsible for his own happiness.  Later that day I mentioned the same to my counsellor.  She replied, yes but, what about all the government cutbacks and policies against the poor that make life incredibly miserable for the poor.  I succinctly replied that they can make our lives miserable but they cannot break us.

I say let us continue the fight for social justice, to continue to make noise for change and reform.  But let`s make it a joyful noise.  We don`t have to be miserable to be effective.  In fact this makes us ineffective.  They cannot destroy us and they cannot rob our happiness and when we allow the living waters of joy, love, peace and justice flow into our lives and out of our hearts then we will be transformed into a living force, a river of life that nothing can daunt or restrain.

A Beautiful Day

This is a spring full of beautiful days.  Not as dry as last year, and not as consistently warm though this year we have already logged some record breakers.  I think a lot of us get nervous about global warming.  I do.  Just today on the news I heard that my part of the world will be particularly vulnerable to disastrous floods as sea levels rise.

In other news, the flowers this year are spectacular.  They always are.  Every spring.  It is as if each year the rhododendrons, azaleas and lilacs, to name but a few, always come back in yet greater splendour than the year before.  Or perhaps through the winter we have so missed the flowers that when they appear again they are so dazzlingly beautiful that we never want them to wilt or fade.  But they do wilt.  They whither, decay and fall to the earth that waits to reclaim them just like all living things.  Just like us.

To those of us who feel guilty about enjoying this beautiful weather, the warm temperatures, the flowers, the green leaves and the bird songs, hear me:

There is nothing wrong with enjoying and celebrating beauty, even if it could be a symptom of bad times to come.  It is not the same as hiding our heads in the sand and waiting for climate change to kick our ass.  We accept that this is temporary.  We understand that the earth as we know it, through our own fault, is at risk.  We also see how slow, reluctant and absolutely stubborn are many of our politicians and corporate CEOs to effect any change to slow the speed of global warming.  We keep on driving cars and flying in airplanes and eating meat and doing everything else to keep our carbon footprint large enough to abolish our future generations.

The colours of the day surround us.  The fragrance of flowers and wet earth seduce us.  The sound of birdsong enchants and enthralls us.

Don't we know by now that life is itself a dance of death.  We infuse ourselves with joy, the celebration of the moment, that eternal nanosecond on which all the universe dances.  It could all be gone tomorrow, tonight.  We grasp and cling to the golden moment of light, each moment and we draw and extract from it all the sweetness and grace that it contains.  We do not forget that this could all end.  We remember that we all dance on the edge of a very sharp knife. 

Let us not forget to celebrate this fragile gift of life and let us also remember to be kind to one another because we are also all very fragile and to do everything in our power to rescue our planet earth.

Men Need To Be More Like Women 3

I still cant type a proper question mark nor in some cases an apostrophe.  The question marks still come out as É, though sometimes they don't.  Hello Windows 10.  RIP Windows 7.

Before I go on to explain just why and in what ways men need to be more like women just let me drop a little conversation bomb in your midst, Gentle Reader: 

Men are more like women.

That's right.  You heard me the first time.

We are not really that different, and most men, when it feels safe, will let down their guard and show to others their better side.  We are after all human, all of us, and humanity always trumps gender and if it doesn't then there is something dreadfully wrong with this picture.  I am not going to go into any of this nurture versus nature nonsense nor make any effort to support or discredit the alleged differences between the male and female brains.  As far as I'm concerned the research is still largely inconclusive and anecdotal and we are therefore left in the realm of personal opinion, and I believe that we already know what I think of opinions.  And as for that dreadful John Gray and his absolutely stupid book about Women being from Venus and men are from Uranus, don't even get me started.  I have heard already about his specious nonsense and all his findings are purely anecdotal based on a very narrow cultural sampling.

That said, whether through nurturing or from the way we are biologically wired, there are some important binary distinctions that mark male and female identity for many, perhaps for the majority, but not for everyone.  Its this one size fits all mentality that I really tend to lose patience with.  So what if the majority of little boys choose toy guns and trucks and little girls usually go for dolls.  There will still be exceptions.  Whether or not this is from cultural conditioning or not, who cares  We still have to, and ought to, celebrate the huge diversity we have in gender: besides cis men and cis women we have transwomen, transmen, asexuals, androgynous, intersex, as well as the full range of sexual orientation.  (I believe that I have already informed some of you nosy parkers out there that I am asexual and androgynous).  Underscoring all of this is the incredible competiveness that gets bred into us, and this dynamic knows no gender.  It is often differently manifested by different genders because of conditioning (likely) even though competiveness is generally thought of as a male trait.

So, in what ways, specifically should men be more like women  I am not about to suggest that men wear makeup or cosmetics though some already do.  I would love it if more women would identify and challenge the collective self-hatred with which the advertising has brainwashed them into hating their bodies and their looks making it necessary for them to buy their products.  Nor am I suggesting that men cry and squeal and jump up and down and hug each other and talk about everything, especially their girlfriends or boyfriends all through the night with their buddies.  Nor do I think that men need to cultivate a craving for quiche and white wine (boy, does this reference ever date me!)

The traditional female traits, nurturing, gentleness, empathy, communication, sensitivity and aesthetic appreciation, are not specifically nor exclusively female characteristics.  They are human characteristics.  They are among the finest and highest human characteristics which many women, as part of having to cope with the assholes that men often are, have had to develop by default of having to kill their male partners.  What has made men into assholes (though I would say that some of us are also rather decent)  Power.  Far too much disproportionate power.  For men to become more human they need to become more like women, which is to say they have to give up some of their power.

It is alarming to me that so many women are eager to become more like men, which is to say less human, by adopting these most loathsome human (sic) characteristics.  I say to women, be what you already are and lose the self hatred and become more assertive and continue to make bold inroads into traditional male domains.  But please do not turn into assholes.  To men I say stop being assholes and reclaim your true humanity which means tapping into your feminine side, your female energy, and becoming gentle, nurturing and caring of others.

Feminism must lose the language of capitalism and change its focus to a more human and much kinder and cooperative dynamic in which men and women and all who fall outside the binary can live and flourish together in peace.

Men Need To Be More Like Women 2

Gentle Reader, you will never believe the horrible news I just read in today`s Globe and Mail, but before I proceed let me mention again that the question mark still reads as É.  Thanks for nothing Microsoft and you can stick Windows 10 up where the sun don`t shine!

Now on with the show.  I have just read about a brutal gang rape in Rio.  Yes, in that Rio.  Carnival, Samba, Summer Olympics in a couple of short months, drugs, gangs and crime, and widespread political and social corruption.  A sixteen year old girl was drugged unconscious and gang-raped by thirty-three young men who then videotaped her naked and unconscious and posted it on YouTube where they gloated shamelessly about what they had done.  These were not thugs or criminals.  They were just regular guys with regular jobs and regular lives.  Oh, the Banality of Evil! One of these disgusting man-boys was her boyfriend.  And now the vile little cowards have all run away into hiding.  A particularly loathsome article was published in one of the Brazilian dailies, blaming the victim: she had tattoos and piercings, wore skimpy clothing, at sixteen the mother of a three year old.  Oh, the hypocrisy.

As though men, falling back on that older than time pathetic excuse that it`s the woman`s fault for being attractive, cannot control their carnal urges.  Who raised these imbeciles anyway? 

(Yes, Gentle Reader, you just heard me retching.)

Anyone who doesn't believe that there exists such a thing as rape culture or specific male violence against women ought to be forced to read this and other articles.  I think it was only in 2012 or so that a series of brutal gang rapes were reported also in India.  Such crimes against woman, against humanity don't only exist in developing countries.  Can you say Jian Ghomeshi?  Those of you who don't live in Canada can be excused for not knowing about this (does anything that happens in my country ever get noticed anywhere in the world?) but it's been all over our local news for the last year or so.  He was the charismatic aging pretty boy host of the CBC Radio One culture program "Q".  A wannabe rock star with a seductive come-hither voice who violently assaulted any woman unfortunate enough to get caught in his web of desire.  There was a court case, and he was defended by a particularly astute lawyer, ironically a woman, and acquitted.  Of course this will be for Mr. Ghomeshi career suicide so it isn't as if he will go unpunished which will still be scant satisfaction for the many women harmed by him.

What is wrong with us anyway? With men, I mean.  Here we are in the Twenty-First Century and there are still way too many males of our species who would like to believe that genitalia is destiny.  I think that many factors could be blamed, starting with patriarchy, the traditional male dominance of culture that still has an iron grip on too many societies and still whacks at times a most severe kind of phantom pain here in our own progressive and lovely liberal Canada.  The sad news is that it doesn't appear ready to go away any time soon.  We still have competitive sports, police and military cultures (pardon the oxymoron, GR) where male hierarchical dominance is still shamelessly entrenched and accepted.  Even with the huge incursion that women have made into these three institutions.  I believe there is a reason for this.  The patriarchal culture of violence that dominates these spheres is in itself, not simply masculine, but something ugly, brutal and destructive.  It is a culture of death.  Women being admitted into these areas, while providing a useful sop to feminism, themselves become corrupted by the same disease that affects and dehumanizes their male colleagues.

What I am saying here Gentle Reader is that the social evils of dominance, power and brutality are not necessarily defined by gender but by hierarchy.  A woman entering into a traditional male sphere of power does nothing to soften or feminize the zeitgeist and instead becomes rather like a man with a vagina.  She subscribes to the same insidious process of dehumanization.  This also happens in politics.  I have heard various second wave feminists opine fatuously that with more women governing and leading the nations the world would become a more gentle, just and peaceful place.  To this fatuous nonsense I will reply with but two words, both proper nouns (though there was really very little that was proper about the person so named):  Margaret Thatcher.

Stay tuned for part three.

Men Need To Be More Like Women

Before I proceed with this post please be advised that Microsoft has forced Windows 10 on my computer even though I kept refusing.  Now it is difficult to type certain punctuation marks such as question marks that come out looking like this ?  I can't believe it.  Microsoft must be behind this.  They hate criticism, Gentle Reader...

Gentle Reader, or the fifty percent of you who pee while standing, I will give you all exactly thirty seconds to calm down.  And for those of you who ran out of the room squealing like frightened little girls--is that anyway for a man to behave

Oh that's right.  This post is about why men need to be more like women.  But not like little girls.  Not even little girls should behave like little girls, and nor should little boys behave like little boys.  It`s time to grow up.  I have survived now I think four waves of feminism, or is it three I still think of myself as a second and third wave feminist.

I particularly want to comment on a column I read the other day in one of our local dailies.  The author of the piece was trying to weave a convincing argument about why women need to become more like men, which is to say, stronger, more assertive, more aggressive, more scary, more obnoxious, certainly less nice.  It happens that whenever a man is being strong and assertive he is perceived as powerful and is respected and admired.  When a woman is like this she is a shrill whining bitch.  A Harpy.  A shrew.

Of course this is all patently unfair.  There is nothing wrong with being assertive and a lot that is right about it.  And it does seem to be true that assertiveness is easily mistaken as aggression, sometimes when being expressed by a man but too often when it`s coming from a woman.  By the same token, men too often get away with being complete jerks and really don't care a rats hieny if they are being aggressive or assertive.  They all want to be like Donald Trump.

I am concerned about the influence of global neoliberal capitalism on feminism: the idea that  there are many women who aspire to become every bit as ruthless, competitive and take-no-prisoners aggressive as men in order to reach the top of the corporate ladder.  But my question is simply, who in their right mind would want to be a top CEO  I mean besides the whopping seven figure remuneration, the influence, the power, the power, the power...

Women, not all women but enough, want to be not men, but jerks, which is to say, like men: ruthless psychopathic monsters who simply don't care whom they step on or destroy to make it in life.  This is not about being assertive, it is all about completely abandoning a moral compass.  Women and especially men need to understand and fathom that men are particularly damaged as human beings.  The more power, the more wealth and status, the less humanity.  Regardless the influence, the wide reach of corporate and fiscal power, it concerns me that there are enough women who call themselves feminists who would be so eager and willing to barter out of existence the finest aspects of their humanity: empathy, kindness, emotional intelligence, sensitivity, to be not just the alpha female, not just the alpha male, but the alpha jerk.  These are not exclusively feminine characteristics.  Men also possess the gentle virtues though many are in denial and would blush like young virgin brides at the very thought of expressing such altogether vulnerable humanity.

In part two, Gentle Reader, we shall explore the necessity of men becoming more like women...

Reader Advisory.

Before I proceed with this post please be advised that Microsoft has forced Windows 10 on my computer even though I kept refusing.  Now it is difficult to type certain punctuation marks, such as question marks which come out looking like this É.  and apostrophes that come out looking like this è.  I am going to continue writing this blog but I will be omitting these punctuation marks.  Thanks for understanding.  Until the problem is resolved I will publish this disclaimer with every future post.

Crowed

It's that time of year again in Vancouver.  Springtime, flowers are blooming, the trees are in leaf, the days are lovely and the crows are on the attack.  It is nesting season, Gentle Reader, and Hitchcock rules.  Suddenly every large black bird in town thinks we are all dead ringers for Tippi Hedren an Suzanne Plechette.  We have only to walk anywhere near a crow nest and suddenly it's open season.  On us.  I have been attacked by three different crows in the last couple of weeks.  These birds don't take prisoners. Each made actual physical contact with my head as they dive-bombed me.  My crime?  Breathing while human.

It isn't that crows especially hate us though there isn't a lot of love lost between us.  But as their little babies with feathers start dropping out of the nest suddenly it's Angry Birds everywhere.  They are highly intelligent birds by the way, rather like chimps with feathers.  Only ravens are smarter as far as birds go, and crows hate ravens even worse than they hate us.  I understand that parrots and hummingbirds are also pretty darn smart (prettier and nicer too)

Sometime in early July when the little crow-lings are all fledged and able to fend for themselves, mommy and daddy crow will chill a bit and simply caw raucously from high branches at every life form they dislike, which is to say everything that is not a crow.  In the meantime, carry an umbrella with you.  Or better yet, a shotgun.  Or lobby city hall to cull crows nests within the city limits.  If they cant learn to behave like civilized birds then how about a nest cull.  Or maybe a shotgun.

Agreeing To Disagree

I am going to write today about religion, Gentle Reader.  More specifically I want to briefly explore an idea or two about how to commence a gentle and respectful dialogue between faiths where neither party has to compromise or forget the existence of any of their own respective key tenets and beliefs.  I was listening this morning at the crack of dawn to a program on BBC called Heart And Soul.  And just to reassure everybody that I have not turned hoity-toity on everyone, I don't normally listen to the BBC.  This is a program that our own CBC Radio One broadcasts every Tuesday at 5:30 am and it pertains to matters spiritual and religious, hence the very easily accessible scheduling for said radio program.

I learned something really very new on today's broadcast: that Islam honours the Virgin Mary with almost equal reverence to the Roman Catholics and that she is mentioned in the Koran thirty-four times (or is it thirty-seven?)  apparently, in Germany some Catholics and Muslims were actually meeting together to celebrate the Blessed Holy Mother.  Gobsmacked?  I sure am.

I have long had reservations about carrying interfaith dialogues too far.  I have long believed and held, as I still do, that Jesus makes interfaith dialogue somewhat problematic.  Christians, which is to say that Christians who have a sound grasp on Christian theological moorings, understand that there is something unique and in a way exclusive about Christ.  Not exclusive in the sense of driving away non-members, but in the sense that there is something irreplaceable and inimitable about Jesus: that he is the Son of God, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, and that he came not simply as a prophet but as God manifesting his love in our simple and fallen humanity in order to span the chasm that sin had opened between humankind and God.  We do not have to accept in order to have a reasonable dialogue with Muslims that Mohammed is his prophet.  By the same token neither do they have to accept as valid anything we believe about Jesus.

The key word is respect.  Believing as we believe need not close our minds or shutter our hearts to those who believe differently.  Neither does this let us off the hook from learning from the other.  We have to accept and respect that the things we believe have power in our lives because somehow these things have been given us by revelation.  Or perhaps that this has been God's way of revealing himself to us.  We cannot reasonably expect nor assume that everyone else is going to think the way we do.  This does not make us right, neither does it make us superior.  It doesn't make us anything.  Simply we are Christians and that's all there is to it; or we are Muslims and that's all there is to it.

So what do we say to each other, as Muslims and Christians talking to each other?  How does one open the dialogue?  By saying "My God can beat up your God?"  Or maybe more like "My God is your God."  But we don't believe all the same things.  Well, why should we?  We all have good reasons for believing what we believe and one of the surest and quickest ways of shutting down dialogue occurs when one challenges the other's belief system.  If it comes to that then one side had might as well put up stakes with kindling and the other had might as well build crosses for crucifying because we have already insulted each other.  Of course, as Christians we are still going to want to keep on believing that Jesus is God made manifest and as Muslims we are still going to believe that Mohammed is the Prophet of God. 

So I will say to my Muslim friend that it really doesn't matter to me that you believe as I do.  We both still believe in the same God.  And from my Muslim friend I would like to hear that it doesn't matter that I believe as he does.  We are both passionate about what we believe.  We are also passionate about respect, kindness and mutual goodwill.  If God wants to reveal to me that Mohammed is his one true prophet then this will happen in God's time.  Should God want to reveal to my Muslim friend the divinity of Christ, then hunky-dory and tickety-boo.

We are still going to want to proclaim our respective faiths, and so much the better, but in order to do so, respective must be transformed into respectful.  We walk in love.

There Is Nothing More Dangerous Than Us

I actually heard this on a radio broadcast this morning.  I was up uncharacteristically early from insomnia and had CBC Radio One on while getting my ducks in a row for the day at the ungodly hour of five am or so.  I did fit in a three hour nap this morning and not having to be at work on this Victoria Day Monday was definitely a plus.

"There is nothing more dangerous than us", said the subject of an interview.  The theme was about robots and droids and the possibility, however remote, that they could wreak havoc and become our masters.  Really a farfetched notion, this, and quite divorced from our human reality.  Interesting, isn't it, how expertly we project our fears and personal human darkness onto speculative fiction, be it robot rebellions or zombie attacks or alien abductions.

There is nothing more dangerous than us.  We are, to employ flattery, a species of renegade ape.  A difference of one percent in our DNA differentiates us from chimps, our slightly less intelligent and equally vicious nearest relatives.  The murderous rampages they go on have been but an evolutionary dress rehearsal for our species' ongoing experiments with genocide, mass rape, carpet bombing, environmental degradation, and threats of perpetuating global nuclear annihilation.

There is nothing more dangerous than us.  The last one hundred years of our species' history contains two of the most bloody, murderous and destructive wars that ever occurred on our planet.  Even now we have nations still arming themselves with nuclear weapons and terrorist groups as well as terrorist nations (including the charter members of NATO) engaging in scorched earth warfare, which does nothing to resolve differences nor end hostilities and everything to entrench historical grudges and blood feuds and yet more bloodshed and mass destruction.

There is nothing more dangerous than us.  The fragile and delicate balance of our biosphere and biodiversity is more threatened than ever by short-sighted human greed and violence.  The market for elephant ivory and other body parts of endangered species still has not dried up.  Entire species' populations are in danger of being wiped out within a generation.  With the extinction of even one species the web of life is yet further damaged and unravelled and the complex interdependence of all species is further undermined and knocked off balance, eventually threatening our own human existence on our suffering mother earth.  Extinct is forever.

There is nothing more dangerous than us.  Ever since our prehistoric ancestors began to walk upright and started to leave Africa we have been threatening and destroying other living things as well as each other.  We still have not matured beyond the kind of toxic tribalism that legitimizes mass murder and mass destruction: once upon a time with rocks and stones, then with spears and arrows, then guns and cannons and now nuclear weapons of global mass destruction.

There is nothing more dangerous than us.  Despite our highly developed and evolved brains and the intelligence that comes from them, we are still pathetically controlled by the amygdala, or reptilian brain.  Fear, greed and the flight or fight instinct seem to always get in the way, scuppering international treaties and flushing down the toilet almost every business negotiation undertaken to help save the environment.  Governments respond to the overwhelming scientific research and findings of the dangers of climate change by global warming by silencing the scientists and shutting down debate.  In spite of the loud and clear warnings coming from our scientist-prophets they had might as well be named Cassandra as our governments and the banks and international business interests that control our elected leaders take charge, shut down conversation and ensure that the fuels of death flow free and unhindered to poison our land and waters.

There is nothing more dangerous than us.  All over the world cynical politicians ignore the crisis that is rapidly unfolding around us and lull us to insensibility with the trite magic words of jobs and economy.  Nobody says that renewable and nonpolluting energy will generate more jobs in the long run and keep the economy running smoothly.  The CEO's of Big Oil and LNG will hear none of this.  They are our real leaders and our real masters and their word is going to be law.  So, knowing that wind turbines and solar panels will do more in the long term for our collective wellbeing than all the oil that belongs in the ground, they feign deafness and pursue their deadly agenda to our peril and to the earth's endangerment.

There is nothing more dangerous than us.  We must have our meat with every meal time, and we must have our cars to drive.  We have converted luxuries into necessities and simply will not imagine an existence without steak dinners, pulled pork, or Mercedes' Benz.  Screw the environment and keep on spewing methane and other poisons into the air. and screw the future of the planet and our species if it means living on beans, lentils and wind and solar power.

There is nothing more dangerous than us.  We owe it to the planet, to our future generations, one another and ourselves to find a place of repentance and begin now the process of change.  It might take one climate crisis too many to shock us from our somnolent complacency and once we get started with change it will probably be too late. Or will it?

How are we going to convince people who don't want to change that change is essential to our future survival?  Especially when those same people have all the money and power?

To be continued...

Kind Of Nice

Is there a difference between being kind and being nice?  Sometimes we're neither.  Other times we're both.  But are we ever one or the other?  I suppose while on the bus today I was being kind by removing my knapsack from my seat so a young woman and her friend could sit there.  The annoyance of both their loud strident voices made it necessary for me to change my seat.  When I turned around later and saw they were getting off I returned to the back since it was quieter again.  They both saw and took note.  I suppose I wasn't being very nice, but really, neither were they.   Likely just two more young narcissistic little bitches on whom both niceness and kindness are usually wasted, but I still couldn't bring myself to ask them to shut up or sit somewhere else.  I did both the nice and kind thing by removing myself from the problem.  I also did the not nice thing by glaring at them as they got off the bus and visibly returned to my seat (or near my seat since someone else had taken it) and muttered as they left "good riddance."

I think it could be easily said that nice is superficial but kindness comes from the heart.  For example, while stopping to pet an ugly but friendly dog you are being kind to the dog.  When you tell the owner what a lovely dog he has you are being nice in a lying through your teeth sort of way.  But if it brightens his day for him you are also being kind.

It seems we're always lying to one another, and to ourselves, anyway.  Brutal honesty is neither kind or nice.  Truth spoken, or better, demonstrated in love is kind but not always nice.

We occupy a gradually shrinking planet of finite resources and the way we treat one another as well as our environment is going to do a lot to determine our outcome as a species.  The increasing pressure to do more with less, be it food, material possessions or living and breathing space is going to make it all the more challenging for us to coexist, unless we are really prepared to make sacrifices and accept trade-offs.  Never in our history on this planet has this been more necessary and more crucial.  Or more difficult.

I think the best way to start is to deal as kindly as possible with our immediate surroundings, beginning with ourselves.  It is important to be kind to ourselves, not because we are anything special or above others but because we all matter equally.  I think this is also called self compassion (not to be confused with the Spanish cognate "auto-compasion" which means self-pity).

What does being kind to myself mean?  I think it involves good self-care, first of all: eating good, nutritious and tasty food, keeping myself and my living environment clean, clothing myself decently, getting all the rest and sleep that I need, doing things that I find enjoyable, stimulating and relaxing, taking good care of spirit, soul and body. 

It also means extending this kindness where possible and appropriate to those around me.  This also translates into handling conflict well.  For example, I live next door to a city owned social housing building full of hard to house and some very damaged tenants with a lot of street experience.  Many are emotionally adolescents and behave like adolescents often playing their music inappropriately loud.  The usual staff person I have to phone to complain sometimes loses patience and I make every effort to be kind and tactful in my response though this has not stopped me from filing a complaint about him to his employers who are being very supportive.  I have also had to take care to not demonize the tenants but to understand them and pray for them with compassion.  Not often easy but very necessary.

As long as we are all living at close and closer quarters and having to share more there will be growing and increasing opportunities to lay aside our own selfish agendas and preferences and treat one another with courtesy, respect and kindness.  And, often this will also mean having to be nice to each other, even if it kills us!

When To Say Thank You (And When Not To!)

Please tell me, Gentle Reader, if I am the only person to whom this has ever happened: I am entering or leaving a store and I hold the door open as always for the person behind or in front of me.  Said individual takes full advantage of my generosity and slips on by as though I am invisible and it was the invisible hand of fate holding the door open because he is an absolutely awesome individual and naturally fate is smiling on her.  So, I annunciate a sweet but decidedly tart "You're welcome."  Sometimes they will respond with a sheepish thank you, usually if it's a female.  Less likely coming from a male.

I think it goes without saying that women are generally nicer, politer and more apt to express gratitude than men.  For example while waiting in line at a produce market yesterday the fellow, a young male (race and ethnicity irrelevant) in front of me tripped and knocked over a shopping basket.  I waited to see if he would put it upright again.  He didn't.  Instead of saying anything to shame him I merely went over and put the shopping basket in its place.  He gave me a very embarrassed, shall we say shit-eating?, smile but not one word of thanks.  I can only hope that next time he is careless he will do something to rectify it, hoping that setting an example will have spoken to him more loudly than words of shaming and reproach ever would.  Who only knows?  I am not going to go into detail here as to why women are generally (but not always) nicer and kinder than men.  There is of course the familiar nature versus nurture argument and I myself am undecided.

As for myself, I always tend to say thank you and the rare time I forget to I do what I can to make it right.  I do tend to get a bit uncomfortable when it feels extorted.  Right now the housing providers of the BC Housing building that I live in (I am not going to name them as they can be very thin-skinned and vindictive when offended, and I have learned the hard way to not anger those who have the power to hurt me) have launched a campaign to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary as an affordable housing provider.  So, there is the tacit expectation that their very fortunate tenants are going to write them glowing messages of gratitude for saving their sorry hienies.  I guess there is nothing wrong with this really and I still remain a bit undecided as to whether or not I'm going to participate.  Probably not.

It isn't that I don't feel grateful.  I am tremendously grateful for this little apartment that I live in.  Having experienced almost a year of the couch-surfing variety of homelessness (thank heavens it was never the street variety).  Then I spent three years living in two shared accommodations-type situations.  When you are over forty you are decidedly a bit old for these kinds of arrangement.  It became unsafe and just in the nick of time something opened up for me in BC Housing.

I have now lived here in this building for almost fourteen years.  Though things have gone generally well it hasn't always been a cakewalk.  Living with a number of tenants who struggle with mental health issues is in itself a bit of a mixed blessing.  Since I also work in the mental health field I have had to learn to protect myself so that when I am not in my apartment I am away from the building.  This doesn't exactly correspond well with my housing providers' philosophy of building community with their tenants.  I am also seen to be talented, able and professionally experienced which, I have been told, has also made me a bit of a nice find for their community program and let's just say they have been less than overjoyed to learn that I am not interested in participating.  The good news is the current managers seem to both understand and respect this.  You see, Gentle Reader, when you are a professional care provider it can be downright impossible to turn it off during your time off.  Being also a person who cares about others it is very easy for me to try to be as supportive as possible to some of my neighbours when they are troubled about things.  Which is also often the last thing I need to do during my time off when what I really need is rest so I can recharge my batteries.  To be brutally honest, GR, my job pays my rent and if the place where I live and for which I am paying rent makes it difficult for me to do my job then I could end up in deep shit if I'm not careful.  So this is why I tend to stay away from the other tenants.

There is also the question of what exactly am I thankful for?  Well, that I have a roof over my head for one thing, and that paying thirty percent or less of my income  for rent makes it possible for me as a low wage earner to live with a sense of dignity.  Really, if I were paying market rent for my little apartment I would have to be earning twice my current wage or I would have to move to another part of the province or country.  So yes I am extremely grateful.   But to whom do I feel gratitude?  To God of course.  How about my housing providers?  Well, that's a little bit of a mixed bag.  I happen to see housing as a fundamental human right and I am not overly enthralled with the charity model, being more inclined to lean in the direction of social justice.

I am distinctly wary of the people in upper management for various good reasons.  Last summer I was threatened with eviction for swearing at the assistant manager because I felt my rent adjustment was unjustly high.  There were extenuating circumstances.  It was a sizable increase by over one hundred dollars a month. I was still recovering from hospitalization and my health still seemed uncertain.  I was also emotionally very fragile at the time.  My hours at work were at an all-time low and there seemed to be almost no allowance given to factor this in to lower the rent.  Not knowing if my income situation would change (I had also been stung by Canada Revenue Agency for nearly a thousand dollars, very difficult to pay on less than fourteen thousand dollars a year).  I later admitted that I was inappropriate, owned up and apologize even though I didn't and still won't back down on my opinion that the rent increase was not entirely just. 

A couple of weeks later someone from upper management sent me a letter threatening me with eviction over the incident, even though I had apologized.  Not one iota of consideration was given to the fragile and difficult circumstances I was in at the time.  Having survived homelessness of course this has been traumatizing to me.  Instead of endearing me this has merely made me all the more wary of these people and reasonably disinclined to want to thank them for anything, pending an apology of course.

I am still grateful for all these people have done for us.  But I don't like feeling in a position where a thank you feels a little bit extorted.

A Beautiful Fiction

We are all liars.  Some of us are pretty good at it, others are horrible.  Some lie more than others.  They usually get ahead in life because, we'd might as well face it, we live in a culture of lying.  I have probably been turned down for more than one job because during the interview I have refused to lie nor even massage the facts.  This does not make me a paradigm for honesty.  I do what I can to be as transparent as possible but even this could be a bit of a lie since I am caught in the same zeitgeist of lying as everyone else.  Perhaps I am a little more aware of it because ethically and as a Christian I really disapprove of lying.  Not that it always stops me.  And sometimes I have knowingly and willingly told a lie to protect myself or others from harm and I do not regret this.

I remember talking with a former colleague who was chosen instead of me for a position we were both interviewed for.  He eventually resigned.  One day we went for coffee together and he admitted to me that he was likely picked instead of me because he wasn't exactly honest during the interview.  I was.

I listened recently to a program on CBC Radio One's Ideas about lying.  It was suggested that really the best thing we could do for one another was to tell the brutal and unvarnished truth at all times.  No matter how many people get hurt.  This gave me pause and I thought for a while about the difference between telling lies and protecting someone from being devastated.  They also talked about the importance of the white lie as a social lubricant, that we always need to be a little less than honest with one another in order to get along and coexist.  This of course suggests the necessity of the beautiful fiction.  For example, at a dinner party the host asks you how you enjoyed the dinner.  If it was truly awful do you risk hurting feelings and perhaps ending a friendship by telling the truth or do you lie beautifully and just pray that they never serve you this vile garbage again?  Then there is the aspiring artist who asks you your opinion of their awful painting or the wannabe poet who expects you to swoon over their lame doggerel. 

I wonder if there are ways of getting through this without being brutal and without having to lie.  I personally don't think there is any harm in giving an honest answer, but it cannot be blunt or brutal.  For the awful food give an honest reply but avoid drama.  Simply ask if that was the way the food was meant to turn out and express as tactfully as possible that you didn't care for it, but reassure the host how much you enjoyed everyone and the conversation and ask them to please feel free to serve the same dinner again if they wish and let them decide what to do about it.  You are the guest and unless you are a vegetarian being served steak you eat what is put in front of you.  Tell the host how sorry you are that the food wasn't up to your expectation, reassure them of your undying friendship and next time invite them out for dinner.  They will have to get over their hurt feelings and if there is any depth to the friendship you will both treat each other with exemplary kindness and move on.

As far as evaluating amateurish art or creative writing look for something to appreciate knowing that every creative act has its redeeming feature.  And encourage them to keep trying.  Creative work is so personal and subjective that it is not worth jeopardizing a friendship by saying cruel things and perhaps even where the food is concerned we might consider that the onus could be on us to expand and broaden our tastes a little.

Where I get particularly stumped about our culture of lying is in the way our daily lives and interactions are completely loaded with this variety of horse manure, of how inevitable it is and that it is nearly impossible to get away from it.  I like to think of it as wishful thinking spoken aloud.  We want to persuade ourselves as well as others that we are really good, kind and enlightened people and so we lie shamelessly to each other to convey that we're really not that horrible.  I think this approach is defendable under one condition and one condition only: that we really make the effort to become the lovely, nice, kind people that we are trying to sound like.  That we rise to the challenge of our beautiful words.  That we make our words become flesh and then perhaps we ourselves will one day turn into something noble and beautiful.  And honest.

Faking It Until It's Real

I had this conversation with one of my clients earlier this week.  I had invited him for a group walk and coffee outing.  She  asked me, what if she didn't find anyone interesting.  I told him to fake it and to keep faking it till it's real.  I used to believe in being real about everything.  I thought that politeness and good manners were a lot of bourgeois nonsense so I dedicated some of the wasted years of my youth to being intentionally rude to the point of being an offensive jerk.  This didn't gain me a lot of friends and for a long time I went around dejected and lonely, like the guy who kills both his parents and then cries because he's an orphan.

I don't know when things really began to change for me.  I think that one morning in my forties I simply woke up and realised that I was going to start dedicating myself to being nicer to others.  Even if it killed me.  This also meant of course having to fake it until it's real.  This hasn't been easy.

When I began working in the mental health profession I was up against some real challenges, among others, the fact that I was going to have to work one to one in a healing therapeutic capacity with individuals whom I wasn't necessarily going to like.  It was a real struggle for a while.  My tongue almost contracted gangrene and fell out of my mouth for all the times I had to bite it.  Then, to my horror, my clients began to like me.  I soon began to seek daily to find something special to like in each client whom I had difficulty liking.  It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be.  Then I really began to see the wounded and beautiful core of my clients, especially one who had been testing my patience and then I saw something so beautiful and so hurt in her that I was overwhelmed with a most tender love for this person.  That was the turning point.

It still isn't always easy.  But it happens now regularly.  I look for what is real and beautiful in each person I work with.  I still have to fake it at first but it soon becomes real.  I am doing this with others now, outside of work, believing as I do that there is something beautiful and of worth in everyone.

I am no longer brutally honest.  It is not real truth but something that hurts and damages people.  When I am doing art therapy with some of my clients, no matter what I might think of their art work it is always wonderful and interesting.  Not because it is well-done, and often by empirical artistic standards it is not.  But it is still the honest expression of this person and this infuses it with beauty and meaning.  And you know something, Gentle Reader?  This approach, rather than being dishonest or hypocritical, has opened my eyes to the beautiful and the authentic in the art of my clients, regardless of their talent or skill development level. 

Truth, when guided by love, can be like a deftly applied scalpel for healing the broken heart.  Otherwise it is a brutally wielded butcher knife that simply kills and mutilates.  Truth has its place and a very important place, but it's rightful place is the place of healing, and love alone can accomplish this.

We are all so very fragile.  This is what makes kindness so important.

We're All Temporary

A client of mine has just died.  I unfortunately cannot properly memorialize here this wonderful individual who died way too soon.  I am not at liberty to identify her in any way because of confidentiality concerns but I will say this.  We had our best meeting the last time we saw each other.  There was a near mystical sweetness to the visit and I felt strongly assured that he would be okay.  Today, I heard of her death.  I wasn't surprised though of course I am saddened by his loss.  A very special individual, sensitive and very kind person who has suffered in life far more than her share.  But his last couple of years have been good.  And we parted as friends.  There can be no better way of saying goodbye.

We're all temporary.  We don't often think about this, indeed we are usually too frightened by the reality that we are all going to die.  This is with one hundred percent likelihood.  We do have bucket lists, or, laundry lists of everything we want to see, do and experience in life before we kick the bucket.  We are so pathetically brief on this planet and so governed by this fear of our demise that we run around like frantic mice trying to extract meaning from our short little lives.  Nothing wrong with this I suppose.  But it goes without saying that here in North America we have quite a culture of denial when it comes to death and dying.  I suppose it's because we are a relatively new culture here and founded very much on the tenets of modernity: everything has to be new and improved and the old is always soon made obsolete and replaced by new models.  Our frenzied magic death dance with technology is a particularly compelling example of this, with one model of computer or phone falling out of fashion every year as a new and better version hits the market.  Our obsession with the new and novel must surely also reflect in our denial of and flight from the reality of death.  So is our obsession with youth and our horror of aging.  Ask any reputable plastic surgeon.  You could even ask a disreputable one.

This is why I so heartily endorse and appreciate the Mexican Dia de los Muertos, or the Day of the Dead.  It is, if nothing else, a huge celebration of life through an embracing and facing of death.  Skulls and skeletons appear everywhere as families erect elaborate altars of the dead where they celebrate their deceased loved ones and visit their graves with picnic baskets, pulque, tequila and beer (or wine or whatever hooch their dearly departed used to get shitfaced on).  We look death in the face, we laugh in death's face and celebrate with all the greater passion and frenzy this very brief dance of life.

Today while walking in a beautiful neighbourhood with one of my clients I mentioned to him how temporary the beautiful spring flowers are.  The rhododendrons are all the more wonderful and lovely because we know that after a few short weeks they will be gone for the rest of the year.  Likewise the lilacs and other flowers.  I always stop to smell the lilacs, the irises and the roses and other flowers, knowing that they will soon be gone and there is never an absolute guarantee that I will be around next year to enjoy them again.  In tropical places the same flowers bloom everywhere all year.  While in Bogota, Colombia I was struck by the relative indifference that people seemed to have towards the year round displays of every shade, colour and scandalous brilliance of the bougainvillea, the hibiscus and the many other flowers that festoon the gardens, parks and neighbourhoods.  Like the trees always in full leaf.  I would imagine that if they could only enjoy their flowers for a few months of the year they would somehow become very special and beloved.  Knowing that the things we love are not going last can only make us love them more.  So it is with life, and so it is with being kind to one another.

Now is always the time for kindness.

Throw-Aways

I heard that word today.  Throw-Aways.  It came from a woman I overheard in a café.  I was not intentionally eavesdropping, though sometimes I have been known to drop eaves in a manner most shameless!  Where did that word, eavesdropping come from, by the way?  I shall ask Uncle Google.  He knows everything!

early 17th century: back-formation from eavesdropper (late Middle English) ‘a person who listens from under the eaves,’ from the obsolete noun eavesdrop ‘the ground onto which water drips from the eaves,’ probably from Old Norse upsardropi, from ups ‘eaves’ + dropi ‘a drop.’

So there it is folks.  It was hard not to hear what this woman was blathering about.  She had quite a loud voice and when she came to join her friend at the next table I kind of dreaded losing the lovely peace and quiet I'd been enjoying over the last hour while working on a drawing.  I heard her friend mention that he had been a vegetarian for the last six months so I politely chimed in (Pardon me for eavesdropping, but as a vegetarian for the last twenty years and more I would concur that meat is gross."  It was clear that they did not exactly appreciate hearing from me so I left them alone after that, not being one to put my foot where it isn't welcome.  It was just as well.  She seemed like quite an awful person.  First bragging about being a playwright (and maybe she is and she might even be good at it, or at least famous)  But it was her tone: loud, self-centred, a likely narcissist.  And the way she was so arrogantly complaining that not one single man she has been meeting is worth more than a fifteen minute screening visit.  She complained that they are all divorce casualties, with baggage.  Other people's "throw-aways."  I tried to imagine the experience of any one of those prospective suitors might have had sitting down in a coffee shop with this piece of work for the first and only time.  And then I started to understand why this woman has trouble finding a suitable man and why she is likely to spend the rest of her life married  monogamously to her Magic Wand vibrator.

She was not what I would call anything near attractive.  She was loud, and seemed not very concerned about other people's feelings.  She appeared to have a level of expectation that could be charitably termed as being unrealistic.  She was a nasty, rude, frightening bitch.  A narcissist.

I am also persuaded to believe that she herself was once someone else's throw away.  You know the game: reject before you get rejected.  She looks like she has logged quite a few years experience.  What don't kill you makes you strong.  And frightening.

It has been a rather pleasant day otherwise, apart from the crow that dive bombed me today and knocked me on the top of my head.  So it's open season on humans again.  By the same token I had an enjoyable chat with a fellow in a different café this morning.  And with a young woman on the bus on my way home.  It has been a decent day altogether and most strangers are actually very pleasant and quite lovely when you give them a chance.  Maybe even the nasty man-rejecter.

We're all throw-aways really, Gentle Reader.  And shouldn't that be all the more reason for being kind?

Brain Fart

That's right, Gentle Reader.  I have absolutely nothing to write about today.  But I'm writing anyway.  I have committed myself to writing something every day on this thing and I plan to keep on doing this till either my hands fall of their wrists or I contract advanced Alzheimer's.  So, I am going to write about the experience of not having anything to write about.

I simply haven't thought much of my blog today.  Usually when I get home I have a good idea of what I'm going to write about.  There will be a certain idea that won't stop rattling it's cage till I've let it out and then the fun begins.  Not today.  My brain has been a relative blank since I got out of bed this morning.  Not a bad feeling, actually.  Sort of like being pleasantly numb.

I have to admit that this has been one of my cushier work days.  I get paid for six hours after working for only one hour.  It doesn't mean the day hasn't been without it's challenges.  I walked two and a half miles, by choice, to my first assignment.  My client decided he did not want to engage and I walked out vowing  to quit working with the ungrateful little loser as this has happened several times too many.  I went for a walk of about one mile or so, then stopped in a local café for an hour and a half where I worked on my current drawing of a Himalayan Monal:



Awww, what a pretty birdy, and no I am afraid I am not doing it justice but I can only try.

I just found out that I forgot to turn on the oven a half hour after putting in the sliced potatoes.  I was not happy about it at first but I have been able to use the extra time that I have to wait for dinner now to write my blog post, so it's not really a bad trade off.  I also arrived home earlier than usual, just after four.  The explanation?

My second client also cancelled because he wasn't feeling well.  This gave me time for an extra walk, then following a bus ride a forty minute walk, partly in the forest.  Then I sat in a quiet café for another hour of art before seeing my third and last client who took me back to the same café.  Having finished early with my client, I decided against a third visit in said café with my sketchbook again as I had already been there, likewise I eschewed another walk in the woods and just opted instead to go home early.

It's all worked out, everything is done and all my ducks are in a row and I am just waiting for the potatoes to finish cooking.  I am also glad to have my window open again as the douchebags in the social housing building next door are not playing their music loud.  They were a half hour ago and this has been an ongoing problem.  It's like living sometimes in a state of siege.  Fortunately I have the building manager's phone number and he is usually helpful.  The city who is the de facto landlord, is also being supportive.

I'm not a NIMBY by the way.  Just tired of the noise.  I try to remember that these people are often traumatized (like me) live in government subsidized housing (like me) and have other issues that have not affected me but are not likely to make them the nicest neighbours.  But we all belong.  Eh?

It's all good.

Everyone's For Sale

I was reading in a local newspaper recently about how user and consumer friendly friendships and relationships have become in our society.  There is now very little occasion for allowing for  friendship to deepen over time, not as something to consume or experience but to share in a sacramental act of two lives touching each other in meaningful and constructive ways.  With websites everywhere facilitating every kind of relationship imaginable (and unimaginable) we can all treat others like items in a store.  I think I'll try this one.  Maybe that one.  This one's getting a bit boring so I'll see if I can find something better.

I have especially noticed this since I began searching the Conversation Exchange Page for language partners.  It is all well and good to maybe have coffee just once with this one, Skype twice with that one, maybe see if this one is hot enough to take things to the next level.  I have had mixed success with meeting others through this website.  I think because I am probably one of the few people in existence who is at all serious about friendship without agendas.  A handful of contacts have developed into friendships of varying quality.  But really, to get beyond the sense of merely being useful to each other and actually spending time because with or without the benefit of language support we actually love each other, or at least like each other?  That takes time, luck, experimentation, patience and trust.

Not everyone is equal to the challenge of friendship.  Most just want their own needs and desires met but to actually put themselves out for others, to actually open and offer their lives?  Too much work.  I blame this on global capitalism.  Everyone is treated like a consumer item, like an object to buy or barter.  It's all about means to an end and no real relationships of quality, no community.  With the advent and constant upgrading of communications technology we are also digitalizing each other out of existence.  There is an app for everything but what about friendship?  I see many alone and lonely people so engaged in their tech toys who have no time or interest in each other.  And everyone complains about being lonely.

This ruthless Darwinist competitiveness has seeped into every facet and fibre of our lives and being.  We are always holding out for something better, because persons have been degenerated into objects of use.  It has infected and corrupted every cell, every molecule of our humanity.  Everyone is expendable, dispensable.  Everyone can be replaced.

Ever since they divorced the economy from human beings it has been all downhill.  We are all getting slowly flushed down the same toilet.  We are the economy.  There is no price on our value and it is time that we learned this and reclaimed our shared humanity.  To stop using one another as items of commerce.  To rip off the price tag, as it were.  We have to reclaim our value and to learn to value others, not for our utility but because we simply are, and that this makes us worthwhile.  How are we going to do this?

My Four Pillars, Or Is It Five?

During a chat yesterday with a good friend I mentioned three things that have helped keep my life together and have been helping me move forward: Spanish, art, and writing this goddamn blog every day.  Even when I was unwell, suffering from symptoms of complex PTSD made all the more complex by my experience of homelessness during the late nineties, Spanish, art and writing served a dual purpose: by keeping me from spiralling any further downward and by helping me actually to move forward.  There was this constant and subtle meshing of learning, of being creative and of crafting and practicing that must have been doing wonders for my neuroplasticity as well as healing and reversing some of the toxic effects that trauma has had on my brain.  I think this helps explain my rapid and full recovery, without meds, from complex PTSD.  It has also been a constant implementation of these three disciplines that have helped propel me forward and have also stabilized my mental and emotional health.

My friend mentioned a fourth item: my occupation as a support worker and caregiver.  This has always had a key place in my life, ever since I began work as a home support worker at the tender age of twenty-four, launching me into quite a series of adventures of caring for some of the most vulnerable people I had ever encountered as well as palliative care where I helped a number of terminally ill adults prepare for their final journey.  Following a lengthy hiatus and a stint as a home cleaner I resumed caregiving, first as a frontline worker in a homeless shelter for about a year then in my current occupation where I have worked for twelve years as a mental health peer support worker. 

My choice of occupation is multi-pronged:

1. I decided at an early age that I was not going to work at a soul destroying occupation where the only value was keeping my sorry ass alive another day.  This meant ditching anything and everything that I had been taught about work ethic.  It also placed me at a particular disadvantage because I could neither afford university nor occupational training, given that I was living always half a paycheque from the street.  So I took what I could get, always low paying work, with poor and unsafe working conditions and no hope of advancement.

2. As an outgrowth of my Christian faith I felt a strong call into the helping professions, regardless of the aforementioned obstacles.

3. As a single man living alone, working in caregiving is a great way to hold in check the inevitable self-centredness that afflicts people like me.

4. This kind of work is the most humanizing I have ever done.  It integrates beautifully with my other life disciplines making my life full and complete.

There is of course  fifth pillar to my life.  It involves my Christian faith, but especially the quality of this faith.  This is not simply something auxiliary to my life, it is the hub, the axis, the working centre of who I am.  This has actually less to do with reading the Bible twice a day and much more to do with my lengthy experience of the nearness and intimacy of God's presence.

So I am blessed with these five pillars: art, writing, Spanish language, caregiving, but most of all, the living presence of God through Jesus Christ in my life.  These practices daily integrate in fresh and new ways to help form me into the person that God has destined me to be.

I'm Saving My Pearls For Worthier Swine

I can't remember when I first coined the expression, of course taking supreme liberty with the original, but hey, everything's derivative.  If I had a dollar for every minute I have wasted explaining, justifying, elucidating and dumbing down to suit the needs and demands of impervious idiots I would be able to afford to buy a house in Vancouver.  Unpleasant strangers on the street can be particularly odious.  Even today when I was in a crowded frou-frou café with a client.  When I went to use the washroom I had to slalom my way past a huge mob waiting in line, their trays all conveniently poised to be walked into.  Knowing how absolutely deaf and ignorant perfect strangers can be I simply moved the trays out of my way with my hand while saying a quick excuse me.  One nasty piece of work shouted "Excuse you!"  I turned around, glared at him and replied "I said excuse me and there is no reason to be rude."  That's all I said.

It would be lovely if we were all on the same page, Gentle Reader.  We are not.  When I am on the sidewalk, or anywhere in public I try to maintain a gentle awareness of those around me: to not view them as objects in the way, and simply to not seem them as objects, but as individuals with lives that matter.  I don't always succeed.  Sometimes I set the bar realistically high for myself, inevitably I fail and come off looking and feeling like a hypocrite.  But really why not?  If I didn't have high standards, standards too high for even myself, then how could I possibly aspire to be better, to improve or to grow?  I have been having to learn the humiliating lesson  of falling short and pressing on regardless.  Sometimes, yes, I do have to adjust or lower the bar a little.  Without challenges we don't grow, we don't move forward.

It would be impossible to try to successfully empathize with every single stranger that I see throughout the day.  I find that it is better to just focus on those in my immediate whereabouts.  It doesn't matter who, whether they are attractive or unattractive, well-off, poor, Caucasian, Asian, African, each one has a life, a family (or had a family), friends (I hope), in most cases a job, or classes, volunteer work, social activities, obligations.  Some are clearly unwell or self-destructive.  I have blogged elsewhere about second-hand smoke and I promise not to bore you again, at least not today.  Some are homeless.

I cannot believe that every single person that I see on the street is a selfish, vacuous narcissist, though I'm sure many are.  Some are kind, generous.  Some carry the most horrendous wounds in their soul, some are callous and dangerous sociopaths.  Most are so frantically busy getting from place to place, or so absorbed in their little tech toys that they really see nothing and no one outside of the tiny little screen in their hand.

Such people cannot be reasoned with nor persuaded by eloquent arguments.  If they are in my way I try to avoid them.  If they are really offensive I might say something without sticking around to argue.  From time to time I seem to get a fleeting glimpse of an actual living human soul lurking somewhere behind their eyes and then suddenly I am touched by a fragile and fleeting love, too easily forgotten as I hurry along on my way to get far away from this infuriating mob of incurable idiots.

The Dance Of The Day

I don't like people walking behind me, especially closely.  It feels like I'm being followed.  Of course I am not being followed.  The persons walking behind?  They are usually so absorbed by their iPhones or their music devices that they don't even know there is anyone there but themselves.  Which is part of the problem.  I know that I can be very irritable and that I can get really annoyed with people in public.  I might also be equally aware that many people around me don't really have a clue.  They are distracted by their phones, by their music.  They don't seem to know where they are because in many cases they don't know where they are.  They're too stuck and self-absorbed.  But I still have to dance around them.  So, as I turned the corner and the woman behind me turned the corner, I wandered over to the other side of the street to get away from her and enjoy a little privacy only to see this young man suddenly walking behind me.  So urgent was my need for personal space and privacy that now my favourite method of dealing with this assault on my space is to simply stop and wait for the other person to pass me, then continue at a slow and measured pace.  This generally works unless it's a smoker and then I have to cope with the downdraft of second hand smoke.

People are idiots in public, on top of being stupid.

I have spent this entire day dancing around idiots, slaloming around imbeciles, avoiding the toxicity of self-destructive morons.  Today my enjoyment of confining myself with my sketchbook to a comfy chair in a nice café was shattered by the screaming baby of a woman who decided to share my table.  I was on the phone at the time with a co-worker, so I had to move to the back of the café if I expected to be able to hear what she was saying.  When I returned to my table I promptly swept up my sketchbook, pencil crayons, and half consumed iced Americano and chocolate cookie to move to a quiet table by the door.  The woman apologized about her baby and I replied, or lied rather, that it wasn't a problem because of course it was.  As I was just beginning to relax a friend of the woman seated behind me came in.  Knowing that I was about to be subjected to two people talking right behind me I moved to the other side of the table.  Then there was the young douchebag whose car straddled the crosswalk and completely ignored me when I signalled to him to back up (yes there was room for him to do it.  He just didn't want to.)

I have long blamed myself for being irritable and selfish because of my strong reactions to the insensitivity of strangers.  Now I am not going to be so kind.  The fact of the matter is, nobody knows how to behave in public anymore.  They get so wrapped up in their private listening devices and their phone conversations that their minds completely glaze over when it comes to knowing that they are among other people, people whose lives matter every bit as much as theirs.  There was a time when walking among people was downright pleasant.  No one had their own portable phone, no one wore a private listening device.  People had to be aware of each other and interact.  Now they don't have a clue.  Technology has done a lot to enhance our lives and much to destroy the quality of our public and common life.   It is time to reclaim it.

Cool

It amazes me that that word is still in common usage.  I don't mean that we have found another word for the English language that denotes a low temperature that is not quite cold.  I am referring to that most useless of adjectives that arbitrates the chaos theory style of social engineering known also as the schoolyard and carries on continuing to define our social status and street cred till we've finally grown out of it or until dementia and other evidences of creeping old age have landed us in the nursing home.

Cool summons images of dark glasses and black leather jackets, black t shirts, black jeans, black everything.  Cool cannot be defined.  It is its own definition, like the word colour which has to be seen to be understood.  But cool is colourless, odourless but for the faint lingering stench of Galloise of Gitanes (cigarettes I once smoked), a rigorously existentialist intellect, an economy of words that flows like minimalist poetry with the bite of a scorpion.  Cool is disdainful of those who are not...cool.  Cool is an upper case letter that wears lower case clothing.  Cool is a carefully studied and rehearsed pretense that nothing matters but that one thing that gives you passion and this passion speaks in a quiet voice and an economy of words that could suggest autism or at least a sexy indifference.

Yes, cool is sexy, the ultimate sexy, the ultimate illusive object of desire that always hovers and hums just a little bit out of our reach for which we should thank the gods and the muses because otherwise, if we catch it, possess and wear it, ceases to be cool.

Cool is an artificial value that we transfer onto those who validate our self-hatred.  Cool is illusion, it is the silent spaces between the peals of derisive laughter as the Great Unwashed continues to worship rock stars, movie stars and royalty and anyone else who ratifies that they are ugly, awkward and badly dressed.  Cool is afraid of nothing, or almost nothing, save for one little thing...

Unconditional Love.

Channelling My Inner Dad

I was walking on the sidewalk, where I belonged.  He was cycling on the sidewalk, just where he didn't belong.  There was here no excuse for his behaviour.  We were on Tenth Avenue, a designated bike route in my city with next to no car traffic.  I didn't even see him till he sped right past me from behind.  Had I made but one small step to the left we both would be airborne.  I shouted to him that his bike doesn't belong on the sidewalk but on the road.  He ignored me.  I said that next time he could at least warn me from behind.  Still no acknowledgement and still on the sidewalk.  Finally I bellowed "You are not deaf!) and suddenly his bike was on the road and he made a quick right hand turn as though to escape from this horrible old man once and for all.  I was channelling my Inner Dad.

It happened again this afternoon.  My client and I were enjoying a coffee together in a West Side café.  Two young women, perhaps high school seniors or first year university students were studying at the next table, their backpacks semi-sprawled on the floor as though it was a detail from their own bedrooms where anyone could easily trip on them.  I gently said to them, "Ladies, sorry to bug you but you might want to move your packs a bit so no one has to trip on them."  They were both so sweet and respectful, each with both middle fingers under complete control and they apologized as they moved their packs closer to themselves.  When I added, "Don't mind me, it's just my Inner Dad speaking" and they both laughed.

I am not going to go so far as to stereotype either party according to their gender, having also encountered while channelling my Inner Dad rude and churlish women and kind and gentle men.  It is usually certain sets of circumstances that summon him forth: off leash dogs, cyclists on sidewalks, anyone on a skateboard, smoking in inappropriate places.  It is my Inner Dad who wants to re-parent everybody's spoiled obnoxious children; it is my Inner Dad who cannot bear public incivility (which means that your feet belong not on the empty chair in the coffee shop nor on the empty bus seat but on the floor); it is my Inner Dad who craves justice and righteousness the way a junkie craves his smack; it is my Inner Dad who wants to grab by the scruff of the neck every useless, louche, self-destructive, selfish and socially inappropriate young man and kick his sorry ass into the army.  Oh, wait a minute!  My Inner Dad is also a pacifist.

I have been having to work hard at learning to control my Inner Dad.  He first began to emerge just after my fiftieth birthday.  I remember getting into a mild disagreement with a couple of young dumbasses where I reminded them that I was old enough to be their father.  Then were the three morons riding their bikes (or were they skateboarding?) not only on the sidewalk, but underneath a construction shelter making them all the more a nuisance.  One of the young gentlemen replied quite solemnly that he never really had a father.  His two friends said something rather similar.  It was one of the strangest and most awkward shared moments I have ever had with three perfect strangers.  Then I said to these three young men that my father was also for me an absent presence.  For a few brief seconds we were brothers.

I am hoping that I will sweeten with age and that now that I am just out of my fifties I will look with kinder eyes on all creatures, including the young and stupid.  I wait for the day, which could come somewhere in my lifetime when my Inner Dad starts to emerge for the last time only to be gently nudged aside by the business end of the cane of my smiling and laughing Inner Grandpa.  I await with hope and anticipation.

Coffee Shop Hop

I spend a lot of time in coffee shops.  An awful lot.  I used to write in cafes.  For years.  Way before laptops.  Hell, way before the internet.  Notebooks (the kind made of paper), pads (of paper), anything.  During the Eighties I was writing my novel.  During the Nineties I was writing my journals.  During the Two Thousands I was reading books.  This decade I do art in coffee shops. 

I suppose it gets kind of expensive at times, especially if I visit a café two or three times on the same day.  Even though I have neither the stomach nor the palette for fancy-schmancy coffee drinks, those decaf Americanos, black and bitter just like life of course, do add up.  Especially when you consider that I am not a Tim Horton's kind of guy.  I'm even too uppity for Starbucks.  I try to stick with local independent joints or some of the better, and local, chains.  Fair trade is always a plus.  Being a cheapskate I still try to avoid having to spend more than three bucks per Americano.  Not always easy, especially on hot days when I like it iced.

The places I hung out in during the Eighties could be charitably called diners.  That was back in the mean-spirited days of the minimum charge.  But there were still a number of decent hangouts, some soaked in atmosphere where you could huddle in a back booth for an hour or two, nursing the same cup of black and bitter (no espresso in those days, coffee was coffee was coffee) and perhaps a muffin, or a slice of cut-rate pie, or a plate of French fries long grown cold soggy and fit only for mattress stuffing.  My table was often a revolving door for people who wanted to stop and visit, chat, tell a few jokes, cry on a welcoming shoulder.  After everyone was gone I would remain in my seat and resume writing, journaling, reading...

This was in the days of table service.  You only stood up to put on your coat or, if you were a male, go to the bathroom.  Then, in 1987, the first Starbucks opened in Vancouver.  It was a novelty: standing in line while young baristas alluring in black poured or made your exotically sourced coffee for you: generally students, bright, engaging, friendly and sometimes very interesting.  It was at the Waterfront Station, a decent place to sit at a counter and stare out at the people and the huge Edwardian windows full of sunlight.  One day one of the baristas said they were opening a new location on Robson Street.  I checked it out.  Before I could even wait my turn to make my order something in my stomach fell through a trap door and I left vowing never to return.  I also came to avoid the original location.

I still haven't really reconciled to Starbuck's, unless it is my clients' preference.  They are a massive US chain that shows absolutely no mercy to the many local establishments that end up having to shut down because of the marketing power of their brand name.

I suppose I enjoy the human contact in coffee shops.  They are neutral ground, making them a safe environment and the constant streaming human parade is like endless free entertainment.  There are drawbacks too, especially when brain-dead parents try to turn the corner café into the local daycare.  But there is something seductive about a comfy armchair and table by a window, or back in a corner, or wherever.   I do all my writing these days on my laptop, the old-fashioned way, at home.  Reading occurs at home and on the bus. 

Why do I do art in cafes?  I wish I had a simple reply.  Truth is I don't really care for the attention, one way or the other.  But it is nice when someone wants to stop to chat or seems to enjoy my art.  There is something about being around people that inspires me to create.  It is not the recognition, it is simply that irreplaceable human presence.  And art seems to attract people, in a positive way, and if I can do or be anything to stimulate the positive then count me in.

The Inevitability Of Other People

Every time I go for a walk in the forest known as Pacific Spirit Regional Park in my lovely and tragically overpriced dumb blonde of a city, Vancouver, it is with the instinctive expectation that I am going to be there alone.  I am always disappointed.  There will be someone jogging or biking past me, usually from behind, usually without warning, usually on a narrow trail.  There will be two or three people of any gender but often female who simply cannot shut the f-you-see-k up so that someone else can enjoy the silence of the forest.  There will be family groups with kids who behave worse than their dogs and there will be dogs that have to bark at and threaten anyone who has the temerity to walk past. 

I think this expectation of solitude has two sources: the fact that when I began walking in this forest some forty-three years ago I was usually almost always alone.  It wasn't a park in those days but simply an unofficial forest with trails.  Nobody went there unless they lived nearby and even then it was a well-kept secret.  The other reason is a little more nuanced: I always have a natural, perhaps instinctive expectation that the forest is going to be silent and unpeopled, as it always has been and always should be.

I have learned how to cope.  When the first irreverent boob destroys my tranquility, often within the first five minutes of my being there, I try to remind myself now that this is the current normal.  The University Endowment Lands, given by the Crown to the University of British Colombia, were bought by the provincial government and transformed into a regional park.  This meant that the huge forest would never become an endless network of housing developments and shopping malls.  It also meant that the forest finally had public legitimacy.  Suddenly everyone was coming there.  The tranquility was destroyed.  Now, when I go, I have to employ coping strategies of letting blabber mouths pass so I don't have to endure their babble while listening for birds.  I have learned to be (mostly) gracious towards insensitive joggers and cyclists whom would sooner trample over you than civilly let you pass.  I have learned to welcome strangers to share my favourite bench (there were no benches before it became a park), to chat with them and to even make new friends.  I have become super-concerned about visitors who appear lost while anxiously studying one of the many maps posted at trail intersections.  To my surprise I enjoy the interaction as well as the opportunity to help. 

The inevitability of other people is rather like the Caps Lock key on my keyboard.  It always comes up whether expected or not.  During my break in my favourite café on campus an entire family asked if they could share my table (I was in one of the comfy chairs).  Remembering my good Canadian manners I smiled and said, yes of course, please join me.  They sat and drank and ate, husband, wife and baby and toddler.  I asked if they were from Korea.  They were Mongolian, the first Mongolian people I have ever met.  She is studying mining engineering.  They were nice, we enjoyed visiting.  I showed them my drawings (I was working in my sketchbook, as always).  I learned that in Mongolia the Chinese are hated and the Russians are loved, even though the Russians are ill-mannered brutes and the Chinese are polite and diplomatic.  The children were quiet and frequently held, hugged and cuddled by both parents.  Very well-loved children.  Even though I was glad to have my space back when they left I also felt a sense of loss as they left as quickly as they had appeared.

People are necessary and inevitable.  We cannot live without each other, no matter where you fit on the artificial spectrum of the introvert-extrovert binary.  But sometimes it is just so lovely to have a few hours in the forest, mesmerized by sunlight filtering through trees, by the timeless music of birds and leaves rustling in the wind, and bathed in the illusion that you are the only person in existence, if only for two or three precious hours.

Is This A Conspiracy?

I am really getting sick of this.  Ever since before Epo 86, when the world came to Vancouver and didn't go home we have had problems with homelessness, increasing poverty and displacement.  Now, thirty years later, our own people are being displaced by Chinese millionaires.  I am not blaming the Chinese.  They come here because they know they can only offer their kids a crappy life in China.  I am blaming our governments, all levels, civic, provincial and federal.  There is a growing exodus of people moving out of this city, people who like me were born and raised in Vancouver and people who unlike me haven't been able to luck into subsidized or social housing.  When I walk through the wealthy neighbourhoods of Shaughnessy and Kerrisdale there seems to be a disproportionate population of Asians compared to other parts of the city, except perhaps Richmond and Marpole.  They are not bad people.  Some I have found to be quite pleasant and friendly.  But I really question how much they are aware or care about the impact that they are inadvertently having on the social fabric of this city.  I mean here, wealthy Chinese who have recently moved here, not those who came over from Hong Kong and certainly not those whose families have been here a few generations.

I really wonder if these wealthy Chinese are themselves being used as unknowing pawns by our governments in an experiment of social cleansing.  I am beginning to wonder if this has all been planned in advance, to the utmost detail, to make life so difficult and so impossible for low income earners that they will have to leave, making all the more room for rich people to enjoy the beauty of this city.  I wonder if this is why the BC Liberal Party in 2002 engineered our crisis of homelessness by throwing vulnerable people off of welfare and onto the street.  I wonder if this is why our federal government dismantled its public housing strategy and why very little new social housing has been developed anywhere in this country but especially in my province.  I wonder if this is the real reason that our corrupt and useless elected officials shrug and make the same old lame excuses about the real reasons that property values are still soaring past the stratosphere and doing absolutely nothing to solve this nor are doing sweet Fanny Adams to keep housing affordable to those who need it most.

Gentle Reader, you might well wonder just why I am agonizing about this, given that despite my poverty and the fact that the health care provider that employs me (I dare not mention their name here because they are legendary for being thin-skinned and vindictive) keeps me and my colleagues at a measly wage well below a living wage with no raise in more than six years and absolutely no hope of one happening in the future.  I still am reasonably well off.  I live in affordable housing and because I am good at budgeting and able to make sacrifices I do get by okay.  Well, ever hear of survival guilt?  Because this is exactly what afflicts me and if it did not I would begin to seriously question what is wrong with me.

I also wonder if the paucity of social housing that has been provided both by Mayor Moonbeam (aka Gregor Robertson) and his friends in Victoria, is but a cosmetic and nothing else to help deflect criticism (hasn't worked)  I mean, come on Moonbeam!  You based your electoral platform on ending homelessness in 2015.  It is now 2016 and our sidewalks are still choked with people without a place for the night.  You call this a noble effort?  Gregor, you have cheated and betrayed the people who voted you into office along with those who did not.  You do not deserve the privilege or the responsibility of being mayor of this city.  Do the honourable thing, Moonbeam, and resign!  I know that you have a very thin skin and don't like being called Moonbeam.  Well, SUCK IT UP, MOONBEAM!!!

Do It Now

I am a recovered procrastinator...Hey! Where did everybody go?  I'm not contagious...Sigh...Gentle Reader, I am afraid to admit that recovered procrastinators are even more annoying than ex-smokers, and almost as irritating as physically fit and gorgeous ex-fatties.  Having lost all patience with ourselves and our own habitual shirking and avoidance we have absolute zero patience with...Everybody.

Everything has to be done, not in a New York minute, and not yesterday, nor the day before yesterday, but last week.  Today, instead of standing in line in one of my favourite local coffee shops (the people ahead of me, just like anyone ahead of me, were painfully and agonizingly slow, expecting a detailed explanation of almost every single item on the menu board)  I left a couple of loonies on the counter and asked the barista to get me the usual coffee and there was absolutely no hurry even though I was lying through my teeth.  Yesterday was even worse.  At a different café across the street from one of my worksites I waited, and waited, and waited for this woman who was ordering food items and ridiculously fancy coffee beverage for nearly everyone of her coworkers and their next of kin.  I rubbed between my thumb and forefinger a loonie and a toonie, the barista smiled and said she'd get right to me, I of course didn't believe her, said a very sincere Canadian "Sorry" and walked out.  I opted to arrive a half hour early for my professional appointment where I sat in the staff room with my sketchbook.

It hasn't been all bad.  I actually do get things done, on time, and often much earlier than on time.  My income taxes I generally don't get around to till early April since I'm usually out of the country for all of March when my t-4 arrives in the mail.  But the first, or second day that I'm back I have everything ready, though I still like to spread out doing my tax forms over three or four days, simply to alleviate the frustration.  But it's always in the mail early in the first week of the month.  My phone and internet get paid within twenty-four hours of receiving notice (my twenty-four hour rule), generally within five minutes of opening the envelope.  I almost always wash my dishes immediately after eating, answer all my emails within twenty-four hours, usually within five minutes of opening the envelope.  I have become so proactive with everything that even I find myself annoying.

By the same token I have had to learn when to delay, to put things off: usually if someone needs to be confronted about something.  I try to give these communications a minimum of a week or however long it could take to cure me of the desire to confront.  It can sometimes take several months, and by the time I get around to making contact with the person I have had trouble with, and vice-versa, we've usually both forgiven if not forgotten and simply I ask something lame like "How are you?  I've missed you."  Doesn't always mean that the feeling is mutual.

Being perfect is not going to gain us a lot of friends.