It’s Thanksgiving in Canada, which means the usual rush of a weekend with frantic schedules that you attempt to counterbalance with relaxing activities. On the other hand, it is a weekend that should call us to express our gratitude.

While I can list a litany of things I am thankful for this year, and my life overall, there is one thing I am truly thankful for above all else:

Time.

It is often said that time is the great equalizer, but that doesn’t go far enough. You can’t earn, bank, save or trade time—you can only spend it. And the problem is none of us know just how much time we have available… or that of those around us.

There is no guarantee and no bargain you can strike with time.

You can study it, but can’t manipulate it.

It’s not an equalizer, but rather the very thing that holds our existence together and gives meaning to our entire lives. And it’s with that notion in mind, that I give it thanks.

I am thankful for the time I’ve had so far to learn about the universe, to spend time with family, to have fun with friends, to enjoy good meals, read good books, reflect, celebrate, mourn, laugh, cry and even write in this silly little blog.

Even the difficult moments, those that have passed and those that have yet to be, I am thankful because, let’s be frank, there’s never enough time for any of us.

What a limited and wondrous thing it is for all of us to have.

Happy Thanksgiving!

This is a hard post to write because the tone will come across as someone who is immune to what I’m writing about, which I’m not.

I mean, I’m the person who put a styrofoam container of chicken wings in the oven to warm up for guests at a party and spent his entire life wearing my pants around my hips thinking that was my waist. And while I can laugh at those blunders, chalking them up to being nothing more than a doofus, I’ve also been taken in by dangerous presentations of information.

Why dangerous?

They were wrapped up in a way that seemed convincing enough for my personal bias at the time, leading me to believe things that just weren’t true (or a very massacred version of the truth).

However, my training in theology and philosophy has given me enough grounding to reconsider and critically think about the issues. It also helps that I’m a huge fan of Harlan Ellison who says it in a more direct way that his bar for bullshit is incredibly low.

And this is what is concerning me today is whether people even have a bar for bullshit?

While my generation and older want to blast the younger generation for a multitude of sins, I have to say they are doing much better at sifting through the cacophony of noise. I hear them in my classes laughing at the news stories and especially the groups of people who are apt to believe whatever a social media feed tells them.

Take, for instance, the idea of fifteen minute cities. The basic argument is every person should live no more than a fifteen minute walk or bike away from all their necessities (groceries, health care, restaurants, community centres, libraries, etc.). In other words, move away from dense residential development and build self-sustaining communities.

I currently live in one and it’s wonderful. As a result of the pandemic lockdowns, a lot of money went into our local economy allowing even more businesses to pop up nearby.

Yet, you have people convinced that fifteen minute cities means a complete lockdown of areas where people won’t be allowed to leave unless they have government permission.

Let me be blunt—have you tried using your brain on that conspiracy theory?

Police departments are already underfunded, making it difficult to respond to crime already in place, and you think that somehow they’re going to BARRICADE areas at all times? We’re already having difficulty keeping national borders in check, yet we’re somehow going to get enough people to surround communities.

And yet, the cognitive dissonance is so strong that a presentation of common sense will cause a person to venture into even more insane ideas.

So what’s happening here?

Why is this occurring?

Why are people failing to take the minimum number of steps to confirm whether what they’re being told has any grounding in reality?

There’s no simple answer and any attempt to reduce it to one is ignoring the complexity of our society today.

For starters, let’s take a look at our media. I used to love reading my local newspaper, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Globe and Mail and even dip into the Wall Street Journal. Not anymore.

Media has become such a commodified resource that private interests are only concerned with profit at the expense of anything like ethics, or even truth. Entertainment, sensationalism and speculation take priority over actual journalism.

Sure, media sources always had a bias to them and could easily be manipulated by power players in society using them as an outlet for propaganda (Ryan Holiday wrote a book about this very topic and Robert Moses was a master of it) – but as Mark Twain once said, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re mis-informed.”

Well, it feels as though consuming media today makes you both mis and uninformed. I may look at headlines a few times a week (my current service I enjoy is 1440 that does its best to deliver a variety of neutral stories, but still not perfect), but I’ve stopped consuming and feel I’m better off for it.

Another point is to be critical of my own bias.

My worldview was first shaped by my parents (politically liberal with very traditional conservative values), before going very conservative, then very liberal and now somewhere in-between. It always hurts to admit when I’m wrong, but I’d rather walk a more honest path than live a lie and having others keep me concealed within it.

A lot of that, of course, is also influenced by age and environment. So I have to be critical of those two as well—not to mention the political terms above have changed significantly over the past thirty years.

Maybe there is a conspiracy theory to purposefully keep the population woefully lacking in critical thinking skills while simultaneously bombarding them with distractions. I mean, that’s exactly what happened in the Roman Empire before it fell. Or maybe we’re just doing this to ourselves.

We lack the training needed to understand that what we read on the Internet is not information, but rather data; and data needs to be interpreted correctly. We also lack the training to avoid being swayed by social influence and charismatic figures.

Philosophical training in thinking may help, as would a resurgence of some vestige of a classical education.

But perhaps what we really need is a renaissance of celebrating the enlightenment ideals of rational thought, harking back to a time when an explosion of literacy emboldened a population to not accept the narrative they’ve been fed for generations. In the intermediary, I’m concerned.

I always have a naive hope for humanity and the people in it. It may be misguided and it may wrong, but I still have it. For right now, all I hope is that in the future, my current concern will be of no consequence.

A few moons back, I got into one of those fun, yet inane, online debates over whether soft or hard pretzels are better. I honestly didn’t think there was any debate on the matter as I always felt soft pretzels were infinitely superior.

Nothing against hard pretzels—they are also a great snack. Just not enough that I’m salivating every time I walk by them in the grocery store.

Everything was going along as goofy you might expect it would (and surprisingly polite), when someone in the hard pretzel category commented:

“People who like soft pretzels are really just craving a bagel.”

That one, single comment has burrowed into my mind and hasn’t left.

Side note, apparently my other issue is I haven’t had the hard pretzel brands from Pennsylvania, who have the “best” ones. I’m on it.

It’s amazing. You go through your whole life having a strong opinion about something, even feeling a personal preference for it… and along comes a single comment for consideration that shatters it.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we all had more of these moments?

Lately, for whatever reason, I’ve been inundating myself with videos about people describing their near death experiences (NDE). While holding a candle of critical thinking (or skepticism) towards it, I am taken in by the sheer amount of love and empathy they share when describing it.

While the details always vary, one thing consistently stands out:

An overwhelming sense of peace and love, beyond we can ever feel in our physical bodies.

Even more specific, the number one word that pops up in their experiences is love. Always love.

And I think… wouldn’t it be nice if we could strip away our anger and run the world on love?

Not the nonsensical persuasion of love you find at Burning Man (that kind of love we can artificially induce by drugging our water supply), but a genuine, real love for all of creation. One that allows us to be patient, kind and challenging (basically, Paul’s letter to the Corinthians).

The kind of love that wouldn’t have us feeling road rage every time we got behind the wheel.

A love that would allow us to vehemently disagree with each other, while still allowing us to stay friends.

A love that would make rules of society that show love to each other, even when that love needs to be tough.

Understandably, this is ultra-idealistic and would require all of us to work through our inner demons in order to let them go. It would also require us to look upon those people we absolutely hate, wish horrible things upon and see them differently.

But, if we have to let it go when we die anyway, why not start right now?

We may never get to where we need to be, but the world would be far better served by a person who lived their life with love and got one more person to do the same.

I always consider the first day of school to be a preliminary New Years because that’s when all the resolutions are made by students and staff alike.

It’s always fun to watch students make promises that this is the year they’re going to get organized, stop procrastinating, get their work in… you know… all those good habits we’ve been promising ourselves for decades. Sometimes they can get it together enough (especially seniors as they know their marks matter for post-secondary admissions), but often enough, the slope is slippery and moves quick.

By mid-October, we find out whether old habits die hard or whether there’s a concerted effort to really make things different. The likelihood of slipping into the same old routine is significantly high, so the year tends to end just the same.

However, it’s the hope of a new year that is needed.

Regardless of what our circumstances bring, a fresh start is necessary—a chance to do things different. To be different.

To put away what once was and to move towards what could be.

My contention with today’s world of holding everyone under a digital microscope is we do not allow people to move on from their mistakes. Sure, we can hold them accountable (and that’s important), but we don’t allow them to move on when they truly desire it.

Even if things don’t change in the end, there should be an opportunity to try… whether that date is September 1st, January 1st, or next week.

And if it doesn’t work; then we try again.

It’s the first few moments in the morning.

When you just wake up and you haven’t fully registered that you’re awake. There’s a convergence between your sleeping life and waking life, which will eventually resolve itself.

It’s the time when you’re not thinking about the day…

what has been…
what will be…

and there’s nothing to get worked up about.

Your body hasn’t had time to tell you how it’s feeling.

The world hasn’t been able to bother you.

You are

in those moments

truly free.

If you just take the next few moments to be grateful for that feeling, you will always have something in your day to appreciate.

Patience…

To be patient.

To have patience.

To want more of it.

Except, when you look at the Biblical translation for the word patience, what you find is this definition:

Long suffering.

Makes sense, right?

Patience being nothing more than long suffering; something to endure until the suffering is complete and one is rewarded for enduring it.

You can suffer a little or a lot, but you’re still going to suffer until you get there. To be, to have and to want patience is really an invitation to invite pain with the hope it will be relieved in a big way.

Thus, all of us have patience… just some of us deal with it better than others.

Let’s talk about meditation for a moment.

There are numerous claims about the health benefits (mental and physical) of participating in such a practice, while also sporting hundreds of different claims about the “proper” way to do it. Most of that is marketing as all meditation really needs is a slight image adjustment so it’s not relegated, and associated, to a practice of the whacked out hippies of the 70s.

Or some esoteric practice of monks in the “east.”

Anyway, at its heart, it’s a spiritual practice.

One of many.

And like any spiritual practice that requires both commitment and discipline, it can produce positive results. Which is where the problem of spirituality resides.

The expectation is these practices will physically alter the landscape of reality. Somehow, through enough dedication, you will be able to read minds, walk through walls or heal people instantly with your touch. I cannot remark on the claims of those who say this is true (the story always seems to be about someone else’s eyewitness instead of a firsthand one), but it is a bad expectation to set.

Spirituality alters the way you perceive the world, getting you more comfortable with the vastness of the universe in relation to the minuscule viewpoint of our brief moment of existence. In other words, it puts the world (and you) in a much different perspective.

It doesn’t solve the issues you have, the problems you face or reaction to things that set you off. It can help, but nothing really changes on the outside. It’s all interior and therefore, very personal.

Each person’s mileage will vary.

This is why the mystics of religious traditions veer away from any literal explanation of their experiences and provide poetic metaphors instead.

Spirituality is an invitation for a shared perspective of reality, but it will be experienced in many different ways. It’s worth diving into, as long as you really know what to expect.

…and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever it want. What do you call it, freedom or loneliness?

Charles Bukowski

Twenty years ago, I moved into a single bedroom apartment in a new city that would become my home.

Before that, I grew up in a busy household with three siblings, two parents and a revolving door of family/guests. There were always people around and having any form of privacy was laughable.

In the year before the move, I travelled across Canada with nine other people where things like privacy and personal space were merely words—much like theoretical concepts in physics. Possible to understand, but never likely to observe it personally.

Moving into a single bedroom should have felt like the freedom I had always longed for and bask in every moment I was there. As an introvert, it’s the dream, right?

Except… I was truly alone.

No friends.
No contacts.
No residence floor of similar people in my position to connect with upon my arrival.

Nobody.

The first two weeks were spent doing a lot of walking and reflecting. A lot of sitting on my balcony and listening to the city. A lot more walking.

Yes, I was incredibly free… but also incredibly lonely.

This was also a time when social networks and data plans (even cell phones) weren’t around to distract an individual from their circumstances. You had to live with it.

Yet, even as I longed for the freedom and silence of having my own space, and kept living in single bedroom apartments, I found myself taking every opportunity to be with people. Eventually I would connect with people, grow my social circle and start my own family.

And even though I enjoyed the freedom of being alone, and even though I long for moments of solitude now, the loneliness that comes with it isn’t worth it.

It’s only through other people that we bring out the best of each other.

It seems odd that in a world where our life expectancy has gone up, automation has made tasks quicker and access to information is instant—we’re running faster than ever.

We’re working more hours, packing more in our days and bombarded with messages about keeping up.

As I prepare for another school year, I look at my curriculum packed with enough content to last years, yet the expectation is to fit it in a semester.

It’s known that stress is the conduit for illness (especially the proliferation of cancer cells), but our solution is to suggest paltry activities crammed within an overpacked schedule to combat it.

At what point do we say enough?

A slower pace of life requires less and gives more. I think it’s time we all move towards it and, more importantly, demand it.