Tag: meaning

Re: Outcome

I don’t remember when I first learned about compound words. Every word has a certain power when used effectively. A hyphenated word brings an idea together quite nicely while two or more words that are smashed together can be particularly enlightening. For a planner like me there is something very satisfying when all my organizing, mapmaking, list-making and future gazing creates an outcome that fits the contents of my imagination.

Our personal stories are often crafted to have outcomes that put us centerstage. In our vision of life, past or future, we tell our tales of adventure, defeat, disappointment, shame, honour etc. within the context of how we wish To Be in the world. I went on a much needed four-day holiday with my partner to an island retreat. I hadn’t anticipated getting lost in this fairly remote place, but I did, get lost. But it was temporary. A stranger appeared, literally driving out of the nowhere woods. I leapt from my car, waving my arms to stop him from going further along the dirt track. He smiled, led us to our destination only five minutes away, then vanished in a shower of small stones. The outcome, besides my embarrassment, was a good story of my fallibility.

At the Pearly Gates of Heaven, so it is said, you will discover the outcome of your existence. Someone will have kept a notebook of your transgressions and accomplishments. You will be judged. Of course you will likely disagree with the assessment. You will have kept your own ledger of regrets, misdemeanours, sacrifices, and awards of distinction. This island paradise I visited was Eden-esque; it certainly felt like heaven. While there, I talked with a young fellow about the importance of family. He was determined to tell me about how his life changed after becoming a father. He said he couldn’t have anticipated such a marvellous outcome as his crying fragile baby, turning into the boy that he so dearly loved.

For business types, the outcome is only read as the bottom line. The great Hudson’s Bay Company, established as a cornerstone for Canadian commerce back in 1670, recently died. From my point of view it was a case of neglect by rich folks less interested in history and more in profit. The outcome: Bankruptcy. I pushed my mother-in-law around our local HBC in a wheelchair. She commented on the bare aisles and naked mannequins. We both thought that the space felt like a garage sale. Our outcome: A feeling of loss.

On this temporary island of welcomed respite, my wife and I watched the tides filling and emptying a lagoon twice daily. We could gaze out our shorefront window and intentionally develop a new rhythm; one defined by more natural needs and intentions. Time felt less important here, we tended to ignore our digital handcuffs. The inbox and outbox of our manufactured world lost meaning. Our existence in this curious world felt familiar. The outcome of this experience has yet to be fully determined, but there can be no limit to our imagination.

Re: Exist

I find it amusing that an anagram for Exist is Exits. We are living in Existential times, say many articles I read these days. Some headlines scream; “It’s an Existential Crisis!” or “Our very Existence is being jeopardized!” or “Human’s will soon cease to Exist on our planet!” Certainly civilization is in a roiling turmoil, sufficient to make us feel that it’s time to seek the exits of the great theatre of life (the vomitoria of ancient roman amphitheatres come to mind).

But wait! Before we search for that way-out from our own arena, let’s consider together what defines our existence. Hamlet was right when he opined that to be or not to be was the question. I believe we must be, simply because we are. Life is precious, to ourselves and to others. I’ve known folks who have committed suicide. I’ve contemplated shuffling off this mortal coil. What held me back was that the fear of missing out was greater than the fear of what comes next.

My existence is dependent on my thoughts. I am aware of my presence because I feel things. My senses send me signals of pleasure and pain. To be present means to acknowledge the messages being received, even if they are uncomfortable. All things will pass. I can’t always relate to what’s happening around me so I find comfort in the parade. Maybe I’ll join in later, or start my own parade. We are characters in a play of our own making. All the world’s a stage.

When I read stories of people who have disappeared I wonder what their previous existence had been like. I’m going to assume here that they arranged their own disappearance. After their escape, I’ll assume they had a life, somewhere, even though the ones they left behind may do better emotionally by thinking they are dead. The story writer in me wants these vanished souls to have an alternate world; a world free of the hassles from which they felt they had to depart. Imagine being so uncomfortable that you had to get as far away from your current experience as possible. It’s hard to believe that such a disappearing act would be possible in this age of surveillance. Yet, in Canada alone, tens of thousands go missing every year.

There is no doubt that we are in an existential moment in history. The world-wide pinball machine seems to be in continuous tilt mode. Lights flash warning after warning: Climate change, Terrorist attack, War crimes, Political lies, Viral pandemic, Species extinction. Prophets are screaming end-of-days rhetoric. Please wake me up when it’s all over!

Then I see my wife smile at me. I see a sparrow land nearby and tilt its tiny head. A breeze teases the hairs on my arm. I smell a barbecue cooking. I swallow my saliva. I am alive! I exist and my existence doesn’t have to matter to anyone else but me. Each day can be better than what I thought it might be. I’ll never miss out if I hold on for one more day.

Re: York

I’ve learned to pay attention to symbols. I don’t always know their meaning at the time they present themselves but I get a certain pause that tells me to look again. I wonder if I am getting a message from my future self or simply a memory of something. Maybe something like a time capsule where the thought was packaged for future viewing only.

Anyway it might explain why I woke this morning to a nursery rhyme about a grand old Duke of York who had 10,000 men. When I came down for breakfast I was captivated by the way my bride had hung her sun hat over a chair post that had a cotton New Yorker book bag tangling. I continued to stare at the story created by hat and bag and chair. A memory came; of rushing to see my father after learning he was taken to a hospital in Maine. The journey required me to fly from England and catch a Grey Hound bus leaving from downtown New York at 2 in the morning. This mega-city was awake, bustling even, as I sped on foot through Times Square towards the subterranean depot.

I buttered my toast humming a medley of songs about the city that never sleeps: Barry Manilow told of how he survived by keeping the New York City rhythm in his life. Rod Stewart harmonized in a melancholic ode to a girl he hopes he’ll see tonight on a downtown train. Neil Sedaka chimes in to say he loves the place he calls his home. My breakfast ends with me tap dancing with Gene Kelly and his pals in a scene from On The Town; “The people ride in a hole in the ground.”

My English roots mean I’ve eaten sizzling hot Yorkshire Pudding (roast beef is a meager meal without its presence pooled in gravy on the plate). I’ve even been to the old Roman City of York with its magnificently preserved Cliffords Keep and the majestic cathedral York Minster. The latter construction is a massive structure that dominates the city yet the walls have carvings that give the building the lightness of lace. I feel a pull to both Yorks; the old and the new. I would like to live in either city to resolve the emotional tug that comes from anything York-ish.

Picking up the latest New Yorker magazine, I linger with the manuscript in my hands, looking at the cover art, hoping it holds the promise of unravelling the mystery that is symbolism. My love of magazines notwithstanding (the power and beauty I find in words written there) yet this magazine is a flimsy structure despite the heft of the title page font: New Yorker. “This has meaning”

Perhaps I am crossing borders to my Angle ancestors when I speak the word York as in some mystic chant to summon images of hunts for wild boar. The symbolism that draws me to that city; a geographical place but more than that. I wonder if there is something coded in my DNA.

Re: Grey

Some words like Grey get as much attention as a senior citizen waiting in line at a bank. The word Grey/Gray even comes with two spellings, which my computer doesn’t appreciate. I think that gray has more complexity than the colour tone it describes. I’m grey; of hair, of perspective and sometimes of mood. Let me explain.

My hair has grayed slowly. My mom predicted that I would be bald by age thirty, but my hair persisted. I went through a salt and pepper phase but now, at age seventy, there are very few dark strands left on my head. So I am officially a ‘Grey Hair’; a term I used to use with some disrespect when referring to members of committees who’s opinions I didn’t share. Now, I like the way my grey hair lends me the illusion of wisdom, like Gandalf the Grey. I won’t use a hair dye. I used to feel sad when I saw female church elders who had tinted their soft grey locks with a blueing agent. (I quietly nicknamed them Blue Belles to cheer myself up).

Life is filled with shades of grey. Many folk feel that the world is either black or white. Some actually prefer seeing things as either/or. I suppose it makes it easier to decide yes or no. But events or ideas are rarely as singular as that. Taking a hard line on a topic means that the soft fringy edges will get ignored. Darkness and light have spectrums of illumination, tone, and pastel perspective. To me, grey does not suggest mediocrity of opinion or design. I’m quite content to see issues as shades of grey.  When I evaluate things I can sometimes rank them according to priorities, like selecting shades of colour when I am repainting my living spaces. I once painted all the walls in my home a light grey and was amazed how they took on a different colour as dawn moved into dusk. It reminded me of how my dad taught me to watch patiently for a rainbow to emerge through the greyness of a rainy day.

I admit that overcast days can make me moody, yet I tend to do my best writing on a grey cloudy day. In bright sunlight I have an urge to do silly things in a forest or on a beach, but on a hazy, darkened day I can somehow make better decisions. Where I live now, the skies are often tissue white, which is a remarkably happy, less stressful, contrast to the intensity of a cloudless stark blue sky. I remember being surprised when my wife and I previewed our wedding pictures; I hadn’t noticed that the skies were a light ash shade. When the sun set on our lengthy joyous pictorial, the sky behind and above us had exploded with a stunning pumpkin red wash that looked digitally manufactured.

The neutrality of grey can suggest a potential for inclusion. All colours are then complementary rather than competitive. Perhaps we can get to yes more effectively by starting with grey.

Re: Important

At the beginning of every decision making process I ask myself a question: What’s important? Those who wish to defund the police have likely asked that question. If they have, I hope their answer is less about police and more about the wider desire for more appropriate care for the members of the community. I believe policing is important in a community yet so is adequate mental health services, affordable housing and well funded schools. When it comes to a healthy world many things are important.

Everyone believes in causes. We feel it is socially important to give to something. Sometimes we don’t think of ourselves as a good cause. Deciding what’s important is really personal; requiring observation, a solid evaluation and then judgement. We can agree that human lives are important. But which lives? Here is the question for our age and every other through history. BLM highlights not just the importance of one race of people, just as Feminism is not only about the importance of one gender. During COVD19 times some politicians have actually decided that the economy is more important than the lives of a ‘few’ elderly folks. We all are important, to the economy, to our community, to our families, to ourselves.

I’m cursed with these thoughts that everything is important, when sometimes nothing really matters. Aristotle once commented; “Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history.” In my philosophy I’m a forest person so every tree matters. A range of people; Ani DiFranco, Oscar Wilde, artists mostly, have a history of promoting equality in their work. A view that all people and things have import to the world at large is gaining strength, particularly as societies navigate a climate crisis. There is some truth to the poetic notion that a butterfly’s behaviour has consequences far beyond a flight to find nectar. More importantly, human’s must be earnest about their impact on the environment. The question of what’s important doesn’t have to be an either/or listing. Individually and collectively we can create priorities, then set a timeline for action that can have a graded outcome. 

The heading for a series of columns I once wrote for a daily newspaper was called ‘Just Because’. The title came to me when I was walking for no real reason on a circular nature trail.  William James, sometimes referred to as the Father of American Psychology, once said,”We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.” At the time of my short hike, stuck in the mire of self importance, I surprisingly needed to find out what wasn’t important, before I could see what was. I could write, for ‘no real reason’ because sometimes it feels important to write without any expectation of outcome. Sometimes the importance of things can only be determined after the event. 

Like in the film Groundhog Day, perhaps history must repeat before we discover what’s  important. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GncQtURdcE4

Re: Mean

“Everything happens for a reason” is easy to say, harder to believe. Just what do we mean by that phrase? Perhaps we are merely trying to find meaning in what might have just happened to us. We want to fathom the grand meaning of life, yet we don’t have the context to make a reasonable connection. To paraphrase a classic, “If a butterfly flaps its wings in my son’s backyard, I’ll be inclined to go ten pin bowling.”

Imagine a strange scenario: A baby born in the backcountry. Her parents die and she is raised by wolves. She survives, thrives, grows old and dies never having known another human. Did her life have meaning? Surely life can have no meaning without context or connection. We have meaning only when those we have touched remember us and respond to that memory. I think that is why funerals (or Celebrations of Life) are so important. During an end of life event, we get to pronounce what a person has meant to us. As a collective we confirm that the person did not die in vain; that a legacy remains despite the loss. We, by extension, are made significant for having known another and are encouraged to continue our journey.

Meanwhile, I’ve been meaning to write about the word Mean for a while. Sometimes with a word like this it’s hard to cover all the thoughts that bubble up. I mean it! I could go on a rant about how I wish people weren’t so mean to others. Or I could say how happy I was to discover that the mean price of a house like mine has risen in the last six months. Each time I pick apart a word my intention is to find out how it has affected me.

Perhaps intention is key to meaning. When we say we want a meaningful relationship with someone, we are intending to give as much as we get. Reciprocity can add to our understanding of life. It starts by ‘walking a mile’ in someone’s shoes. Yet sometimes after all we do to find commonality and mutuality with another, we must go our separate ways and define a new meaning for our personal path.

Graffiti, like other art forms, is rooted in an exclamation: I exist! All artists use creativity to find meaning. Regardless of an artist’s depth of training or natural skill, their work shows us what they have discovered so far. One of the first ubiquitous bathroom stall etchings was a drawing of a head with a large nose peeking over a horizontal line with the caption, ‘Kilroy was here’. A one-liner, a bumpersticker or a meme all do the same thing: They attempt to crystallize our thoughts on the meaning of life.

Sometimes I have felt that life has no meaning for me. On those occasions I’ve been grateful for the loving souls who have given me counsel to let some time pass. The urgent question, “Why am I here?”, is often solved by waiting patiently for meaning to present itself.

Re: Settle

I settle into my favourite chair as I write this. I like the fact that I chose to settle in this part of the world. My journey, both geographical and metaphorical, was not unlike the first western white folk who settled into their covered wagons to look for newness in a promising land. I wasn’t nearly as bold as the First Peoples who ventured across the Bering Straight either, but I like to think I share their curiosity.

Sediment settles to the bottom through a fluid. That’s a movement that is the result of gravity not of willpower. And that may be why the notion of settling has gotten such a bad rap. I could have had that job, relationship, friend, pet, apartment, lifestyle or meal but I settled for this one instead. The implication is that you took the lazy way out and ended up with something less. Yet those people who seek out a new place to live or think, do so for very definite reasons. It’s a very willful decision to leave what you know for the risk of the unknown. To find a new place to settle requires a gravitas that only comes when options are weighed and hope is filed for another day.

I remember a discussion with my parents regarding my decision to marry. My mother and father had different questions to ask. I brought them comfort with my answers. I felt they basically wanted to know if I was going to find comfort with the woman I had chosen to be my wife. Comfort, security, love, promise, and the idea that I was going to settle down didn’t sound boring to me; it sounded like heaven. I clearly remember my mother rising from the discussion table with resolve, declaring, “That’s settled then.”

Settlements come in all forms and figurations. They can involve formal contracts or the wink of an eye, they can be held in a moment or transcend lifetimes. They can include a subtle willingness to go along for now, or acknowledge a deep acceptance of something that will never change.

The other day after a meal at a restaurant I asked the waiter, “Can I settle the bill please?” My wife always teases me about my formal nature and even this archaic phrase, slipping out of my mouth so fluidly, surprised me. After the meal is eaten, after the words have been spoken, when the party is over, there is an accounting that must take place. Ultimately, things must be settled before a decision to move on can be made.

Sometimes it feels that we are weighed down so much by our grief or our wishful thinking, that sinking to the bottom is guaranteed. Yet a person is not a speck of sediment. We are a complex mix of our past, with desires for the future, trying to make something of our present. We are dealing with daily memories of loss while maintaining a confidence that we can continue to make valid, positive decisions.

Despite the fact of gravity, I believe we can always choose to boldly go.

Re: Infinity

One of my favourite concepts is infinity. I used to tease my students with the notion that if we had a chance to travel in a straight line in space, we would never stop and we would never encounter a wall. In relation to time, infinity means forever. In regard to space, infinity is limitless. Scientists have tried to calculate the beginning of time and space. Referring to this moment as the Big Bang, they have concluded that the Universe (as close a synonym for infinity as I can imagine) was created almost 14 billion years ago. Every year, during this lesson, one of my students would tease me back by asking; “What came before the Universe?”

Because infinity is so incomprehensible we prefer to think in a finite way. Sorting things into boxes brings us a sense of order. Scheduling things on a calendar or in a day-timer app on our cell phones gives us a feeling that when we start something it will have a predictable finish. Thinking in a finite way reduces randomness and gives us the illusion of control. How else are we to comprehend the vastness of time and space if we don’t create within it, a structure?

In relationships we may romanticize the idea that a special union, like a marriage, can last at least as ‘long as ye both shall live’. ‘Forever and Ever’ is how we may conclude a prayer in the security of believing that some things never end. Organized religion and other power structures have helped us to feel calmer about the shortness of our individual lives in relation to the infinite expanse of time and space. We are encouraged to think that our spirits will live on and our earth will last for future generations. However, we all know that someday our bodies will cease to support and transport our essence. There is no practical way, save for Cryogenics, to extend our body’s natural life span. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bedford

The Metis flag is an infinity character on a blue background, symbolically suggesting that a people lasts forever. Indigenous people have an oral history that indicates reverence for the natural and lasting world. Currently, in Canada and elsewhere, aboriginal tribes have gathered to protest against political structures that don’t recognize the sacredness of Earth. When I was a child summer seemed to last forever. I felt secure that water would always flow clean and the land would always grow stuff. I worry that I, along with my white ancestors, have messed up the planet so badly that my grandchildren will inherit an environmental apocalypse.

We are about to begin a new calendar year. We will talk for a while about new possibilities or a fresh start. We may encourage our young folk to believe that their lives contain infinite opportunities. I’m hoping that I will do more than wishful thinking. I am an idealist at heart. Perhaps I’m hopeful in a similar fashion as a grade two student who once said she liked me, “Infinity plus one.”

Re: Woke

Perhaps it’s my need for light at this time of year that makes me feel hyper-vigilant. I joke that I’m afraid of the dark and that has a certain memory of childhood truth to it. I really appreciate the observance by many to string lights around their buildings since it makes it more easily enjoyable for me to get out for a nighttime ramble. In our community we have an annual lighted truck parade that helps to celebrate the light. The swift moving caravan of dozens of vehicles honks its way throughout our streets, piercing the darkness and our eardrums while making crowds of people smile. https://www.ieoa.ca/

The African American word Woke comes to mind and is useful to me as I come to understand our requirement to be alert to life. I feel that being awake to the world around us is a responsibility of citizens. The poet, Ivan Brooks Sr. starts his piece ‘Reasons I Woke Up’: I woke up very happy/This joy isn’t for me alone/But for nearly everybody/Who calls this world home. https://hellopoetry.com/words/woke/

The joy of being Woke is energizing. I love those mornings when I can rise confidently from slumber and just know in my heart that it is going to be a good day. At times like that a song comes easily to my lips, as this one from the film The Sound of Music.

Lit is another word that can be used to express awareness to the joys that life may bring if we are paying attention. I’ve never felt the need to take drugs to get Lit, but I’ve been known to get a buzz from a happy-hour drink or two. When I am Lit I am also Woke to all possibilities. The world is out there for me to explore and I wish to bring it! I suspect that the Three Wise Men of myth and legend woke one morning and got lit by a passionate desire to seek the reason for the star in the West. My favourite carol as a child was We Three Kings. I could picture their quest easily: Three souls, all wise, yet still they searched. They rode with gravitas, perhaps hoping that their gifts would be enough for what they imagined they would behold.

Being Woke or Lit can prove that you are alive. Someone once said: “If Death comes a knocking just hope he finds you living.” We are often in a wakeful, yet numbed state. What a pity, since soon enough our days of consciousness will end. To be alive is to be fully awake, with our light shining brightly, clearing away the darkness. We must be wise to ourselves. We must look for the wisdom, the wakefulness of others who might act as our guides.
We can be turned on, only after we have tuned in.