My 5 secrets

Yesterday marked my first year back in Canada. It's not a huge achievement. All it took was me doing what I do best. Living life, enjoying life, and generally being awesome. But besides all that there are a few things I've realized since coming back. To keep things simple, I'll list them in point form:

1. Being able to call yourself Canadian is a privilege that should not be taken for granted. We are a people with a history unlike any other. Although there we share similarities with other countries in the ways of capitalism, politics and colonialism, we have made this country into one where nearly anybody can come here and feel welcome. Which leads me to my next point...

2. You have to work hard to be a good person and have a good life, no matter where you are in the world. When I'm in Canada I have the benefit of being a part of the greater majority. I have rights that are given to me by my constitution, and I have the ability to give myself a good education and a good lifestyle. This isn't the case when you're living on the opposite side of the fence. Being a part of the 'other' is tough mentally, and a person has to secure themselves in their own identity if they are going to live a full and happy life in a place that is not familiar to them.

3. Moving back with your parents when you're an adult who has lived alone so far away from them is tough, and should only be done with great caution. Moving back in with my parents after living away from them is really, really difficult. Studying what I study, and having the experienced so many things outside of their understanding has created a distance between us. I love my parents and would do anything for them, but at the moment we both have to be careful. We have our own ways of living, and the most important thing we do for each other now is to compromise. If you're moving back in with your parents, you're now roommates, and that relationship is different.

4. The world is a confusing place, but underneath all the superficial layers that make societies work, people generally have to deal with similar responsibilities. In every first world nation the people living there have to take of the same things. Rent, utilities, food, friends, family, and everything else are constants that are unavoidable no matter which country you are from or you are in. Everything else is your own baggage that you have to take care of yourself, sometimes with the support of the people around you. In reality although the details of our baggage might be different, a lot of times the essential points are the same and anybody can sympathize with you, and vise versa.

5. No matter where you are in the world, there's no point in doing anything if you're not going to have any fun at it. Being interested is important. It makes all the difference between just living and living life. When a person studies, they should do it in a way that they enjoy. When they go out for a bike ride they shouldn't look at the next hill and hang their head, they should look forward to the downhill ride that's waiting on the other side. Perspective is what makes all the difference here, and everybody should be careful to keep in mind how they look at the things they do.

United Way's Why Race? Running around Calgary.

I love being me. I have learned how to enjoy my life and how to make the best of it. And those five secrets I just let you in on might help you someday as well. I hope you turn them over in your mind and find the same amount of excitement in your own life that I have found in mine.

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So many metaphors.... Where life can lead you

Lately I've found it hard to anchor myself. My life is constantly changing, becoming a nearly ominous beast that charges ahead without any regard to myself, while I struggle with pathetic determination to keep up with it. It weaves this way and that, like a rabbit attempting to avoid the eye of the hunter, and the hunter is Failure. The constant fear of failure drives me. It forces me to take the plunge, all the while keeping my toes outside of my comfort zone, and as it does so life never stops providing me with opportunity.

Since my last post I heard back from my university about two particular opportunities that my life laid its attention on. I have been accepted in to the Co-op Education Program (basically interning at whatever company will have me) and I was offered a position in the English Honours Program (which effectively voids any chance I had at taking the camping course for credits). What that all means is basically that I'm taking initiative. I'm sure I'm reaching right now, but I might compare my feelings about my situation for next year with my grade four report cards. In the first half of the year my teacher would write comments like "Understands the material well!" or "Is an engaging and interesting class contributor!"; my report card in the latter half of the year was marked with much red ink and read like I was steadily sliding into academic ruin with comments like "What happened? Constantly loses focus in class, grades slipping."

I feel like I'm on the academic cusp. The point in university where things will either overwhelm me, or just whelm me, and one of two things will happen. Either I'll make it through to the end and tether the beast that I set free in my first year, or I'll crash and burn and fail. Either I will become that speedy and ambitious life-rabbit, or I will embody the determined and destructive Hunter Failure (yes, he is now a character with a full name).

I always tell people pessimism has never helped anybody. Vive Optimism! Next year is going to be one of the greatest of my life!!

Comment and let me know, where have you been letting your life lead you?

Identity, Perception, and Belonging

I work at a gas station part-time. My duties are to greet customers with a smile--although sometimes my greetings are coupled with either a straight face or a grimace, depending on the time--ask them how much of what grade of gas they would like, follow up with, "Car wash? Oil check? Washer fluid?" and then finish with a squeegeeing of all their windows. Fortunately, I have one of those personalities where conversations start easily, and I often find myself getting to know my customers rather well. I have a few regulars now, after months of seeing them on the same days at the same times, and we call each other by name. My relationships with these people came about by the gradual sharing of aspects of ourselves and of our lives. There's Gorgeous-mom-gym-goer who drives the BMW, and with whom I don't often have lengthy conversation but who I know has a daughter who practices gymnastics who had just competed in her first competition last winter. There's Dodge-mini-van-mom, who guessed my field of study at school solely by being perceptive to my manner of speech, the words I use. There's W (I won't give his name here) who works for a gas company. He always comes in early in the morning on weekdays to buy a pack of smokes and to fill his travel mug with coffee. He only just warmed up to the fact that I like a conversation, and although he's another one of those quiet types, we get along well and have grown to look forward to our shared morning ritual. I feel that I know these people and know them better than most would, and the reason why is because I'm only a fleeting existence in their lives, someone they see twice a week and with whom they can unload a few of those raw feelings that they hide so well from the people who are closest to them.

It's interesting how people often feel more comfortable opening themselves up to strangers rather than their friends or family. We're more likely to openly display our identity to someone we just met and will never see again, while during the day we often guard certain aspects of ourselves, but rather than guarding our identity, it might be better to say that we impose labels on ourselves that determine just how much we are meant to show the world. This isn't an inherent characteristic of the human condition,we aren't born this way. Most people consider the naivety that comes with being young to actually be its greatest beauty. As we grow and perceive society, what society teaches us is that there are certain things that are accepted, and certain things that aren't, in everything. While in a great many ways this is a good thing, our identity still becomes not what we are, but what we aren't; the 'other', to borrow a term from post-colonial theory (but one I consider to be applicable to nearly everything else), becomes what defines us. And then we attach terms to characterize those abject traits of our being. 

I'm almost certain I could quote the thoughts of Dodge-mini-van-mom when she was guessing my major. I'm sure that she was thinking, "This young man works at a gas station, has a beard and long hair, but he doesn't speak like other kids his age. He must be an English major." The slight difference between me and the rest of my generation defined me. We, all of us, do this everyday to ourselves and to others; it is a condition that has been hammered into us by our societies. It is a skill that allows us to judge people, a skill that always begins with how a person looks. It is inescapable. It is an iron clad rule we follow in the act of existing. The more a person becomes aware of it, the more difficult it is to change, and it determines how we see everything in the world. 

Me being me.

I might sound like I'm ranting, but I tell you that I'm not. The determination of identity is a cloud that does, in fact, have a silver lining, although it may be very thin. Dodge-mini-van-mom made me realize something that I had a hard time accepting since I came back from Japan. My state of mind had, for months, been I'm different. I can't relate to anybody. How can I ever belong? I was closing myself out, labeling myself as disconnected from everyone else when I should have been seeing my differences differently. Perception becomes key here. It is perception that determines change. Perception is a key node in the web of existence that lets us quantify and identify the same thing in different ways. I hadn't thought of that till later, but after Dodge-mini-van-mom had left I stopped and changed my thinking. I found something about me that I could use to build the foundation of my existence anywhere in the world. I am eloquent and intelligent. I am an English major. Suddenly my identity just became a little more clear.