I know now the meaning of life

 Today is my birthday, and it feels good.

 I went to work, had a little mini party, had a 32 oz bubble tea (do not recommend) had lots of laughs with colleagues, got a very nice present from parents and Alex, and went to my dance class.  Lots of plans to see people this week, lots of nice messages and thoughtfulness. 

 Life has changed.  People have changed.  I really feel like this year is a new chapter, especially the past few months.  People are reconsidering what's important, children are growing up.  I had a mental break when one of my youngest nephews let me know he passed his full drivers test and is now driving by himself.

But it's not bad...it's just life.  Life changes even when we don't want it to.  Reality doesn't conform to our dreams. It's the other way around.  Dreams come to reality and become something different than what we expect.

Let me tell you a story. In university, I was secretary for a student council.  I took pretty good notes, but used a lot of shorthand for words.  I went back a couple years ago, and talked to the chaplain who helped run the council. He said, "You know, your legacy is that we all use one or two of the shorthand words you used to use in all of our minutes for our meetings!"

Famous and obscure, that's me.

The things we imagine for ourselves...they rarely come true in a way we expect.  Life is very much a monkey's paw.  Make a wish, get a surprise in how reality unfolds.

This decade, it's a new chapter.  I don't know what it will be.  When I started my career, I saw people as rising stars above me.  Those people are now close to retiring.  Life is a wheel, and we are on it long enough to see the lights as it goes around.  Or at least I have been.  I'm still on the ride, going for another round.

It's been a good yr. Looking fwd to the next 1.   

 

 

 

 

Fencing!

 I had a lot of fun doing a summer fencing camp in July.

 We had a final tournament after 8 weeks, I tied for second place.

 

 

I took fencing in university, and really enjoyed it.  Surprisingly, my knees are not that bad to continue to do fencing.  Instead, it's my lower back and ankles where I sometimes pull a muscle.

It's fun to do activities that I really enjoyed from before and pick them up again.  I think I have a little skill at fencing, and maybe I will take more classes in the future.   

Saying Goodbye to Friend

 

A friend of ours tragically passed away two weeks ago.

It was sudden. There was no cause that anyone knows yet.  As said today during the funeral, it feels like a bad cosmic joke.  A successful, soft-spoken guy that accepted so many different people into his life.

One thing that I think about is that there should have been more time, and the truth is, there's never enough time.

So many things in life don't make sense, and this is one that also doesn't make sense to me.  I still think that it's not real, that it didn't happen, because he was so full of life and drive, and then suddenly not there.

My heart is just aching for everyone who has to pick up the pieces and move on.  

I don't have many words to say, but only a deep sadness for a person gone, but not forgotten. 

The Second Half of Life

You know, nothing irritates me more than those blog posts of 90 year olds saying 'life has just begun for me!'

Because, the numbers don't lie. You have until 100, or less. So after 40, you are half done your life.  

 

I'm over half done my life.  But I don't feel regret about anything particularly.  My regret is simply the same as most people my generation and most people everywhere. I often feel I am frustrated by the circumstances I live in, by the systems, by the missing opportunities that should exist. 

I can imagine what these opportunities are, or would have been, earlier in my life. But they simply weren't available to me.  And, unlike every single self-help video or book in the world, it wasn't something I could obtain. 

The things you know you would do as a young person, as a different person...there are things you could have done, but only if the technology, time, money, environment, people and luck converged. And even if all those things came true, you might still be worse off than you are now.  It's like saying I would be an Olympic athlete, if only I didn't have cancer that took my legs.  No one is bringing back the legs.

There are many things I have tried to do in my life, but I suppose very few things have been successful. The good news is that the things I have been successful at, have led to a stable life for me that I enjoy. That is pretty good.

But I still have a deep hunger for meaning as an adult. And that is not because I don't have direction, aspirations, goals. It's actually the opposite. It's because I know that life and its end are inevitable, that sometimes it feels like every small creative endeavor, every attempt at self-betterment, every attempt to change, seems silly in the face of decay, of self-lessening, of having access to only meager means to increase, advance or surpass expectations.

Because every moment in bettering myself is a moment spent in agony, in purgatory, in wishing to have enough time to be good enough to enjoy what I create and not feel empty.

Because every time I make something for me, and for others, I am emptying myself.  And there is joy in being empty. But being empty requires time to become full again, to have something to express myself with. And time is in short supply as an adult, no matter which path you walk in life.

We have nothing but time. And yet time is never available, not the kind you want, not with everything you need.  But. But....every moment spent doing good is a good moment. In a moment of goodness, we are ourselves.

And that's why I feel cheated. Like most people my age. Like perhaps all people who make it to my age. We have finally seen a hint of ourselves, and soon we will disappear, like ghosts or mermaid tails in the wind.

Easter 2025 Musings

This Easter was very reflective for me. This Easter Vigil was the first time I went to Easter Mass at the new church here in our new town.

The church was old, and looked like a giant barn from the 1960s, not exactly similar to the beautiful cathedrals of downtown Toronto. But it was absolutely packed full of people. I was very lucky and got one of the last seats in the house, though I was prepared to stand the whole two hours.

The readings this Easter were about Moses taking the people out of Egypt, and through the Red Sea. This famous passage is something I always take something different from.  

 What stood out to me was the tambourine and the column of fire and smoke.  The joy of the woman Miriam, the prophetess, and the wife of Aaron, takes up the tambourine at the joy of their emancipation. The very real joy of the present moment, not tarnished by the future upcoming, of which there would be many tears, nor the sadness of the past, but only the joy of victory.

And this passage in particular in Exodus:

And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, ²⁵ clogging^[c] their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”

In our version it was called 'the pillar of fire and smoke' and I just thought about that, about the fear of something great that can extinguish all life, but instead is leading people away from a life of slavery.  But it was a symbol of great power, of something mysterious and luminous, that defies the natural order of men and kings and armies.  

I also found it mildly amusing that their chariot wheels got clogged.

In the face of great inevitable power, what are we? We are only someone trying to flee the wrath of nature and the man or woman who is our enemy.  And there's no promise of an easy life once we've left a life of oppression. There are only questions, and a sort of natural human nagging and annoyance that we traded a safe life under oppression for a life in the wilderness and the desert.

But I found the two images kind of arrested me: the tambourine, the pillar of smoke and fire. The overwhelming sheer power, the joy and freedom.  Joy and dancing, beside that which is mysterious to us.

 

   

 

Goodbye, to my old college program

Today I went to a farewell party for my old PR program, which is shutting down after many, many years being a program for young professionals to grow.

Many people I knew over the last 10-12 years have done really well for themselves, and I've followed their career fairly closely.  They've been doing really well as directors, managers and coordinators of communications, public relations and marketing. They are hardworking, incredibly smart, dedicated individuals. They've succeeded.

But the Ontario education system has not. Ontario colleges, to fill the gap in funding they took it from international students, which then turned into a housing crisis. which then turned off the international student tap, which then meant colleges are now closing and struggling.

When I started in my program there was maybe 1 or 2 international students.  When the program ended, the mandate for the programs was to bring in as many international students as possible. (Slightly differently worded, but the same outcome for my college program and many similar programs.)

And we can't train only local resident Canadians because then the government shoulders the cost of education at the post-secondary level.   And the cost of real, practical post-secondary education is a problem no government wants to solve or pay for, federal or provincial.

It's expensive to train people. It's expensive to give them a world class education. We are beyond lucky we have the good teachers and good educational systems built into Canadian values.

But the creative programs that're being cut from Ontario's colleges will, eventually, have negative effects.

Where will we train young people before they get into the workforce? Are we going to be returning to unpaid internships and a never ending promise to pay younger employees?

Training costs money. You can't avoid that. And if the government won't address the educational gap that will eventually exist, what kind of quality of work will we have in Canada, which is known as a country of experts and highly skilled and highly trained individuals?  

I'm not all doom and gloom, but it's telling that a full program of students can still shut down because the funding does not exist for what is an extremely modest program with mostly part-time staff and very little corporate costs other than a nearly run-down Degrassi set and some stationary.

It's college programs that will continue to make Canada a great nation; it's great teachers and great ideals that produce the kind of workforce Canadians can be proud of. 

Feeling down today

 I think I read too much news today.  And more importantly, I think I'm just very aware that I live in a time on the verge of war.

It's sad because it's completely unnecessary.  But I guess I don't think like others do.

We have more than everything we need, we just don't have the answer to capitalism, which has gone far and away to drive the absolutely insane choices in the last 5 years. 

I know despair is not the answer, nor do I think everything is at an end, but I do think that it's hard not to feel powerless in the midst of great political upheaval and change.

And I guess I never thought I would be living in the middle of something like that.  I always felt like Canada was one of the safest, most boring places in the world.  I still sometimes feel that way (from a statistical perspective and a societal top-level look).

But it's hard.  It's really hard to be an adult, and it's hard to know now, the truth of how things work.

In times like these, I do look to prayer, and to meditation.  I'm reminded of the prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me bring love.
Where there is offence, let me bring pardon.
Where there is discord, let me bring union.
Where there is error, let me bring truth.
Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.
Where there is despair, let me bring hope.
Where there is darkness, let me bring your light.
Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.
O Lord, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love,
for it is in giving that one receives,
it is in self-forgetting that one finds,
it is in forgiving that one is forgiven,
it is in dying that one awakens to eternal life.  

I'm still contemplating deeply what it means to be alive in this time, and maybe I'll write more later.