A Ship without a Captain

A second wave of COVID-19 is growing internationally, nationally and provincially. Regionally cases are on the rise as well, which stands to reason. No one is immune to this virus or its insidious impact on day-to-day living but some are experiencing its consequence far more severely than others, so far.

 As with most storms, until folks are actually in the eye of it and experiencing its full force and impact, they do not respect it, even if they do fear it. Some will mock and jeer it. Some will cower and be crippled by it. Some will defy it and run out to confront it. Human responses to conflict are pretty predictable in that respect; they’re not all the same, unless and until uniformity and conformity is encouraged, enforced and sustained by the majority of those folks in any given society.

 That’s where Law arises as a tool to make as many as possible decide that being as much the same and behaving as much the same as possible is in everyone’s best interests. Those would be the Group Rights that have increasingly been challenged and minimized by the birth of Individual Rights in the past several decades and their expansion.

 Those Individual Rights are now challenged once more by the need for conformity to Group Rights interests and the clash between them is the David & Goliath struggle of our Age; precipitated in large part by a pandemic that can kill millions of folks indiscriminately if not checked and make both sets of ‘Rights’ completely mute.

 I won’t be here in 50 years but I would like to know how it all turns out. At a time when new cases and deaths are rising internationally, nationally and provincially as a second wave begins to unfold and gain momentum, political leadership is encouraging re-opening the economy, sending folks back to work and children into classrooms within the next couple of months.

 I see a perfect storm brewing and a lot of imperfect leaders putting on their blinders. Will they be held accountable for crimes against humanity if they are, by these choices now, sending the masses to slaughter? How will those masses cope if the health care system, the education system and the supply chains collapse just as the summer ends and we all start heading into the fall and winter seasons again? I certainly hope the Harvest is a good one this year!

 There is a large gap in the messaging between what I am seeing and reading from international bodies like the WHO and what my federal and provincial government leaders are messaging, and I am not okay with that. The interests of the Greater Good deserve better!

 If the economy needs shutting down and basic incomes distributed for 2 years, so be it. IMO that will still be far less costly for the rich and far less divesting for the masses of poor in the long-run than losing a significant percentage of the total work-force in coming months and all of the knowledge, skills and experience they possess with them for coming decades.

 It feels today like I’m on a ship with no Captain tacking into a very imperfect storm.

What I Like About Me

The inside voice can be a cuttingly critical one at times. In the past few years there has been much to process and deal with in life and it certainly has taken its share of shots in and at my psyche for past choices made and paths followed. I believe it is important to be introspective and self-critiquing periodically in life, but it is equally important to know what one likes about oneself and one's situation and circumstances as well.

There have been no shortage of external critics and critiquers frequently eager to offer their impressions over the years and had it not been for knowing what I like about me it would have been easy enough to be submissive and conceding in accepting and being shaped by perceptions of an identity and personality not of my own design.
Part of maintaining and sustaining, as well as building and enhancing, on what is good is to focus on the positives and not the negatives. Accordingly, it's time again in life to take stock of what there is that I like about me.

I like that I value life and the living of it as an awesome adventure and an amazing journey. I experience it's abundant beauty in person by making time in my schedule every day to walk with my canine princesses and seek out what is beautiful, inspiring, or just neat in its own way. Routinely in all four seasons we have adventured together to parks, lakes, mountains, oceans and islands on highways, back roads, trail systems and bodies of water to experience a life enriched by the majesty of nature.

I like that I value everyone and believe that ALL human beings are equal in worth within humanity. I also like that I have a high sense of empathy for others and am not afraid to champion and defend under-dogs and the oppressed. I believe strongly in equality and 'Justice' and in all that is expressed and implied in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I like that it matters to me to be inclusive with my love and appreciation for the wonder of creation that exists within every living being and thing. I like that I am quick to be a good Samaritan or to lend a helping hand to those I see in a situation of need as well. Those occasions in life bless me with the chance to put a smile on MY face for good deeds done.

I like that I am physically strong and intellectually persistent in seeking out and achieving new heights of knowledge and understanding about life and everything it comprises with every breath I take. I like that I feel passionate about unique and interesting aspects of life and its existence in community with others. I also appreciate that I am able to pursue my interests with veracity and tenacity, routinely accomplishing what I set out to discover, learn about and achieve along the way.

I like that I have a good moral compass and a non-violent disposition and nature, but also have the physical size and grey matter to avoid, deter or defend against most threats to my well-being and best interests. I like that I have a gregarious and jovial nature far more often than not and am able to laugh at myself as well as others. I also like that I have the capacity to feel and experience the whole range of human emotions through different situations and circumstances experienced as a part of living. Happy, glad, sad and mad are at times all a part of the ride and offer each their own innate lessons, virtues, benefits and blessings, in encompassing the various parts of my being.

I like that I am wise enough to know that life is about change and capable of perpetually learning how to adapt to survive and thrive through it. I like that my instincts and impulses are most often nurturing and that I feel compelled toward tenderness and protectiveness of all that is endowed with vulnerability and innocence. I also like knowing that I can and have responded appropriately and successfully in life in defusing, preventing, and resolving many dangers, threats and conflicts with confidence, competence and composure.

I like that I value music and the arts, and that I find pleasure in creating and sharing my passions and talents to please and enrich life for myself and others. I like that I feel humble about the skills and abilities I have as well, and that I am able to admire and learn from those who I discover on my journey are better or brighter at one thing or another. I like that I have come to understand with age and the plethora of insights I have enjoyed on the journey to now just how little I do know and how so very much more there is to discover, learn and come to understand still.

I like that I feel a predominant desire to be kind, considerate and respectful toward all living beings and achieve that ambition the vast majority of the days and nights in my life. Above all else, I like that I can like and love myself and sleep well at night knowing that on the whole I like the man that I am.

Life And The Living Of It

In August of 2011 my father passed away at the age of 84, following a two-year battle with cancer. My Mom, at 84 herself now, has had some health scares in the past year or so and my eldest brother, Rob, has been battling serious ailment for the past year also. In August of 2015 I had to put down my dog, Kaiah, after her health declined rapidly. She was just 4 years and 10 months old when her end came. This past spring my first dog, Jazmin, declined in health and went to roam the after-life off-leash park on June 12th, 2017. She was just shy of 10 years old. I have come to know grief and the enduring of it through the waning and departure of these loved ones and primary companions in my life these past 6 years and the weight of it on my soul has been heavy at times. Over the half-century mark myself now and being the youngest of six siblings, with a large extended family, ensures that for however long my journey continues endings are likely to be more prevalent than beginnings. It is the curse of aging to serve witness to and to experience waning and associated sufferings routinely in daily living. It is saddening and even maddening at times, but it is the cycle of life and the living of it all the same. 

Professionally life has treated me harshly over the past few years as well. Dishonesty, nefarious agendas and maliciousness by some industry associates and board volunteers caused untenable working environments, tarnished my many years of good works, thousands of hours of my devoted and competent service, and smeared my lengthy track-record for good management, leadership and sound judgement. I made a few mistakes along the way in managing the politics of it all as well that ultimately provided the daggers for my foes to fling. At times I have been partly infuriated by circumstances, partly disillusioned by them, and partly saddened by them, but most days now I am just resigned to the reality of it all. I have journeyed through the ebb and flow of many thoughts and feelings, reminding me through the introspection travelled that I am an emotional being.

It is a truism of life that it can be lonely at the top and I most certainly learned that lesson in spades. With no allies or good friends now aiding in the service of my best interests, "it is what it is" has become my go-to mantra, anchoring my consciousness in the present. Each new day I persist with positive energy and a determination to right the ship by over-coming the adversity of the past and rising above my detractors and adversaries. Time will tell if that is yet to come. All I can do is continue to strive toward it. 

Through it all if there is one thing I have come to know best it is that truth does not always prevail. Life is neither fair nor just and far too often evil triumphs over good. Be that as it is, I refuse to abandon the high road, whatever the consequences may be. For better or for worse, I will not succumb to the urges for vengeance nor will I allow the grief and anger I have felt to make me a lesser man than I know myself to be. I can only proceed proudly in my life by accepting what is and doing what I can to achieve brighter days ahead. Life is not always what you make of it. Life is also what you allow it to make of you.

Despite the challenges, injustices and depravities experienced, for so long as I am above the grass, I will remain confident in my value and worth. I await new opportunities in days, months and years ahead with the knowledge that I continue living my life by honourable principles that are worthy of the journey I am blessed to still be on. When the end does come, a day or decades from now, I will sleep eternally knowing that I was not perfect and earned no sainthood, but on the whole I was a good, honest, compassionate and kind-hearted man who did the best I could to serve others very well. That, from my perspective at least, will be a life well-lived. 

Rumours - The Bastion Of Ignorance

“Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please”

                                                                Mark Twain

It is a perpetual paradox that in an Age of abundance in knowledge and communication means to attain it there seem to be so many who prefer not to acquire its genuine insights in the formation of their opinions and judgements. "Facts" are far too frequently dispersed from the mouths of folks who are least in the know with respect to first-hand accounts and experience, yet the roots of such diseased discourse permeate an air of legitimacy in impressionable intellects that can be staggering in their propagation. "Hey, did you hear....", perks the ears with titillating pronouncements that all too often are born from malice and ill intents, or sometimes simply the misguided proliferation of misinformation. It is a truism of life that one should always be cautious in casting stones, lest boulders boomerang back to crush the caster.

In an era of cynicism and distrust and a world that seems governed more by passion and prejudice than by genuine reason I am reminded of a poem I came upon in University more than a quarter century ago that reeks with pungent poignancy and prophetic wisdom for contemporary times:

                                         “God give us men. The time demands

Strong minds, great hearts,

Truth, faith and willing hands;

Men whom the lust of office does not kill;

Men who possess opinions and a will;

Men who have honor; men who will not lie;

Men who can stand before a demagogue

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking;

Tall men, sun-crowned men, who live above the fog

In public duty and in private thinking.”

John G. Holland

Anger: Humanity's Achilles' Heel

"There is a harassed, knife-edge quality to daily life. Nerves are ragged and...tempers are barely under hair-trigger control. Millions of people are terminally fed up." [Alvin Toffler -The Third Wave]

It is no revelation that life and the living of it is a journey through a kaleidoscope of emotions that are coloured from a plethora of internal and external stimuli. Anger, associated with the colour Red on the spectrum, is unquestionably the most perplexing of the bunch intra-personally and inter-personally. In both spheres of its existence it is frequently experienced and yet seldom is it rationally considered and constructively examined. Most often it is nervously avoided, dismissed as irrational, or confronted in kind. Rarely is it understood and only exceptionally is it appreciated and regarded as reasonable. Yet, it is as natural a human emotion as happiness or sadness and no less logical and predictable in the circumstances that trigger it. It is prevalent in micro and macro group dynamics in familial, communal, societal and global arenas on a daily basis and yet it is shunned as a subject of genuine discourse and on the whole treated as a taboo topic. As natural as it is to the human condition and as frequently as it transpires, it is phenomenal how often it is stratified as inappropriate, intolerable and unnatural. 

Akin to the billions of galaxies that comprise the known Universe, anger is in equivalent abundance and has comparative complexity in its representations and manifestations in the human condition and in human inter-relations. Scores of millions have prematurely met their demise through the anger inherent in the hostilities of wars globally and regionally, as well as through genocides of antiquity and contemporary times. An estimated 45 million soldiers and civilians lost their lives in the Second World War alone, which wasn't really only the second global conflict; it was actually the sixth in a series of global wars dating back to 1618 and the start of the Thirty Years War.

The Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism in the years since 1948 have added scores more to graveyards the world over. The genocide in Rwanda and numerous other racially motivated massacres along with the killing of scores more by groups like ISIS in the name of religion have added immeasurably to the astronomical body count of human beings annihilated by the anger of others.  From archeological excavations to the study of primates and throughout the annals of mankind there is ample evidence that anger has been an ever-present aspect of the human condition and the experience of life since the dawn of our kind. 

Anger is hardly the sole purview of the military arms of nation states either; indeed it festers and ferments perpetually in all societies and cultures throughout the world. It knows no borders and is shared alike by all races, cultures, political communities and socio-economic classes. It is also neither gender nor generation specific. Adversarial and penal justice systems and institutions have been invented as a means to address it; laws and policies have been written in efforts to manage and curtail it; libraries are filled with research and commentaries on its root causes and the plethora of its consequences; and professions are devoted to responding to it, counselling about it, as well as medicating to try and tame, control and overcome it. Through it all, anger demonstrates its profound resilience. If one has ever witnessed a school yard fight, a bar room brawl, a boxing match or a hockey game when the gloves drop to the ice it's apparent anger can even be socially accepted, championed and cheered on feverishly. 

In communal, workplace, familial and domestic environments anger is also abundant and routinely vented. Political discord, racial tensions and even the outcome of sporting events routinely give rise to protests, riots and mob violence toward people and the institutions and entities of their making, as well as to the destruction of personal and public property. A massive body of research and courses of study focus on conflict resolution between managers and subordinates,  between peers, as well as between patrons of businesses and the employees that serve them. Careers are created and sustained solely devoted to offering psychological elixirs for managing the disgruntled and behavioural strategies for defusing and placating ire. Families and their domiciles are no less affected by anger and its expressions than any other stratum of human existence and can be as volatile and as decimating, or even more so, to individuals within them as between nations and their populations. Spousal abuse, sibling feuds, corporal punishment, and both physical aggressions as well as psychological tormenting are common place experiences in the lives of billions of relatives generation upon generation. Animals, and especially family pets, are even highly susceptible to being the subject of the wrath of Homo Sapiens of all ages, races, creeds, religions, sexes and sexual orientations. 

As this brief summary highlights, there seem to be as many words in language to describe anger in human interactions as there are occasions of it. There can be no doubt that it is humanity's Achilles' Heel. No human being is immune from it nor to it; it is an intrinsic part of the emotional arsenal naturally existing in everyone's psyche and within the interactions shared with all others. In my own life and its plethora of experiences I have been the subject of it, the perpetrator of it, exposed to it and collaterally affected by it more times than I can possibly recount. At 54 years of age, if I multiply the number of days I have been breathing by, conservatively, a half a dozen instances of anger affecting my psyche on any given one of them, it's in the range of 120,000 instances marked by the presence of anger in my lifetime alone. It is claimed that there are 60 times the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy as there are human beings on our planet. I would wager humanity's collective experiences with anger and expressions of it would dwarf that star count by astronomical proportions. 

In the various employment roles I have fulfilled through the past four decades in the restaurant & hospitality, security & loss prevention, health care, and golf & recreation industries I have been exposed to and affected by anger frequently. On numerous occasions daily I have also been responsible to manage and endeavour to resolve anger and its myriad expressions within amongst patrons and employees alike, as well as within myself. I believe it fair to say that through observation and osmosis from perpetual immersion in hostile interactions and environments I have not only been a student of it but also have accumulated substantial experience and significant expertise in managing and defusing it. Through all of it I have pondered and debriefed on its occurrences, studied its impacts on individuals and societies and quested to understand how best to combat and overcome it. 

After decades of living with it, studying it and addressing it, I have arrived upon one good answer to it, and I am not lightly saying so in a tongue-in-cheek manner. The answer is simple and indeed also natural; quite seriously, everyone with anger management issues should be smoking weed. 

Before discarding my hypothesis as silly or outlandish, it is appropriate to understand how I have arrived upon it. I have one particular life experience to site as an example, but I also have dozens upon dozens of others I can recount that are similar to it. Collectively they have all convinced me over time that Cannabis is in fact nature's remedy for combating and minimizing the impact of agitations and the expressions of anger arising from within the human psyche. 

In 1992 after graduating University I took a job as Night Manager of the Edmonton Inn, a large hotel property across the street from what was then the municipal airport. Within the hotel was a large Country & Western themed night club call Esmeralda's, a sports bar, a casual lounge and a couple of restaurants, along with several large banquet rooms and meeting spaces. It was then a busy and well frequented property with many conferences and conventions held there and numerous sports teams in the city for tournaments housed there as well. Every weekend and a lot of week nights as well Esmeralda's was filled to its 200 or so patron capacity and on a lot of nights angry patrons affected by alcohol became involved in physical altercations. As I recall, there was a Bouncer staff of at least six to eight strong guys on shift every night to manage whatever conflicts arose, and on frequent occasions the police also had to be called in to deal with the most unruly and agitated of patrons.

On one particular weekend the Edmonton Folk Music Festival was being held at Gallagher Park and many of the musicians and their road crews were staying at the hotel. The banquet rooms were utilized as a 24 hour Hospitality Suite for them to come and go from as they desired. At any given point on those Friday and Saturday nights there were upwards of 800 to a 1,000 people in those banquet rooms and the air was a bluish-grey haze of Pot smoke. Over those two nights there were no less than a half dozen serious fights that spilled out of Esmeralda's and into the parking lot, four separate instances requiring the police to be called and a couple where ambulances were required as well. Conversely, in the banquet rooms where up to five times the number of patrons were socializing while passing around joints there was not one single confrontation or fight amongst those in attendance all weekend long! 

I have worked the doors and on the bars of a lot of drinking establishments as well as supervised and managed the floors of a lot of cabarets and banquet rooms for wedding parties and golf tournaments over the past four decades. Time and time again I have observed the vastly different behaviours between those who swig back alcohol and those who suck back joints instead. The verdict is an easy one; alcohol consumption encourages and magnifies anger, while Cannabis use suppresses and eliminates it. Society is gradually coming to understand its benefits as a treatment for anxiety and PTSD in more recent years and more and more people are coming to appreciate its calming and euphoric influences on the psyche of its users as well. I dare say you will never find a group of pot-heads smashing all the glass in a neighbourhood bus stop or filling up Emergency wards in hospitals because of bar and parking lot brawls on most any given weekend across the country. Instead, you are much more likely to find them laughing it up and chatting while sitting in small groups in a park or on the beach, or while playing music and dancing, alone or together, in a care-free state. 

All of this is not to suggest that everyone needs to smoke Pot to suppress and eliminate anger, but for those who are challenged by control of that emotion it is to say that Cannabis can be a positive tool in its management based on my life's experience with it and around it. Anger is humanity's Achilles' Heel and a natural remedy for its treatment should not be illegal to possess and consume in this country or any other. That fact that it is today in many places is quite simply counter-productive, absurd and unnatural. Humans are always going to medicate with one substance or another. It makes sense to allow them to do so legally with a natural plant that actually achieves positive results and lessens the negative impacts arising from  humanity's propensity toward expressing the nastier qualities of its nature.

The Politics of Popularity and the Dubious Nature of References

It is said that, "nice guys finish last", but what assumptions are inferred within that adage? Firstly, who gets to judge the totality of any individual to justly pass sentence on whether they are nice or not so? Secondly, what are the criteria employed in the assessment and at what stage in a person's existence is the measure taken and the label set? Thirdly, where is the authority derived that establishes the standing of anyone vis-a-vis anyone else that enables the claim to be made that a position as "last" has been cast in stone for all eternity? Like many other adages encountered in life, its premises don't progress coherently to its conclusion without significantly more queries presented to test its hypothesis. 

Recently I saw Steven Page perform in a reasonably small concert hall. At one time, as lead singer and co-founding member of the group, Bare Naked Ladies, his popularity would have filled a large stadium. Now a small concert hall is only two-thirds full. Yet, for those who were present he no less performed well and received a standing ovation that preceded a three song encore. Earlier in life he was married to my first cousin, and they share three boys, growing now into young men, together. When Steven had his troubles back in the day he lost his wife and his band, along with a fair share of respect inside and outside the Clan as well. As I sat watching him sing and play, and enjoying the evident talent on display, I pondered on that history shared in a small way with the musician and song writer on stage before me, who I have never actually met, much less talked with or come to know in the slightest way. I found myself reflecting less on that debris from the path of the soul behind the voice filling my ears and more about the powerful influence collateral knowledge and insights can have. It struck me how genuinely prejudicial and unjust they can be in shaping perceptions and attitudes toward fellow human beings who are truly hardly known at all by the impressions other folks and their experiences pursued on our memories and psyches. Steven is most certainly not the same person he was two decades ago. While some of the songs he performed were written back then, they too  have been shaped in unique ways since their origins to the present day. They may sound similar but are not exactly the same as they once were or as they are popularly remembered. 

There are some folks who do not have a high regard for me at all either, based on our history and interactions together, as well as based on the circumstances associated with our inter-relations. There are others who regard me quite highly employing the same influences. Sometimes I have been a nice guy, indeed I believe that to be so far more often than not, but there is no question that sometimes I have not been nice as well. I feel there have been good reasons for that on those occasions, whether the subject of it felt likewise or, as is most often the case, not. The reality is that no one acts and reacts identically in every circumstance and with every person one encounters on the journey through life and through all of its stages. To do so would be quite unnatural actually.  

These thoughts served to give clarity to an intellectual conflict I have had for decades over the use, and reliance upon, references in the hiring process, whether as the employer or as the prospective employee. I have often felt apprehensive about allowing them to shape in any way a potential employer's impression of me, or in relying on them when hiring someone to work for a company I was responsible to employ someone at.

Despite how long one person has been acquainted with another or in what environment they may have come to acquire a measure of familiarity with another, what authority should they rightly have to influence the totality of the future based on their piece of the past? Despite the longevity of the association in that past or the title or stature of the referencer, how can there be any certainty of their motivations for what they say?

A great deal of authority is granted to a referencer to speak about another without ever knowing much of anything, if anything at all, about the referencer's true knowledge, integrity and competency, and yet they no less have significant power and influence in the hiring process. I wonder how many fantastic people have not gotten a given job because of a marginal reference from someone who was inadequately informed, ill-informed or malicious in their opinions, and conversely how many unworthy people have been hired into roles because someone over-stated their true nature and value?

There can be little doubt that personality politics in one form or another impacts on the assessment any referencer gives. Accordingly, there can be little certainty that they genuinely have the requisite holistic experience with any given person to justify allowing them to impact the future for any person based on their subjective thoughts and insights from perceptions shaped by pieces of the past. For better or worse, the outcome is inherently biased. 

All of this points to the reality that popularity and unpopularity are political states and as such must always be considered as suspect when judging the worth and value of another human being. It also points to the reality that reputation is not static, nor should it ever be perceived in that manner. Life is about change and no person is immune to it. Impressions informed by the views of others should never be allowed to taint first-hand experience with any individual.