A few days ago, the sun blasted a 150,000km solar prominence perpendicular to the Earth. Thankfully, it was away from us as these eruptions have the potential to do some serious harm to the planet.

66 million years ago, an asteroid struck the Yucatan peninsula and eradicated all of the dinosaurs.

We’ve had many near misses since then.

However, things in the universe act on a cosmic scale, thousands to billions of years, allowing us with our modern understanding of science to predict these events. Mostly.

They’re still way out of our control, so it doesn’t even matter. For instance, our sun will expand out five billion years from now and incinerate the planet. Until then, we are here.

And for the short time we are here, we get to experience everything the universe has to offer and the problems of today are mere blips for us to wade through until the beauty of tomorrow.

Armed with intellect, compassion and imagination, we have all the tools we need to face another day. No doubt, some days are brutually tough and their effects can last for years.

But, if we can keep in mind a cosmic perspective, of which we are bound, we can face tomorrow knowing there is more to see and experience. Our world, especially our species, is a fragile one, subject to the whims of whatever the stars may bring.

The best we can do is stop fighting against it and flow with it, enjoying the ride and whatever may come.

My first job was in a box factory. The place eventually turned into a warehouse, but making boxes gave me my first paycheque.

It was also my first exposure to co-workers who do nothing but complain. As a young person with their first job, I kept my mouth shut and kept to my work.

However, what is interesting is that every job I’ve held since then, those same co-workers have been there in different forms. They’re not complaining about unsafe working conditions or employers breaking labour laws—they’re complaining about the grind.

I periodically got sucked into that crowd despite my dad’s (still) great advice to “keep your work at work” and “nobody wants to hear you complain.”

Today there are a spectrum of complaints with unreasonable demands on one end and feeling the work is beneath people on the other.

The one end of unreasonable demands certainly needs addressing as employers sometimes forget they’re hiring people, not robots that can be programmed. Of course, this comes with its own complexities and as you venture into the swamp of what is actually unreasonable, things get tricky.

However, it’s the latter end of the spectrum to which I say,

You’re a small person with a big ego. Learn to do the grind.

I am not immune to the YouTube algorithm rabbit hole. While I do my best to get out of it when being sucked down, there’s been some great gems.

One shining gem was the discovery of a channel dedicated to the big philosophical questions of life.

Of the many wonderful videos on there, this one I’ve visited numerous times and show to my students every year.

In summary: if you had a big life decision before you and couldn’t decide the best course of action, would seeing the outcome of each decision be helpful?

Spoiler alert—the video ends on an ambiguous note.

It does, however, bring peace to the decisions I’ve made and put away anxieties of “What if?” The truth you come to understand is that every decision opens an array of branches that stretch out for eternity.

This is true for good choices (“I have two good options in front of me”) and bad (“I know this is bad, but where will it lead?”).

A bad decision will (almost) always end in a bad place and a good one will (usually) get you somewhere better. Never perfect.

No decision will ever lead to a perfect place and we may never be fully happy with each one, but the branches of each decision are too complex to regret the ones that are made.

The only regret you can have is not making one for yourself.

If you ask a thousand people what freedom means to them, you will most likely get a thousand slightly different answers.

Then there’s the next step, which is one of the pressing questions I ask in my moral philosophy course, “Are we really free?”

I doubt we’ll ever get a clear answer on that one.

After all, we’ve only been arguing about this for thousands of years.

And while we’ve migrated this conversation from personal autonomy to things like personal finance (“financial freedom goals”), what we’re really wrestling with is whether we have the freedom to just be.

Be who we are.
Be a fan of the Jays.
Be safe in knowing there’s a world tomorrow and you can face it.

All of this is internal.

If we can get freedom there, then we can affect what’s out here.

The best selling video game of all time was Tetris until Minecraft came along. It’s difficult to guess what the next big game will be, but I hope it will follow a similar vein.

Both games didn’t rely on gimmicks, shock value or ridiculous marketing.

They’re very low graphic games that rely on creativity, critical thinking and spatial reasoning. Minecraft elevates this further with imagination—the more you have, the more you can do.

These games are proof of one thing:

People want substance in what they do.

Even in our “mindless” entertainment.

Pushing limits is wonderful for motivational videos, athletic competitions and ideas, but we often fail to acknowledge the other end:

How much more can we take?

We are way more willing to push that limit rather than rein it in and give ourselves peace of mind.

Imagine getting shot with a poisoned arrow.

The poison will kill you, but there’s an antidote.

However, rather than sprint immediately for it in order to save your life, you instead do the following:

Speculate on who shot the arrow
Get angry at those who you think shot the arrow
Debate whether the antidote is effective
Argue about other potential antidotes
Put a band-aid on the wound to hide it

In other words, you do everything but take the antitdote and give yourself a fighting chance.

Pick any issue our world is facing and this is what it looks like.

(poison arrow example adapted from a classic Buddhist parable)

There’s been a long standing trend with people not knowing (or wanting to know) their neighbours. It may have been when we adopted the idea of moving into a house instead of a community.

A kind of paradoxical conundrum of wanting to move into a “good” neighbourhood and have “good” neighbours without caring about what makes it good and how to contribute to it.

In any event, two years of isolation has us scrambling to figure out how to be social again. During that time, we did witness people reach out and find ways to be supportive of their community.

It was heart-warming and now it’s time to take it a step further.

The past memories of borrowing a cup of sugar are kind of moot in a world where you can get groceries delivered to your door within an hour. And while many community associations are popping up to organize events as a way to meet, what happens afterwards?

Start by being a catalyst.

Grab your BBQ and bring it to the front yard and let the smells invite conversation.

Grab some lawn chairs and beverages, put them on your driveway and offer to anyone who asks.

Buy, or borrow, a telescope, set it up at night and people will want to take a look.

Go for a walk without headphones, or agenda, and greet people as you meet them.

The goal isn’t to create a utopia, but to move things in a better direction. Better, not perfect.

If we can show how to be a good neighbour, others may want to show how they can be good neighbours as well.

I used to think the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought with 30 years of good science we could address these problems, but I was wrong.
The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy—and to deal with these we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, and we scientists don’t know how to do that.

Gus Speth

I’ve been thinking hard about a spiritual revolution for the better part of two decades now.

What does it look like?
What does it entail?
Who will lead it?

What I do know is it starts with a new story.

Our ancestors, I think, had a better way of being when it came to the narrative that ran their lives. If the narrative no longer worked, they abandonned it for another. Not always a better one, but still different.

The stories that run our world are so deeply entrenched that we’re trying to solve problems within it—rather than thinking outside of them.

Carl Sagan tried with a story of the pale blue dot (still one of my favourite reflections).

Pope Francis tried nudging the Catholic Church with his encyclicals, especially Evangelli Gaudium and Laudato Si!

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie brilliantly identified the power of a story, especially when it’s only told from one perspective.

And yet, we’re in desperate need of a story of spiritual revolution and have nowhere to turn but viral TikTok videos and pissing contests with those in power.

We don’t need to walk away; we need to walk a new path.

But it’s a matter of finding where that path starts.

From the moment I got my license, you could say I had a heavy foot. Lead foot? I drove fast.

My driving really reflected my attitude towards life: carefree and get there in a hurry. Take some time to explore some new sites along the way.

Don’t even get me started on highway speeds. I’ve made a few speed records I’m not entirely proud of, nor will I brag about… anymore.

To this day, my biggest pet peeve are people who don’t accelerate to highway speeds on the on-ramp.

However, as I get older, it’s clear the rhythms of life are shifting. There’s still plenty to see and do, but there’s so much to be missed by rushing to get there.

Why rush to see something when you can slow down to see everything?

It’s a new pace of life and it’s rather enjoyable…

except, of course, for those on-ramps.