Monthly Archives: December 2020

Crying

For the first 64 years of my life, I hardly cried at all.  Then my beloved wife Jody was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.  A year later she died.  And the tears flowed every day for months.  Now I cry sometimes … for my dear one and for other human beings who are suffering.

I love watching The Mandalorian on Disney Plus.  It’s a Star Wars story about a bounty hunter and the infant that he’s trying to return to his own people.  On Friday night’s season finale, Din Djarin keeps his promise, handing Grogu to a Jedi who will train him further in the ways of The Force.  Seeing Din and Grogu joined at the eyes on parting brought the tears once more.  I cried.  We folks are touched when people come together in love, and when they say goodbye in love.

The website What’s On Disney Plus  was full of reactions to the human connection.  Here’s a sample of the world’s responses, with my comments attached:

Okay, I full blown cried
I cried and so did my husband
Cried like a baby
My 6-year-old son and I both cried
I just started crying out of nowhere

Yes, hopefully that’s what human beings do
There’s no planning … just an explosion of being undone

***

I cried and my husband laughed at me
I had tears falling down my face with my husband laughing at me
I was tearing up and my daughter was laughing
and informed the rest of my family watching
that mommy was crying
My husband said “there’s no crying in Star Wars!”

I guess your sadness was too scary for them

***

No tears … all cheers

There was a glorious reunion at the end for Star Wars fans
I guess it overwhelmed the despair of loss

***

I fought back my tears with a huge smile

Let’s just be happy and forget the rest

***

I had the feels
I got a little teary-eyed
Very heartbreaking at the end
It touched the hearts of millions

Ahh … euphemisms that dampen the pain
And having the sorrow reduced to the adjective “heartbreaking”
Or it being out in the world rather than in me

***

Touching, but not that touching
I get people are having emotional responses
and I have those too, but not being a Star Wars fan
I am failing to understand why

Neither here nor there on the spectrum of feeling things

:::

Sometimes, dear friends, we just need to cry together
Some of life is sad

Go Ahead and Smile

Am I allowed to laugh in the presence of the coronavirus?  After all, 1.7 million of us have died and 76 million have been infected.  Those are horrible numbers that point to immense suffering among the victims and the loved ones left behind.  But laughter helps me stay sane, so here are some creative responses from the world at large:

I wish Corona could’ve started in Las Vegas
because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

I need to practice social distancing from the refrigerator

2019: Stay away from negative people
2020: Stay away from positive people

Going to bed early
Not leaving the house
Not going to parties
My childhood punishments have become my adult goals

People who ask me what I have planned for tomorrow
probably assume that I even know what day of the week it is

Why the hell did I buy a 2020 planner?

Doglike instructions for humans in 2020: Sit … stay

Due to my isolation, I finished three books yesterday 
And believe me, that’s a lot of colouring

The most unused household item during quarantine: bras

“Hello.  Table for two on your outside patio …
Yes, of course I’ll be wearing a mask.  I’m Batman”

Don’t expect Covid-19 to last.  It was made in China

Has Covid-19 forced you to wear glasses and a mask at the same time?
You may be entitled to condensation

(Charlie Brown)  I’m staying in bed, Snoopy.  It’s too peopley out there

Can’t believe we stayed up and screamed “Happy New Year!”
for this mess

You never realize how anti-social you are until there’s a pandemic
and your life doesn’t really change that much

First time in history:
We can save the human race by lying in front of the TV and doing nothing
Let’s not screw this up

Hang in there, folks

Happy

Those of us who have been on the planet for a fair long spell have probably been asked the question “How are you?” thousands of times.  I bet I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve responded with “Fine” when I wasn’t feeling so.  And quite often, fine or not, I’d go into rambling detail about my current state of affairs, while the questioner wondered why I couldn’t stick to social norms.

For the last few years, I’ve paused after the question was asked, checked the state of the kingdom, and usually replied “I’m happy.”  Most times the other human seemed flummoxed.  “Such a weird answer,” they might be thinking.

Occasionally, I’ve been asked why I’m happy, as if there needed to be a good list of positive events to justify the response.  More often than not, I returned with “I don’t know.  I’m just happy.”  And that’s where I’ve been for weeks.  I suppose you could say that negative stuff is happening, but I remain quietly happy.

I’m not seeing many people in the flesh, and I love talking face-to-face
I’m happy

I miss the kids at school – haven’t seen them since March
I’m happy

The world is grappling with Covid, racial inequality and mean people
I’m happy

My endurance on the cross-country ski machine is declining, as measured by duration and energy output
I’m happy

The arthritis in my right thumb slows down the buttoning process and relegates lid-removing to the left hand
I’m happy

I’m having trouble remembering people’s names, and that used to be a point of pride for me
I’m happy

I don’t know why a blanket of happiness has nestled itself against me, and I don’t care that I don’t know.  It’s very odd to be breathing this air.  It’s tempting to look to my near daily Zoom calls with the Evolutionary Collective as the cause of my little smile, but it’s bigger than that.  I’m not doing anything to bring forth happiness.  It’s just here.

Come on in, my friend.  Would you like a coffee?

Being Different

I once asked kids at school why Nazis hated Jewish people. The most common answer I received was that “their religion was different”. In the US, for many decades some Americans have rejected millions of their fellow citizens because those folks had black skin.

I had the children visualize some leader entering the classroom, looking at each student, and culling out those whose eyes were blue. The unfortunate ones would then be ostracized, or worse. I believe that many of the kids got the message.

For a moment, imagine you’re a bird. Maybe you’re big, maybe you’re small. A fast flier or a slow poke. Bright plumage or muted. The differences are obvious but no big deal. You guys get along.

But here comes someone new:

What is that? Nobody should have a neck that long, and that coral colour is ridiculous!

Wait a minute now. Look at that weird twist in the neck. It should be a straight line. How does the thing even eat? And those legs! They’re not only grossly skinny, they bend … backwards! It’s an abomination. Drop poop on them all.

What?! That’s impossible – standing on one leg. And the idiot on the right looks like he’s sleeping. Birds are not meant to do these things. It’s unnatural. Only Big Bird has such powers. Let’s convince humans to shoot them all.

***

You’re different
Really different
You’re just a thing
And I hate you

A Poem

Two voices are having a conversation in my head …

Why don’t you write a poem today?

Huh?

You know, a poem – it’s like sentences but they flow better.

My dear friend, I’ve written one poem in my life and that was way back in the 1980’s.

That was then … this is now. Go for it!

I don’t know how to write a poem. Sounds like such a pain to make things rhyme.

It doesn’t have to rhyme. Besides, I don’t often hear the words “I don’t know how” coming from you.

Well, I guess you’re right about that. But I can’t think of anything to write about.

Tell me if I’m wrong, but that sounds like a lot of your evenings at the laptop.

Hmm. I suppose. But poems take a lot of time. As I remember, that one in the 80’s sure did.

Look, it’s 5:58. Why don’t you just dive in until 7:00 at the latest? Make it a stream of consciousness thing.

Nobody will understand that. I probably won’t understand it.

Who cares? Just do the darned thing. After you press “Publish” you’ll be able to say that you’ve written two poems!

You’re not going to give up, are you?

Hell, no! This is too much fun.

(Sigh)

Now it’s 6:03. Surely you realize that at 7:00 your carriage is going to turn back into a pumpkin.

Huh?

Cinderella, dear one. Now get going. Literary wonders await.

Right ∴ ∴ ∴ ∴ ∴ Okay … here goes:

***

Wandering through the world in this night of silence
Sensing the fairies beyond my window
I reach for the solid and simply find mist
I reach for the beloved and the smile comes by

Onward through the canyons
Onward across the sky
Beckoned by the spirit
Not knowing why … or who

There’s no direction to the flow of my life
Or is is it just no destination?
For the flow underground and all around is infinitely real
And the singing bowl sings out its song

The red within and the red without
Screams its joy in the moment
Blending now with the pinks of the world
Since white demands to be heard

What’s under the table?
What’s over the end of the world as I see it?
What’s the reason that these words appear?
Will they vanish as I fall away to dust?

I stand tall in the evening, not seeing the way
And not needing to see some direction
There is simply walking in the world and feeling the breeze
On the path that merges with the wood

A finger to the wind
A glance at the night sky
A sweet nod to life
And a smile that creases my face

***

Voilà!

It All Fades

The highest of highs … the lowest of lows.  I’ve had them.  I imagine you have too.  In the moment, the intensity was breathtaking.  Whether I was soaring or plummeting, blood coursed through the body, the mouth dropped open, cells were blasted apart.

***

1.  I played the cello in the huge All-City Orchestra on the square in front of Toronto’s New City Hall.  I remember the aged Sir Ernest MacMillan shakily wielding his baton, leading us through “Land of Hope and Glory”.

2.  There were four years of weekly swimming classes in high school.  Boys only, everybody in the nude.  Since I couldn’t swim, and it seemed that adults had given up trying to teach me, I piddled around in the shallow end while my friends did laps.

3.  It was a large auditorium in Edmonton, Alberta and I spoke from the heart to hundreds of people.  I was in anguish at the coming death of an organization.  At the end, they stood.

4.  High above a mountain lake, I clung to a cliff, frozen in place, seeing my death falling away.  Twenty minutes of terror.  Why did I have to die so young?

5.  On a Sunday in May, 1986, I crossed the finish line of the Vancouver Marathon.  My goal was to break four hours.  My time was 4:12.  The smile matched the outstretched arms.

6.  Two hours later, I lay down on a bench in downtown Vancouver, knowing that the chest pain would soon kill me.  A cabbie found me and took me to Emergency at St. Paul’s Hospital.  I survived.

7.  On the university track, I lined up at the start line with some Grade 6 kids.  “Ready, Set, Go!” someone cried, and we blasted off on the 100-metre run.  They were 12.  I was 68.  I finished forty metres behind the slowest kid, smiling all the while.

8.  At 3:00 am in the hospital room, I could no longer hear my wife Jody breathing.  Soon the nurse nodded that she was gone.  I kissed my wife’s lips.

9.  On the west coast of Vancouver Island, I climbed a sandy hill, the sound of faraway surf in my ears.  As I reached the peak, the glorious waves of Long Beach stretched to the horizon.

10.  In January, I was awake for 44 hours as planes took me from Dakar, Senegal to Brussels, Belgium to London, England and to San Francisco, California.  After all that, how did I survive the one-hour BART trip to Berkeley?

***

What’s left now are blurry memories, in the realm of pleasant or unpleasant.  I still smile and frown as the images return but the moments feel muted.  But I am definitely not muted.  I feel alive, surging with promise, my hair blowing in the wind.  Somehow the energies of yesteryear have found their way inside me.  They’ve settled in the nooks and crannies of my life.  And I am the better for it.

Out Of An Abundance Of Caution

It’s an odd turn of the syllables. When I first heard the phrase, it was about the coronavirus. The words gave me pause. In the US, President Trump tested positive and was heading to the hospital for a few days. Cautious. I doubted that the danger to him was negligible. If you’re hospitalized, something major is probably going on.

Someone described the phrase as “precautions taken against a very remote contingency”. I kept returning to the strangeness of the words, and asked myself if I really wanted to armour myself against remote possibilities.

Oodles of caution seem to be spreading:

1. Seventy students and staff members at a high school go into quarantine after two teens contracted Covid

2. A professional football player developed some tightness and muscle soreness in his right calf. The coaches chose to remove him from the game

3. Some college students won’t be travelling home for Christmas due to Covid restrictions

4. Hackers injected malware into some government software. The programs have been removed

5. Schools switch to remote learning after coronavirus cases in the community rise, although the infection rate in local schools is low

6. Protests in the US about the death of George Floyd lead to the temporary boarding up of some stores in Vancouver, Canada

7. Most Republican politicians in the US Congress won’t say that Joe Biden is the President-Elect

8. Some people who speak out on TV about US politics (and some election officials who keep to the rule of law) are provided with security at home, at work, and while they commute

9. Today, as the Electoral College certified the results of the US election, some states changed the locations of the meetings and didn’t reveal those locations

***

I’m not disputing the potential value of these precautions but they do point to a hesitancy in modern life. Many people are unwilling to take chances, to burst nakedly into life full speed ahead, to be publicly themselves. Whatever happened to throwing caution to the wind?

A Story

Jack Kornfield is a Buddhist teacher, and the founder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California.  He shared this story with us, written by a woman.

It was Sunday.  Christmas, our family spent the holidays in the Bay Area, but in order to be back to work on Monday we had to drive the four hundred miles back to LA on Christmas Day.  Normally an eight-hour drive but with kids it can be a fourteen hour endurance test.  When we could stand it no longer, we stopped for lunch in King City – a little metropolis of six gas stations and three diners.  Road weary, saddle sore, I sat Eric, our one-and-a-half-year-old, in a high chair and looked around and thought “What am I doing in this place on Christmas Day?”  It was nearly empty.  We were the only family.

My reverie was interrupted when I heard Eric squeal with delight and glee.  “Hi there!”  Two words he thought were one word.  “Hi there!  Hi there!”  He pounded his fat baby hands (Whack!  Whack!) on the metal high chair tray.  His face was alive with excitement, eyes wide, gums bared in a toothless grin.  He wriggled and chirped, and then I saw the source of his merriment, and my eyes couldn’t take it in all at once.  A tattered rag of a coat, obviously bought by someone else long ago; dirty, greasy, worn baggy pants; the zipper at half-mast over a spindly body; toes that poked out of the old shoes; a face like none other – gums as bare as Eric’s, whiskers too short to be called a beard, and a nose (varicose) that looked like the map of New York.

I was too far away to smell him but I knew he smelled.  And his hands were waving in the air, flapping about on loose wrists.  “Hi there, baby!  Hi there, big boy!  I see you, Buster.”  My husband and I exchanged a look that was a cross between “What are we doin’?” and “Poor devil.”  Eric continued to laugh and answer “Hi there!  Hi there!”  Every call was echoed.

I noticed waitresses’ eyebrows shoot to their foreheads and several people were going “Hmm … umm” out loud.  This old geezer was creating a nuisance with my beautiful baby.  I shoved a cracker at Eric and he pulverized it on the tray.  I began to get upset.

Our meal came.  The cacophony continued.  Now the old bum was shouting from across the room “Do you know Pat-a-cake?  Atta, boy!  Do you know Peek-a-boo, Peek-a-boo?  Hey look, he knows Peek-a-boo!”  Really loud.  Nobody thought it was cute.  The guy was drunk, and a disturbance, and I was embarrassed.  My husband was humiliated.  Even our six-year-old said “Why is that old man shouting and talking so loud?”

We ate in silence, all except Eric, who was running through his repertoire for the admiring applause of a skid row bum.  Finally I had enough.  I turned the high chair.  Eric screamed and clamoured around to face his buddy.  Now I was mad.  Dennis went to pay the cheque, imploring me to get Eric and meet me out in the parking lot. 

I trundled Eric out of the high chair and looked toward the exit.  The old man sat poised and waiting, his chair directly between me and the door.  “Lord, let me out of here” I thought, “before he speaks to us.”  It soon became obvious that the Lord and Eric had other plans.  As I drew closer to the man, I turned my back, walking to sidestep him.  And as I did so, Eric, all the while with his eyes riveted to his new best friend, leaned far over my arm, reaching with both arms in a baby’s pick-me-up position. 

In a split second of balancing my baby and turning to counter his weight, I came eye-to-eye with the old man.  Eric was lunging for him, arms spread wide.  The bum’s eyes both asked and implored “Would you let me hold your baby?”  There was no need or way for me to answer since Eric propelled himself from my arms into the man’s.  Suddenly a very old man and a very young baby consummated their love relationship.  Eric laid his tiny head upon the man’s ragged shoulder.  The man’s eyes closed.  I saw tears hover beneath his lashes.  Aged hands full of grime and pain and labour so gently cradled my baby’s bottom and back.  I stood awestruck.  The old man rocked and cradled Eric in his arms for a moment, and then his eyes opened.  He said, in a commanding voice as he looked directly at me, “You take care of this baby.”  Somehow I managed “I will … I will” from a throat that contained a stone.  He pried Eric from his chest – unwillingly, longingly – as though he was in pain.  “God bless you, ma’am.  You’ve given me my Christmas gift.”

I said nothing more than a moderate thanks.  With Eric back in my arms, I ran for the car.  Dennis wondered why I was crying and holding Eric so tightly.  And why I was saying “How could I have forgotten?  How could I have forgotten?”

What People Like

Christopher Graves is the president and founder of the Ogilvy Center for Behavioral Science in Washington, D.C.  He’s done work concerning people being hesitant to take vaccines.  This is certainly a current topic, since various polls show up to half of North Americans aren’t willing to take the coming Covid vaccines.  Some of them worry that corners have been cut since these vaccines have been developed so quickly.  Attitudes centre on both effectiveness and safety.

To solve this problem, Graves recommends … a lottery!

In behavioral science, almost nothing works as well as lotteries to incentivize behavior, for a lot of reasons.  People overestimate their chance of winning (optimism bias) and prefer $5 of lottery tickets to $5 cash because of the asymmetry of the cost versus the large payout … Why not enter each person who gets vaccinated into an exclusive lottery?  “Get a shot to get a shot at a million.”  Make it easy, make it fun, make it rewarding.

I smiled as I read Graves’ words.  “Why not, indeed?  Worth a try.”  But then …

The way our brains work, we just love lotteries.

Wait a minute.  I don’t love lotteries.  I wonder if that says something important about me.

In the interest of thorough research, I scoured the Internet, and found “Ten Surprising Things Successful People Like”.  Unsure if I really wanted to be “successful”, I read the article.  A few of the assertions did resonate with me, such as “Helping those who need and deserve it” and “Quiet time”.  However, there were things I didn’t like:

1. Working my tail off (to the tune of 60-hour weeks)

2. Control (squeezing until you say “Uncle!”)

3. Mundane hobbies (such as building models or playing cards)

4. Winning (I get to be king of the mountain, with all of you looking up at me)

5. Giving advice (You need my wisdom because you don’t have much)

No thanks
This human being doesn’t want those things

Perhaps it’s true that within the North American population of 370 million souls I am in the minority.  That’s fine.  My eyes do not go wide with the possibility of winning a jackpot or being better than you (smarter, wealthier, more enlightened …)  All this comparison stuff doesn’t ring my chimes.  I don’t care what other people like.  I have a Bruce song to sing.

Being Still … Moving

I’ve been meditating since 2007 and have been going on silent meditation retreats since 2010, including two that lasted three months. I learned many things, including the value of being still. Just as the Buddha was still under the Bodhi tree for hours … until enlightenment said hello.

I have no interest in enlightenment but the stillness remains with me. At the retreats, feeling “in place”, immersed in the truth of the Buddha’s teachings and immersed in the moment, was contrasted with “leaning forward”. As in never quite staying in this second, being so eager to rush into the next one … and missing them both.

My more recent work with the Evolutionary Collective has shown a different way. Being unchanging and centered doesn’t draw me anymore. Instead, I feel a pull to move forward into the future, which like the present is evolving. It’s not like I’m at Point A and saying “I’m going to Point B!” Rather, I’m roaming around what seems like Point A, and I’m just going. I don’t know where but I feel that the path is good.

In the 1970’s, I read Carlos Castaneda’s book The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. It records conversations Carlos had between 1960 and 1965 with an aboriginal mystic – Don Juan Matus from Sonora, Mexico. No doubt Don Juan knew all about stillness, but his life moved. There was a path.

Before you embark on any path ask the question: “Does this path have a heart?” If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question. And when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy. It does not make you work at liking it.

Thank you, Don Juan. You helped me forty-five years ago and you help me now. Despite not seeing a destination, I’m at ease with the journey. I simply walk and smile with my friends. Hearts and smiles go well together.