There’s a meme going around that our grandparents were called to war and we are called to sit on our couch. We got this.

I smirked at first, thinking of my own grandfathers who both served in World War II and saw such atrocities that they never talked about it. Ever.

Then I wondered why this meme even started.

Could it be that in our constantly connected world, we’re afraid of solitude?

I know the first thing I teach my students when I introduce them to the discipline of meditation is how hard it is to be alone with your own thoughts. We’re so used to distracting ourselves, our brains go haywire at the thought of boredom.

As a practitioner and student of the contemplative side of religion, solitude is necessary. Even today, with the demands of teaching and a young family, I still find moments in my day to create space for myself.

Outside of the bounds of religion, solitude can be a liberating experience–as evidenced by Michael Harris and the hermit of Maine.

If we want to look at this in a new lens, this time of social distancing is a call for all of us. It’s time to recognize we can burden ourselves with the thought of boredom, or embrace reflection with the time being given to us.

As of now, my city is mostly shutdown for the next three weeks.

I’ve emailed my students, and their parents, to let them know their health and safety is my number one priority. Anything else classroom related comes secondary and we’ll figure it out as time goes on.

After all, this is a first time for all of us in this situation.

My heart, prayers and respect goes out to all the front-line healthcare workers and essential services as we hopefully work through this pandemic. It is my sincere hope that when this is done, people will understand how woefully needed our healthcare services are and spend time fighting to fund it adequately.

I also can’t help but think of all the holes we’ve built in the fabric of our society that are being exposed. Perhaps we will recognize it’s time to shift how we do things.

Our current systems that were built for yesterday cannot handle the needs of today. Change was always coming, it was just a matter of when.

In addition to the social distancing, I’m also prepared to digitally distance myself.

I don’t need to know every hour how much worse things are, what people are stockpiling, or what everyone’s thoughts are as they go into panic mode. I’ll check-in once a day with the official channels, then head outside with my family to enjoy the emerging spring air.

I’ll touch base with family and friends, then sit on the floor and play with my kids.

I’ll be writing a lot about this time in history. Whether some of it makes it online will be up for debate, but I want to be able to track where my thoughts were while this was happening.

I’ll be reading my backlog, planning the rest of my teaching year, doing some professional development, learning to keep sane and adjusting to a new rhythm.

I don’t expect it to be perfect, nor would I have that expectation on others.

This is either going to be a great time of self-reflection, refreshment and renewal…

or it might turn into The Shining.

I’ll see you on the other side.

In a world with ubiquitous streams of information bombarding us at all times, we are overloaded.

It is a burden to sort through and filter.

How are we to trust what is being offered?

After all, trust is easily broken.

However, there is also the insurmountable task of making sure you are understood correctly when it is your time to communicate.

Perhaps this is the time we’ve been really waiting for in our history.

It is not enough to endlessly ramble, post whatever comes to mind, message anything in a hurry or show unconcern for what is put out there.

By now, people have learned every word will be dissected and analyzed.
Every snippet showcased.
Every wrong sentence demonized.
Every incessant, incoherent rambling ignored.

We must be thoughtful before we speak, precise in our language and treat every word like it matters–because it does.

“I wish I could read more, but I don’t have the time right now.”

“I wish I could write as well, but I don’t have the time.”

“I wish I could work out, but I’m always so busy.”

“I wish I could try some more recipes, but I’m always in a rush.”

I wish I could (fill in the blank), but (something about not enough time).

Personally, I wish I could talk to people about the shows they’re watching, play some video games I bought years ago and never touched, or go back to doing magic shows… but I gave up that time to do what really matters to me.

I’ve seen the thought experiment of visiting yourself in the past. There’s been enough science fiction (light hearted and serious) to bludgeon that theme to death.

Not to mention the cathartic exercise of writing a letter to your past self. Well… to some it may be angry and torturous.

However, I want to consider something different:

What if my future self came to speak to me right now?

What would future Vito say to me?

This requires an incredible amount of honesty on your part and really, it’s more an examination of conscience than anything else.

In some ways, it’s a point of wisdom manifesting itself.

Future me (10 years from now):

Listen, I’m not here to give you winning lottery numbers, stock picks or provide any other scheme to amass a ton of money.

Yeah, sure, we both would appreciate it, but let’s dig for some of the deeper things that can’t be purchased.

I think we both know that I’m not going to solve the problems you have right now. The issues you’re refusing to deal with are nothing more than the messes I have to clean up.

And let me tell you, those messes don’t get easier to clean in the future.

I know you think there’s not enough time because life is too busy. Hate to tell you, there’s not enough time on this end either.

You need to make some hard decisions and create time for those things we really want. I know you’re kicking yourself for wasting so much of it in your twenties.

You’re close to making that same mistake again.

There’s less available, but it’s still there.

On that note, take heed with the advice you were given when you first became a parent: the days are long, but the years are short.

Take care of your health. You think you’re feeling the effects of age (partially true), but what you’re really feeling is many bad decisions compounded on each other.

Don’t hesitate when an opportunity comes your way. Pounce on it and see where it takes you.

Even if you don’t know what it fully entails, go for it. You’ll figure it out.

Appreciate the people you have in your life right now, but know some of them will only be there for a season. Treat them well.

You’re really honing your crafts, both in writing and teaching. You still have a lot to learn, but keep pushing. No one ever became great at what they did by coasting.

Take ownership of your mistakes and strive for brutal honesty with others. Don’t be fearful of standing up for what you believe in, but accept you might not always be right.

Finally, in case you still haven’t figured it out, this is your life. It’s not some practice round so you can go back and do it again, nor is it the thoughts in your head of what would be ideal.

This is it.

Make it happen and enjoy what you can.

An incredible moment of enlightenment occurred today.

As a teacher (a profession that has always been denigrated, yet I seem to love more every year), there’s certain concessions you must make (these can also be applicable to police and health care workers):

• Never mention your profession at a party, or in public, because you will be vilified and people will stop talking to you (I tend to tell people I sell sandwiches at construction sites)
• 99% of the time you will be shutting the door to your classroom and doing what works best for you and your students, but opening it 1% of the time for optics (demonstrating you are fully on board with whatever fad is passing through this year)
• You are represented by a union and people really… really… hate that
• People will project their ill experiences of education on you, which loops you back to point #1

All of this is made worse during negotiation time with new governments and expired contracts. As it stands in the province right now, negotiations collapsed and we have initiated rotating strike days.

Instead of being in the classroom and with the students, we are walking the picket line. To be blunt–it sucks.

Getting into the details of my thoughts about the current situation would require more than a simple blog post or sound byte to the person who asks, “What do you think of all this?”

However, one thing I’ve come to understand is there are many things outside of my control. To stress out and fume about those would just be spinning my wheels for no reason.

This is why the Serenity Prayer is the most beautiful prayer one can recite when life is overwhelming.

Today, as I was walking across the street and speaking with a colleague, a man honked his horn at us and stuck up his middle finger.

Not uncommon, and pretty tame considering the visceral comments people were yelling out their windows the previous strike day.

I looked at him right in the eyes and realized… he didn’t see me as a person.

He wasn’t looking at me as a guy with a family and friends, grills in the summer, watches movies with his spouse, volunteers with outreach programs and has the same joys and frustrations we all do.

No. I was one of those people to him.

So, I did him the courtesy of giving him a smile and a thumbs up because, hey, I too have a finger!

Boy, he got really mad at that response. He held his middle finger higher, as if I missed what message he was trying to give.

I started laughing because I’ve had people yell some racist comments towards me over the years:
“Nice nose, you Jew!”
“Go back to the desert you f—ng terrorist!”
“You f—ng Muslims make me sick!”
(The fact I’m a Catholic, born in Canada and raised in an Italian household would be lost on those people who I’m forced to conclude are nothing more than ignorant degenerates who need to go away)

With a history of that happening, this guy holding his middle finger higher and with a more fierce look on his face thinks that’s going to upset me?

I continued laughing, then held up both thumbs and mouthed for him to have a good day. My colleague also gave him a thumbs up, because-hey, he had fingers too!

I thought that would be the end of it.

Nope.

He actually did a U-Turn and spent the next five minutes driving up and down the (four-lane) street giving all of us the finger.

I couldn’t believe it.

My thumbs up and smile triggered someone enough to want to spend part of his morning giving the middle finger to all of us.

How much hate do you have in your heart?

How miserable of an existence do you live?

What is going on with you, really?

It made me realize you really can’t let people like that suck the joy out of your own life. The more you stew about it, the less time you have for what really matters.

I have a lot of joy in my day and to take any of those attacks as personal would be feeding the animosity of what is making that person’s life so miserable. I hope for their sake they can get over it.

In the meantime, I offer my sincerest smile and an enthusiastic two thumbs up.

I’ve been on the hunt, for several years, seeking a simple tool that will help resolve the messiness of my brain.

Let’s put aside the instant knee-jerk reaction of “Mindfulness!” and “Meditation!” as a cure-all solution. As a scholar of Religion and practitioner of its contemplation strand, I show a bit of (pretentious?) disdain for those who wish to strip those practices from their context and market it.

Sorry, it’s not that simple and I’m aiming for clarity of thought… and also remembering appointments, bills to pay, projects to finish, etc.

Anyway, it’s this hunt that led me to the cult of productivity.

The best advice still comes from my first foray into the subject while reading David Allen’s, Getting Things Done:

Get it out of your head.

Your brain sucks at remembering things and you need to get what’s in there, out. Allen developed a system that relied on writing everything down, collecting all relevant papers, and sorting it at the end. Each paper you touched was put into a system where you would deal with it.

The crux was using the system as it was intended so your mind can be free in knowing whatever was on it, will be dealt with. Brilliant.

Then the digital tools streamed in, followed by a massive cultural shift of mass communication dependent on the digital world. Suddenly, the likelihood of someone carrying paper and pen shrank significantly as we all put phones in our pocket.

It’s not a bad thing as digital offers convenience on a scale we’ve never been used to–each person gets their own personal assistant. However, digital tools have their limitations and aren’t all encompassing.

Each one promises to be that way (while making it simple, of course), but a system that can capture everything and deal with it in one place? That’s a no and it should be that way.

Our brains aren’t that simple. Give ourselves time to sit and think and our thoughts will race in many directions (and yes, please, I know about meditation, you don’t have to mention it again).

How do we capture those thoughts?

What if we want to elaborate on one?

The advantage of pen and paper is that paper can be anything. You can change the medium to your liking.

Make some index cards, have a sketch pad, bind a book, write a list, make an accounting sheet, whatever. It’s also tactile and visual, allowing you to spread a bunch of papers over a tabletop, or put a ton of index cards in a box to pull out as needed.

A digital tool is still limited by screen size with multiple screens being a solution, albeit a cumbersome one.

The fallacy people run into when trying to convince others of the “superiority” of paper is it can do all the above in a way digital can’t. However, the form in which paper takes varies according to what is needed. Every time you switch the type of paper you are using, it’s the equivalent of firing up another app.

However, this isn’t an either/or situation.

Our brains are complex and for years I’ve ignored the fact in the hopes of finding that one tool that will be my be-all-end-all solution. A tool with a built-in system that will solve all my needs.

Then I accepted that I’m a full-time working parent of a young family, who also writes and publishes in his non-existent free-time.

My daily life is complex and until things simplify (the kids leave and I retire… or so I’m told), I need a complex system to match, accompanied by an assortment of tools.

After several years, I think I got it now. It’s messy and I don’t recommend anybody replicate it, but it makes sense to me.

No single tool will be an instant fix, but many tools can be used together if you’re willing to work it out.

You can give a person is your time and attention.

The effort you put into paying attention to another, focusing on their words and actions (and also what they’re not saying or doing) will provide you with a framework of what they need. In a world hyper-focused on our own image, this comes as a refreshing change.

This is the difference between tremendous marketing and asinine efforts.

The difference between a leader and a task master.

The difference between trust and skepticism.

It’s all the difference in the world.