Author Archives: ij

To Be Canadian

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I spent Canada Day at the mall.

But I had on my Canada Day shirt, not a t-shirt but a shirt actually sewn by my daughter, white maple leafs on a red background, and I wore it proudly. There were a few people at the mall in red and white, but not many. You have to go to the events to really see them…I know that from experience.

Normally I go to Fort Rodd Hill, a historical part of Vancouver Island, where there are ceremonies with representatives from all levels of government, a 21-gun salute and lots of birthday cake and activities. But this year I was sans my partner, so I ended up at the mall instead, doing some shopping for an upcoming family wedding.

To tell you the truth, my favourite part of Canada Day is not the local celebrations or the barbeque or the cold beers and flag waving. It’s watching new Canadians receiving their citizenship. My family are all immigrants one or two generations back, the nearest one to me being my mother, who became a proud Canadian in the 1950’s. She immigrated from Denmark after the Korean War, and decided that she loved Canada so much that she wanted to stay here.

She often joked that she knew more about Canada than Canadians did because she had to go through some rigorous testing on her knowledge of Canadian history and politics before she could get her papers. She was proud, very proud of her adopted country, and she worked hard to learn the language and remove her Danish accent.

When I see families who have come from other countries under very difficult political or socio-economic circumstances, choosing this country because they know that they can make a better life…well, I tear up pretty good.

They know the truth about how good we have it here much better than we do. It’s easy to take it for granted when all we have known is freedom and opportunity. There are a lot of young people right now who could learn a lot by spending a month or two in an impoverished or politically oppressed country. I hope they grow up to learn the real value of the country they live in. Canada. 

I know there are other wonderful countries in the world. But today is Canada Day, and I am unabashedly joyful and grateful to be here.

Happy Canada Day!

IJ

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The Grassy Knoll

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The Grassy Knoll.Image via Wikipedia

Conspiracy theories probably go back to the beginning as humans first roamed the earth with their knuckles a half-an-inch off the ground. It seems that we have been suspicious of forces at work against us since we were first able to imagine that they could be.

I became aware of the conspiracy phenomenon back in the ’60s when John Kennedy was shot…that whole “grassy knoll” story where people swore there had to be a second shooter and maybe it was the mob or the CIA or Castro that did him in. And every few years, they’d pull out the old, grainy Zapruder Film footage once again and use increasingly sophisticated equipment to listen to the gun shots and watch the poor guy being blasted in the back of the limo, his hands clutching his throat and then his brains being blown out. What an awful thing for his family to have to see time and time again. I hope they didn’t watch.

But people are obsessed with these conspiracy theories and can’t just seem to let them go.

More recently there were dozens of YouTube videos posted after the tragedy of 9/11. One after another had a dark, moody voice-over provoking us with question after question on top of manipulated footage of the plane making a beeline for the towers or the towers collapsing. The planes were apparently “fake” and the government actually blew up the twin towers and all of the other towers too so that they could blame it on terrorists and use it as an excuse to invade Iraq. Well, that’s what the conspiracy theorists say.

There were so many of these videos created by so many people, you started to wonder. A few celebrities even became involved and started to speak out at public gatherings and meetings. What is it with our trust in celebrities? Just because they say something is true, that gives it more legitimacy? Honestly, they are often flakier than the rest of us.

When the Oliver Stone movie JFK came out, people started to wonder yet again whether or not there had been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, because this was Oliver Stone, for pete’s sake! There were others who came out in support of the 9/11 conspiracy theory, including Charlie Sheen and Rosie O’Donnell.

And even though Dan Brown howled “my book is FICTION!!”, some people insisted on believing that all of the information in his “The Da Vinci Code” novel was fact. You just can’t win.

There is a conspiracy theorist in my back yard. He’s a retired radio jock who runs a local broadcasting and media message board, and every now and then he posts photographs of contrails in the sky over Victoria and insists that they are a conspiracy by the government to secretly make us breathe chemicals for some kind of experiment. Or something like that. Apparently, these are “chem trails” not “contrails”!

Every now and then he posts new pictures of these “chem trails” left behind by larger aircraft as they fly overhead.

At one point, an airline pilot piped up on the message board in response to one of these tirades, trying to explain what contrails actually were, but this conspiracy theorist wasn’t fazed. There is a Wikipedia site that explains the chem trails theory in greater detail than I care to go into.

He has posted other suspicions about global warming and left-wing conspiracies. They’re all out to get us! 

And as it turns out, research tells us that those who believe in one conspiracy theory, tend to believe in another, and that it is very much tied to that age-old ‘man’s search for meaning’ idea. It reminds me of a line from the movie “Signs”, where one of the characters says something to the effect “people either see signs or they don’t”. Well, this guy is seeing loads of them.

And there are lots of theories out there to get the over-active imagination juices stirring!

The Apollo Moon Landing Hoax is one where people believe that the moon landing was actually created on a movie set faked by NASA and some other organizations. The Holocaust, of course, is considered by some to be a Jewish conspiracy. And who doesn’t believe in the UFO’s at Area 51? There’s everything from conspiracies about the Vatican Secret Archives to the theory that “Paul is Dead”. Paul McCartney, that is. Oh, and who REALLY shot Kurt Cobain?

Much to my dismay, as I was researching conspiracy theories to write this post, I found that the latest “victim” is Michael Jackson. Well, I guess I wouldn’t have expected any less. The poor guy had enough weirdness going on around him in his life, it’s not entirely surprising that his death would only stir up some more. It’s unfortunate that the whole thing feels so unresolved because that only fuels the conspiracy fire. Hopefully, for everyone’s sake, when the results of his toxicology come out it will answer some questions.

But I think that as long as human beings have over-active imaginations, they’ll find another incident or persona to create a mystery around. In fact, I think I’m starting to see chem trails over that grassy knoll shot above…do you see them? Look at it long enough and you will 🙂

IJ

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The Lesson of Big Thunder Mountain

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Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland Pa...Image via Wikipedia

When my youngest daughter had her first day at Disneyland on her 11th birthday, she was afraid of pretty much every ride. We figured that the trip might end up with one of us staying with her while the rest enjoyed all of the Disneyland traditions like Splash Mountain and the Haunted House. She’d always been a little nervous about rides.

But then she discovered Big Thunder Mountain Railroad…now that’s not necessarily a ride for wimps either, but for some reason, she decided to try it, and after that, we could hardly get her off!

I rode with her on one occasion, grabbing tightly to the bars of the car as we whipped furiously around the mountain, when she finally suggested to me “Mom, just let go.” I looked over at her and there she was, my normally nervous little girl, with her arms stretched high up over her head riding that thing as if she was born to it. She told me that it was a smoother ride if I just let go of the bars. And so I did. And she was right.

I often think of that moment when I’m struggling with my own life. We are, every day of our lives, riding a roller coaster between pain and pleasure. Most of the time it is a relatively quiet ride, but one day you might say to yourself “life doesn’t get better than this” and the next you may find out that a diagnostic test has uncovered something that could be cancerous in your body.

“That’s life,” is what we say to each other when something becomes so obviously out of our control. And when you think about it, much of life is out of our control. The only thing we really have any control over is our reaction to what goes on around us. So as I learned that day at Disneyland, I have to remember to let go rather than to grasp too tightly and try to control what happens simply because I can’t.

Grasping on too tightly to anything will ultimately only bring pain and unhappiness.

The truth is that nothing stays the same, not even those most majestic Rocky Mountains. Every object, every person, every moment, has its time to shine and then is no more. That seems a very sad thought, but when we learn to let go rather than desperately clinging to something, it’s a much easier ride.

What is even more interesting to me about human nature is the tendency to cling to the bad stuff too, and how we will punish ourselves again and again for something that may have happened a long time ago. I catch myself doing that from time to time. It’s as if I am right back there in that moment again, feeling everything I felt then as if it were right here in the present. Whether it’s anger, humiliation, pain, fear…it feels as real as it did when I first experienced it. Now why would I do that to myself?

The mind is a funny thing…when it is undisciplined, it just flies from thought to thought until it finds a train that it is attracted to. Once it is on that train, it is held captive by the emotions and can’t get off. Well, it can, but only if we direct it to. During the day when we are busy going about our business, the mind is too occupied with the tasks at hand to ride the train. But at night, as I have recently been experiencing more than usual, the mind can become a virtual wasteland of fears, anxieties and worries. Because you are not occupied and the room is dark and quiet so there is nothing to distract you, your mind goes on the rampage. Yes, I know, you’ve been there 🙂

When you think of it, however, this is just another form of clinging although it is perhaps not as conscious. If you are able to step back from your thoughts for only a second, you can stop the train in its tracks. And when you do, you can redirect your mind to something else.

I give speeches. Yes, I know that sounds completely silly, but that’s what I do. Even though anyone who knows me knows that I have performance anxiety in my “real life”, when I’m lying in bed in the wee hours and need to distract myself from those hellish thoughts, I will imagine myself in front of people giving a speech on something that I know something about. And sooner or later I will bore myself to sleep.

Now, I don’t always succeed. If I get too bored too quickly and I’m still awake, then that monkey mind of mine will be unleashed again. So I have to work at it. Sometimes, instead of giving a speech, I will win the lottery. I will spend a delightful time imagining all of the people I’m going to share my winnings with, and put myself in the seat of that Mustang convertible riding free and easy.

Oddly enough, even in my night time fantasies in that convertible, I never speed.
That could end up a nightmare…

IJ

…oh, yes, and by the way this summer my youngest daughter who is mentioned above, turns 21, and I turn 52. Our birthdays are 4 days apart…so the two of us are renting a Mustang and driving to the Okanagan 🙂

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