It’s hard not to respond to the latest news story of a Muslim family killed in a hate crime, as it happened in my hometown. The place I was born and raised.

I know that city very well and I often joke the rule of the city is that when you grow up there… you leave it.

It’s a tongue and cheek commentary on the bubble the city creates as, economically, it has a lot going for it:
a University, a College, an Ivey Business School, Law School, medical research, insurance giants, government offices, an RCMP office, a growing IT sector, several shopping centres and geographically, you’re located a short distance from many cottage areas, the US border and Toronto.

It was also the place where insulin was developed and the birthplace of many professional athletes, artists and researchers.

Yes, there’s a lot to like about the place.

Unfortunately, I grew up at a time where a stigma was attached to people who grew up on my end of the city. At my elementary school, I am thankful to have had some of the most amazing teachers who sparked my love of reading, writing and curiosity about the world. Then there was the grade four teacher who said directly to a parent, “There’s no point in challenging these kids. They won’t be anything more than construction workers or housewives.”

Much has changed since then, but anyone who’s lived in that city long enough will tell you the amount of noise being raised about its deep-seated racism and bigotry is nothing new.

It was a refuge for Confederates and KKK members after the civil war.
It held a white pride march less than ten years ago.
There was this article, written about five years ago, that illustrates its campus/downtown life.
And it reeks of classism as a booming area actually voted down a resolution to get grant money to build a transit line.

It saddens me because many people in the city want it to change, and are actively working towards it, but it still feels like the city itself does not. For all the flack they give people from Toronto for moving in, the influx is at least forcing the city to accommodate new horizons.

So there’s a lot of noise, country wide, being shouted about this horrendous crime and it’s casting a nasty light on what anybody who grew up there innately knows. I love the place, but I fear all that’s going to happen is the powers that be will just wait until the noise dies down… and then it’s back to status-quo.

I was standing outside of my daughter’s daycare, waiting for the providers to bring her out. Next to me was another dad, patiently waiting for his daughter as well.

In typical dad fashion, we give each other the nod—the universal sign of acknowledgment that we understand each other’s lives. It’s also the only acceptable opening for conversation.

“Another day in paradise, right?” I ask.

He laughs.

“Yeah. Gotta enjoy it though, right?” he replies.
“You’re right. Especially now that we’re supposedly coming to an end.”
“I hope so.”

You have to enjoy it.

I’m often told the days are long, but the years are short. Before you know it, life will have gone by and all you’ll have is the memories of the time you spent together. You’ll have wished for more.

As tough as this past year has been, and it’s broken many of us… many times over… that comment couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment. My daughter emerged, looking down and sad.

I had some candy hidden in the car and gave it to her. She lit up. We went for pizza.

I’m never going to remember the days, but I’ll remember the moments. And they can only be remembered if they were enjoyed.

I’ve spent the past year interviewing some pretty incredible educators on The Unapologists Podcast and something finally occurred to me:

Everybody speaks of a broken system, but nobody has a clue on how to create a new one.

We can speak of methodologies, practices, equity, function, form, in-person, virtual, homeschooling, justice, passions based, skills based, knowledge based, classical and every other jargon word until we’re blue in the face. We can lament its shortcomings, scream about what’s wrong and showcase what’s great.

But…

We don’t have a vision.

What we do have is an upcoming generation of young people who are tired of being stuck in old paradigms, no matter how they’re dressed up, who will break it themselves.

It’s coming and we better be prepared for it.

Every time I meet a prostitute, she wants to talk about God. And every time I meet a priest, he wants to talk about sex.

Osho

I came across this quote this year and it’s stuck with me for a variety of reasons.

One of the earliest writings of this site was a compilation of what I could muster about all of us being broken people.

At the time, it was the furthest extension of my thoughts and capabilities of my writing. There was a lot more I could say about the subject, but I just didn’t know how to put it into words.

I also didn’t have the fullness, or clarity, of thought, which is mainly the reason I continue to write here. It allows me to see a progression of my own thought patterns and make connections from previous threads to now.

And at the moment, I am tired of ivory tower religious people who have planted themselves in the sands of time to make a stand against the world. They are not preserving tradition, they are harming it.

As someone who has a love of the Catholic Church, mainly for the amazing people I’ve met in there, I shake my head at the polarizing situation within it—mainly the self-righteousness. The origins of the Christian tradition was to reach out to the margins and invite everyone into the life of God, not just the elect few.

It was built on broken people seeking something greater.

Although the quote above is meant as a literal observation, I want to extrapolate it to a metaphorical context:

I would much rather be a church of prostitutes seeking God than a church of priests obsessed with sex.

Although I’ve abdicated the idea of doing formal book reviews, this particular book by David Deutsch has left me with so much to think about. Deutsch is a physicist that details how the Enlightenment period opened an unending sequence of knowledge creation.

At its core, it’s the most hopeful and inspiring book I’ve read. Dense in terminology, but if you take your time, you’re provoked through a wonderful hypothesis at the end:

If the knowledge of the universe is infinite, then we are not even close to what is possible.

I think of this in religious terms where people make the hypothesis of God as an infinite being, then relegate the idea of God to boxed criteria. Pardon me as I roll my eyes at the obvious hypocrisy

The quest for God and the quest for knowledge is an infinite one and given how long and far infinity is, the discovery of what we can even know has barely begun. To me, this is exciting.

It means there’s more to learn than we can even imagine.

That we shouldn’t be afraid to venture into unfamiliar areas and that the current explosion of knowledge will be looked at as no more than a foundation for future generations.

It gives… hope.

And hope is something we’ve forgotten.

We went for walks.
We waited patiently.
We had hope.

And now we can’t wait…

to give hugs,
handshakes,
kisses,
and fist bumps.

To have dinners,
lunches,
and get togethers…

with people.

All I hope is that we never forget that we did make bread, go for many walks and wish for the day we can see each other. That we understood life was more than the rat race and that most things didn’t matter.

The three things you never talk about in polite company:

Politics, Religion and Money

This is really difficult to avoid when you’re a Religion teacher in a publicly funded Catholic Education System run by a Premier who hates you (one of his party’s many examples of gaslighting). As much as I try to keep my mouth shut and just do the work that will serve my community, people keep trying to pull me into the mud.

My dad always told me to leave work at work.

Do what you need to do, then go home and leave work where it belongs. Don’t complain about it, don’t whine to anyone and just move on with your life. After all, no one wants to hear you complain about it anyway. This is what I try to do.

And a big reason I cultivate so many other interests (aside from my creative mind craving it), is so I can avoid talking about what I do for a living and my personal study of Religion that I’ve spent over twenty five years on at this point. It’s a stupid game because I love them both.

Yet, I’ve learned, never engage.

At best, play a different game.

We’re built for novelty, but it’s the boring, mundane, every day grind that moves the needle.

This has been a hard truth for me to accept as I’m a person who loves diving into new projects, skillsets and even life decisions. For the better part of my life (so far), I’ve been all over the map with some semblance of things I want to accomplish, but letting the winds of excitement carry me everywhere.

There have been a few consistencies, but a strong home cannot be built on top of a foundation that has been haphazardly put together. A foundation takes time and is the most unappreciated and unseen part of the final product.

Without it, nothing stands.

I was thinking of this as I looked back on my magic career. Countless hours went into learning techniques that were never (well… almost never…) seen by an audience, but were the root of every magic routine performed. My ability to learn new material quickly came as a result of the hours put in at the beginning.

It’s also a necessity for building relationships.

There are ways to shortcut rapport, but that fades quickly unless that consistent, daily work strengthens it.

As this all ruminates in the mind, it calls me to shift my perspective in the morning. Instead of asking, “What exciting thing am I going to do today?”, I should really be asking:

“What boring, mundane thing can I do today that will help me build a better future?”

My son absolutely loves to interrupt my classes with his shenanigans and at this point, it’s quite entertaining.

After a year of spending days talking to icons on a screen, occasionally interspersed with someone accidentally turning their mic on to reveal the movie they’re watching or video game they’re playing, it’s good to have some relief. As a parent, I’ve joined the legions of others who have also hit a point that shrugging is the only response to give right now.

On my way to the basement yesterday morning, he wanted to share a picture:

Notice who the happy one is in that picture?

I keep it at my desk now. He also ran into the room in the middle of teaching to announce that he was going to stick his butt in my face. It was the first time my current students reacted to anything.

This morning, however, was a pleasant surprise.

He took one of my medallions to Saint Christopher and drew a coffee cup (with Sharpie) over the head of Christopher. When I asked him about it:

“Since Jesus is in your heart, and you drink a lot of coffee, your heart is full of Coffee Jesus!”

The logic is sound.

He also made a point of running into my class to loudly ask if I told my students about “Coffee Jesus.”

It was at that point I realized I’ve seen many artistic interpretations of Jesus, but never one with him having a coffee head. And right now, that seems just as valid as any other interpretation.

In fact, it might even be better than most.

My favourite website to show my students is Gapminder. It’s a brilliant display of how our biased views of the world prevent us from seeing what’s statistically happening.

As you work your way through the quizzes, it becomes clear that humanity is at its best right now. Aside from climate change and a few other UN Goals, everything has been moving in a positive direction—worldwide.

Great news, right?

Overall, yes. But we’re still dealing with the same issues, which have been constantly repeating throughout history. We’re fighting the same battles, watching the same tragedies and coping with the same hardships. We just keep dressing them up with different names.

All this in a world where anyone, at any time, can get access to the entirety of human knowledge at their fingertips. You would think that would be a game changer for society.

Nope.

Nothing has changed, but it’s never been better.

Maybe the world really belongs to the optimists and their true superpower is ignoring everyone while they do their work.