Fortune favours the bold, said the classical Roman poet, Virgil. It is easy to live life meekly. In fact, our culture encourages meekness and self-effacement. We are told that we shouldn’t speak too much of our accomplishments, or the people we know. We are told that we should fit in and conform. What’s most surprising …
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Life-Love 96: Missing someone
We spend so much of time focused on the future. We are told to keep our noses to the grindstone, our eyes on the prize, and make sure that everything we do has future-focus. While this attitude and approach to life can assure that we will expedite the achievement of our goals, it can also …
Life-Love 95 – College life
As a society, we really are enamoured with power and control.On a grand scale, our leaders speak of controlling deficits and borders, our national image and crime. Closer to home, we think a lot of what it means to be in control of our lives. We worry about being manipulated or not realising all of …
Life-Love 94: Moments of Stillness
Ours is truly a world of movement. We race around in our cars, run around our places of work and then go home and surf the web, while chatting away on social media, texting our friends and talking on the phone. There is nary a moment of respite, a moment when we are not turned …
Life-Love 93: Principles versus rules
We have been brought up in a culture of bookends and facts. For many of us, growing up or growing older in urban or suburban environments, everything was structured. We watched tv shows on a box that was always the same dimensions, we went to piano or ballet lessons, which lasted exactly thirty minutes or …
Life-Love 92: Rainy days
I just ran in from under the rain – my hair still has beads of waters that roll down like cool surprises onto my ears and cheeks and forehead. I’ve just driven home after an outing at the grocery store, where I picked up a bâtard French loaf, some veggies and a sac of my …
Life-Love 91: Transport through memory over calvados
I went out for dinner tonight at a place in Hamilton, Ontario, where I live, called Le Parisien. It was a lovely evening with several of my dearest friends. We spoke of books and fashion, politics and philosophy, food and pop culture and were served by an elegant, tall thin man with an arch manner …
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Life-Love 90: Reaching out to understand another
It is easy to judge others. Alternatively, it is easy to be a relativist, and not put any demand on anyone, expecting that others will never judge you. Both ways of thinking are reinforced by an education system that privileges talking over learning, knowing over wisdom. The thing is, once you step over the threshold …
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Life-Love 89: Telling a good story
We are a storytelling society. We love to watch the flickering lights of television open new world to us – exotic places that we have not visited, or people enjoying lifestyles that are not a part of our reality. We listen to and watch the news on social media, getting all of our favourite topics …
Life-Love 88: Seeking instead of receiving
We are so powerfully inundated with messages through traditional and social media, that we sometimes can be swept away by the flow of words we stand in the middle of. Communication has become like air – something we breathe in and exhale, without noticing that it is keeping us alive. Just as air quality affects …
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