There is a little tree

It's alone.  It's stands in clearing atop a high ridge, clinging to life.  It's free and clear, our little tree and enjoys the hours of sunshine and abundant rains.  There is no shade to block it.  There is no obstacle to block it.  But it stays little.  For to grow big risks everything.  

There is a little tree on a washout basin, a rockslide basin.   When the mountain rumbles it takes everything in it's wake.  And the little tree with its little soil and roots would not stand a chance the next time the mountain moves.   But it grows, it perseveres and hopes.

Before our little tree there were other little trees and they are gone now, relics to our memory of hope.  And tomorrow there will still be a little tree.  Just maybe not ours. 

But today, there is a little tree. 

What is Canada ?

I travel a little bit, and am frequently asked what Canada is.  On the occasion of Canada's 150th birthday, I thought I'd give answering this seemingly easy, but actually quite deep question a try.

Like some other countries with big neighbours (Ukraine, New Zealand), Canada is frequently defined in relation to the USA.  If I had a nickel for every time I'd heard 51st state jokes, well I'd have about $2.00.  But there's more to my country than the shadow our neighbour casts upon us.

Canada embraces a social sensibility that crosses what I like to think of as the best of Europe, with the pragmatism of the US.  We have a social safety net as Canadians repeatedly elect governments that put this in place.  It means that we are willing to extend our wallets to help those less fortunate around us.  That results in "free" medical care, deep programs and acknowledgement for lots of people in disadvantaged situations in an economic, health, personal and other senses.  It's important to note that this willingness to reach into our pockets (in a taxation sense) to help others, extends beyond our borders as well - Canada is the country that has contributed the most to UN 'Blue Helmet' missions in the last 50 years - and it extends when we see those in need wherever they are.  Canada has opened its borders and communities to tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the last two years and local 'person to person' support was in place at a local level to shepherd these newcomers from life as they knew it, into jobs, schools and our society so they can become self-supporting.

Are we perfect ? Of course not, but arguments about which social investments to make, which bridges to build and mend are different I'd argue than arguments about how much to take take away from the disadvantaged and only give to those with advantages.

Canada is bilingual, and though we complain at times, we have a Swiss style approach with defined territories with distinct cultures and this is enshrined in who we are.  Think about that a moment, not many countries are able to do that - understand the variances that separate  us, embrace them and turn it into a strength. Vive la Canada!

Canada is economically conservative.  It manifests in our banks and spending.  Our economy will never be a world beater or leader - but it is solidly and consistently in the top ranks globally.  In these days of massive economic fluxes - Japan, America, and Russia I'm talking about you - this is a pretty good achievement.

I like to think that we are a mosaic, and not a melting pot.  It's hard to define being Canadian, so instead anyone that comes here - and many do -  simply contribute to make all of our society a little richer, a little deeper instead of having to conform to some 'norm'.  It benefits us all when people with new cultures chose to live here.

And any discussion of what it means to be Canadian can't avoid the massive scale of our land, stretching to three oceans.  The scope of Canada - it takes 7-8 hours to fly nonstop across and the varied geographies we have - it is in our soul.  Beaver, and elk adorn our money and are national symbols.  While most Canadians live within 500kms of our southern border, we all appreciate that the vast majority of our country is wild, beautiful and untapped.

Canada is all of these things, and for a 150-year old it's looking pretty good.

Are You Happy? - It's the Wrong Question

Are you happy?  You've had this question, so have I.  We ask it of each other innocuously, however it has some real implications. You may have struggled to answer it - I certainly have.  I’d put forth that while we’re each genuinely interested in the answer when we ask it, it’s actually the wrong question most of the time.

Let me illustrate this by offering a few variations:

Are you lonely?
Are you afraid?
Are you fulfilled?
Are you hungry?

These are also states we could find ourselves in, and they can change.  I may be hungry right now, but won’t be later after I’ve eaten.  Likewise when something wonderful happens that seems to validate some work or efforts we’re involved in as a professional, parent, or volunteer it does offer the lovely glowing feeling of fulfilment.  But chances are when stuck in traffic later that day or week, that same glow is diminished.  I can be afraid of something, but it probably wouldn’t define me.  I can be thrilled with something, but that excitement fades too.

For reasons I think I may understand however, we want to treat the sometimes fleeting emotion of happiness as a state of being, as if we walk around with a big grin constantly.  That’s because when we ask one another if we’re happy, it’s not intended to be about the precise moment it happens, but rather it’s a general query, that is intended to be more precisely interpreted as “Are you not unhappy?”.

The avoidance of unhappiness I’d argue though doesn’t result in happiness.  Just as some numbers such as 2,3,6, and 478 are all positive while -2,-4 and -17 are all negative numbers, 0 is neutral, and is neither positive or negative, it just is.  (Feeling neutral isn’t positive however and wouldn’t be considered a positive answer if asked about on a 'Are you happy' scale.)  Here, context matters I’d think.  If my dog just passed away, feeling neutral is a pretty good result.  On a daily basis if you’re doing something that you don’t enjoy, neutral is fine.  Happiness is too large a hurdle to aim for.

That’s the crux of the problem.  Asking about happiness, or setting the expectation for happiness when being neutral is a fine result at times, sets the bar too high.  Add to that that we ask about this incorrectly 99% of the time, and all of a sudden happiness, that elusive social goal seems unattainable.  And that makes many people unhappy.

So going forward, I’ll try not to ask that tired old question when the moment arises, setting up anyone that answers for an often-sad moment of self-reflection.  Instead I’ll ask if they have successfully avoided unhappiness lately.  For even if the answer they offer is ‘sometimes’, that in itself is worth celebrating and smiling about.

Life, Happiness and Everything

I think I've figured it out.

For me.  You have to figure it out for you.

This is a question I've struggled with for a very long time.  Five decades plus. You see, like you perhaps I thought there might be a universal answer.  A key piece of knowledge I wasn't aware of, that upon learning would turn on this glow of wisdom and contentment.  I was wrong of course, in a manner anyway.

I was told, like you have been perhaps, by many people that the answer was this or that, taking this attitude or perspective, or pills, or drink.  I think that I've figured out that  the pursuit of the knowledge of life, happiness and everything isn't actually something that we can pass along to one another.  It's more like religion in the sense that some annoying person is always trying to shove their beliefs down your throat as some absolute and obvious truth.  To the recipient of that message who is without that same sense of conviction, faith or guile, those attempts seems putrid and self righteous.  They are rejected in the same manner we reject ideas from the supporters of the 'other' political party.

So, it's something we all have to determine for ourselves.  The destination - the understanding of the answer is meaningless unless you've made the journey to find it.  That in itself is beyond the cliche and verging into the profound. I'd argue that anyway as it took me so long to find it.

I don't plan on telling you what it is by the way, as its the answer to life, happiness and everything - for me. You have to figure it out for you.

Good luck in your journey and Godspeed as they say.

The Root Issues with the United Airlines Re-Accomodation

There has been so much written and recorded about United's issues this past week that it's become tiresome already.  As I want this post to stand the test of time, here's a recap though as we won't recall it in 3-9 months.

 Flight 3411 was due to depart from United hub at Chicago O'Hare to Louisville, Kentucky on Tuesday April 9th.  The flight was operated by United Express (Republic Airlines) an EMB-170 that accommodates 71 passengers and was booked full - but not oversold..  At some point in the boarding process, or immediately after, it was made known to the United ground staff - their gate agents - that the company needed 4 seats on the aircraft to position a set of flight attendants to Louisville to operate a another flight.  So they asked for volunteers and offered them the standard $400 rates and a hotel stay to take a  flight the next day.  No takers.  The flight finished boarding and was full, and then they repeated the denied boarding volunteer offers on-board, doubling the offer to $800 and the accommodation details that go with it.  A couple took that offer, freeing up 2 seats, or United had indicated that this couple would be involuntarily denied boarding, and they took the offer. That part isn't clear.  Regardless 2 people left the aircraft.  United then indicated that Dr. Dao was next on the list selected and he'd be denied boarding too.  He refused, United escalated the situation to the aviation security force that acts as police at O'Hare and they dragged him off the plane in the now infamous videos, injuring him and causing no end of harsh critique's of their handling of the situation from anyone with an opinion worldwide.  

United subsequently handled this exceptionally poorly, initially blaming the passenger, lauding their staff, finally acknowledging that this was a horror story for those involved and apologizing to the Doctor in question from a humbled CEO. They've lost hundreds of millions in market capitalization, endured many boycott calls and the airport aviation officers in question have all been placed on leave pending disciplinary hearings.

There are so many badly handled elements of this that it's hard to know where to begin.

1. United should take PR lessons
2. United ground staff ought to have had the common sense to avoid this outcome
3. United ground staff should not have boarded people to then have to un-board them
4. United shouldn't be allowed to use police to enforce a business practice
5. Dr. Dao should and will sue the pants-off of United and he'll win
6. United's CEO should resign - not because it happened, but because of the way he handled this, which prolonged and inflamed the outrage.
7. The aviation security force at O'Hare itself is under review now, as those officers are are not Police, and receive far less training than Police do.

I want to focus on one aspect however that is out of control and this incident illuminates it well.  It's the use of and acceptance of a police or security presence at airports to deal with 'security issues'.  In the post 9-11 age, with new threats emerging on a weekly basis, what constitutes a security threat..?Almost anything the airline wants to call a security threat it seems.  We've become so accustomed to this, so accepting of the hassles and personal affronts that airports represent these days that we don't question anything any longer.

Let me offer this - I've been denied boarding off of confirmed flights, and when younger I worked in an international airport and performed denied boarding.  The process and approach is 'accepted' and it goes hand in hand with over-selling flights.  So that's not the issue to me.  But if I go into a McDonalds and order a burger, and a few other people also order burgers at the same which exceeds the supply of burgers, McDonald's has no right to ask the Police to intercede and remove the burger I bought and paid for from them.  It's ludicrous.  But that's the situation that we face in an airport, and on an airplane these days.

A little while ago I was flying home from Europe from a business trip and wanted to use the forward lavatory.  It was busy and the crew mingling in the galley area next to it didn't seem to mind someone standing there.  So I waited as one does, and a flight attendant told me to return to my seat.  I politely let her know that I was waiting for the lav, and would just wait here a moment or two.  She looked me dead in the eye and asked if I was threatening the security of the flight.   What was an innocent enough situation that anyone who flies has been in before, turned very quickly into a super tense discussion.  What struck me from that encounter - I did go and sit down - was that in using that magic little security stick was the argument that couldn't be argued with.  I wasn't impressed and later made a comment back to the airplane about her pettiness, but in the moment, all of us are defenceless as Dr. Dao was when the cloud of security overshadows air travel.

The rebuttal to this is of course - would I still fly without these measure designed to protect me ?  You bet I would.

I am not a fan of being mothered and controlled because it's in my best interest.  I'd far prefer less security and more common sense, and am willing to forego any greater good of knowing we're being looked after.  It doesn't work on the roads (are you the worst driver you've seen? - no one is) and yet we all have licenses, and it has reached epically silly proportions at the airport.  This isn't the law enforcement agencies issue alone as they don't write the laws, though they are clearly part of the problem.  Why isn't every single car exceeding a speed limit pulled over - because they use judgement.  And judgement combined with common sense is what's missing from air travel.

What I Learned During a 30day Running Challenge

A month ago, I undertook a personal task - to run every day (at least 5km) for a month.  Rain or shine, regardless of how I was feeling.  In that month, I travelled for fun and went out in rain, sleet and snow, I ran in -20 degree days and oppressive heat, putting a little over 218kms/130+ miles onto my shoes. My distance varied daily on purpose, and I tried not to run my daily minimum 5kms on consecutive days, and likewise wouldn't run my maximum  - which was about 14kms -  back to back.

First off - I did it.  :)

It's worth noting that I'm a casual runner anyway, this wasn't my first foray into what I was doing. I've
done a couple marathon's and about a dozen half -  marathons and am signed up for the next one of those in May this year.  Any given run can be wonderful, painful, an emotional blackhole, or as I heard someone say yesterday - make you feel like you're a bag of milk - or it can make you dance.  I think over the past month I've had at least one of each of those and a few of some.  Running is like a box of chocolates, as Mr Gump might say, you never know what you're going to get.  Just run, Forest, just run.

The running itself became easier, as I guess the strength in my legs increased.  That was a pleasant surprise.  There's more than a few days that I don't recall the running part of the run, which given the task at hand is a little surprising. While I tried a second workout on about a quarter of the days, it always came back to me on the next day's run as a really strong feeling of fatigue. Overall however the running part of the running challenge got better.

The route choices were tiresome, as I grew bored with the places I'd run repeatedly.  I became an avid user of MayMyRun to find that 6, 8 or 12 km path that was a little new.  Wind and therefore direction was a concern as I mentioned that at least two weeks of this was quite cold, varying between -5 and -20 with strong winds. Routing choices to avoid large open areas where I'd have to run into the wind factored largely into the daily decision.  Snow too affected where I went, as we have some lovely trails near me, however snow covered, or (worse) water saturated mud isn't really nice to run through.

Injury was ever-present in my mind - I wasn't running to outpace Usain Bolt or anything, but I did track my pace daily and wanted to see some improvement.  So I was careful, perhaps moreso than I normally am.  I'd stop and walk 20 paces if I felt anything amiss.

Technology was helpful as I track my distance, speed etc with two devices and my little old ipod nano with it's Nike app was key to the success of this.  It's screen is broken, and it congratulates me on another 500km accomplished after every single complete effort (which I secretly enjoy), but I can get lost in the podcast, or music and the last half-a-km audible warning is always welcome.

Importantly, I think I could keep going if I wanted.  My legs, and back are tired and need a day or two off but it's not a must-stop.  That's probably for me the biggest single reward in all of this - the knowledge that if I wanted to, I could continue this. Our own hidden reserves of capability are all too often invisible to us.

The most interesting thing I picked up was the surety that this activity is cathartic for me.  Yes, some mornings I couldn't get the sound of my own wheezy breath out of my conscious mind, but the best runs allowed me to deconstruct an issue or problem I needed to think through, my body on autopilot as I could focus into the moment and think clearly, or listen clearly, or even just be in the moment knowing I was lucky to be able to be doing what I was doing just then.  I had a few of those days in the past month, and that made this all worthwhile.

Dear Dave & Morley...

I've been fumbling, starting then stopping, and putting off the writing of this letter for a little while, as I'm not quite sure how to write it, or how to say what needs to be said. A letter is both a personal communication and an hierloom that can be revisited numerous times in one's life, kept in a drawer or cabinet and relived time and again.  It's also a story telling device that shares our authors thoughts and feelings, joy - and in my case anguish, over what news I feel I need to share.

Dear Dave & Morley I'd begin, and let the sentence trail-off in my head.  I'd heard Stuart start many stories this way, and always appreciated the depth of character he'd uncover in the telling.

He was good at that - good at using a covering imagery like the history of a town in Cape Breton, or the writing of a letter to a neighbour's son to curl around us, engaging our curiosity into the details that he vividly painted into our ears and embraced our imaginations with.  We were drawn in until we were so deeply sunk into his narrative that we missed a set-up  - until it was sitting on us, smiling down like a cheshire cat and Stuart's voice would deepen and lift at the same time, cueing us to notice the situation, or the character's reaction, or the absurdity of where we'd all gone.  Together. And he'd pause.

People remember that he made them laugh. Hilariously so, about turkey's, a drip from a lightbulb onto our forehead, or even Dave's hypochondria.  They recall the sweet little tears he brought out as he unearthed someone's empathy, kind spirit, or resilience -  illustrating it poignantly, helping us all recognize those same feelings in ourselves. Without doubt he touched many people. Stuart taught us about parenting, our own fears and anxieties, and life in our own communities through his invitation to the Cafe and the adventures of Dave, Steph, Sam and Morley.  The key was his voice, wistful and knowing. Richly rhythmic with stunning timing and the expert knowledge of how to say ..... nothing, drawing out our anticipation in knowing smiles and pre-laughter. Listen yourself to a few stories, and you'll see.  But I digress... Dear Dave and Morley, I have some news.

There are an estimated 400+ stories, about the universe that Stuart created and I can't say that I've heard them all.  There's a great big board the way I imagine it - with names, dates, places and relationships linked all together, probably with yarn.  Otherwise how could he have kept it all straight. As we listened it was those little details, Morley's love of figure skating, or characters from his hometown in Cape Breton when growing up with Annie, or the neighbours running the shops next to the Cafe, like Kenny Wong and his Scottish Meat Pies that made it all come to life.  There's a depth to these tales that binds them together and would have allowed for the next story, and the next one and the next. Only there won't be a next one. Dear Dave and Morley, I have some news. Some bad news...

As I sat and turned over on the ideas of what I needed to pass along, days drew long as I stumbled time and time again.  How do you tell someone that their world changed and they had no future  At the same time how do we share the tremendous gratitude that you deeply feel, that so many feel for the times spent together. It's an end, as surely and completely as an end ever was, but at the same time it's a time to acknowledge the hours spent together, and the moments we were assembled as one in laughter, sadness and life's precious lessons.

Dear Dave And Morley,  I re-started, I have some news. Some bad news.  But you're going to be fine, in fact we're all going to be fine as we still have one another.  It seems that...........

It is I'd hope, all that Stuart would have asked for.

______________________________

Stuart McLean was the host and creator of The Vinyl Cafe on CBC Radio.  On a weekly basis he created the worlds that Dave, Morley, Sam, Stephanie and countless others inhabited and allowed the rest of us to visit, observe and learn from. Luckily for us, Stuart was prolific.  Stuart passed away on Feb 15th, 2017.

The Vinyl Cafe can be visited still, and it's a worthwhile way to hear how well stories can be told.