Category: Writing a Book

The Wizard in Us

I got to thinking about the film The Wizard of Oz recently.

Its’ message is that if we but look, believe and dig deep enough, we all have the heart, brains and courage inside of us to accomplish our dreams.

The movie is also really good at showing us how many nefarious forces and distractions can get in our way to achieving those dreams.

Even when we realize that Dorothy was only having a bizarre dream after being konked in the head in a tornado, the movie’s message of self-belief, perseverance and resisting evil are universal.

As The Cowardly Lion, Tin Man and the Scarecrow learn, the qualities of love, courage and brains we need to move forward in our lives are already inside us.

My current insight and thinking is that we are also the wizards, too. Or we became one. We had to portray a false persona that was more than we actually were just to survive and succeed.

“Faking it ’til we made it, “ we often used to say. That was the way many learned to accomplish our dreams.

Along the highways of Florida, billboard after billboard promotes the seemingly magical powers of lawyers to gain vast sums of money for their clients. these clients have inevitably suffered some misfortune usually in a car accident that was someone else’s fault.

It is the same on Florida TV. Ad after ad after ad with clients expressing their undying gratitude to this lawyer or that for the hundreds of thousands and often millions they gained in compensation thanks to Lawyer Dan.

These ads are smoke and mirrors. Obviously, the ads don’t feature the clients of the lawyer’s losing cases. And so, with every new ad or billboard, the message is drilled into the consciousness of potential future accident victims everywhere.

“Dan’s the man. We don’t worry cause Dan will save us if we get in trouble.”

How desperately people seem to need saviors and heroes. It is a hangover of childhood when Mommy and Daddy constantly hovered around to protect us from every bump and bruise.

It is a hard day when you learn those omnipotent parents were only human beings just like everyone else. They just happened to be the hand we were dealt in the parenting department.

On the threshold of adulthood, we begin to become wizards ourselves, just like Lawyer Dan. We learn to breathe fire and brimstone and promise vengeance and restitution and show the world how big and scary and serious we are.

Moreso when we know we aren’t very big and scary at all. Which explains a lot about bullies.

An advantage of getting older is that we can start to shed the persona we forced ourselves to become to make a living and keep body and soul and likely a family together.

I see it in peers getting older. They are more open and relaxed about a lot of things. Trifles that used to bother them a lot matter less and less. The very fact of being alive becomes a more important priority. Especially as they begin to watch friends leave the planet.

We become wise. We realize that aspects of who we once were in large part concoctions. Just like the wizard of Oz admits his own powerlessness to Dorothy and her friends, we begin to let go of our own camouflage.

It opens a path to living life as who we really are. A gift of aging we are told with which I tend to agree.

So let the potential future car accident victims put their faith in Lawyer Dan and believe he is looking out for them and will have their backs. They will find out soon enough whether their particular fact pattern justifies their faith in the lawyer’s “magical” powers to restore them.

Or Jesus Christ will rise from the grave one more time to save their souls. Or a politician will improve their lives and save them from misery as s/he has promised s/he will.

I much prefer watching the daily drama of life unfold than I did when I was stuck behind the paywall. I can watch from a distance and keep my own counsel.

It has been enough to try to save my own life, let alone the lives of countless other victims. I make no such boast now.

As a young person, like many of those accident victims, I desperately hoped there was a savior out there. It turned out there were no wizards out there qualified to do the job.

As a young person, like many of those accident victims, I desperately hoped there was a savior out there for me.

It would have saved me a tremendous amount of painful work and effort. But that’s the inherent payoff for learning to grow your own self up.

Like the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man learned, achieving what you want in life is strictly an inside job.

Work Party

After today, I can say emphatically what a work party isn’t.

No cake, no candles and definitely no balloons.

Slog work. But fun and useful and productive slog work.

Guest bedrooms are dressed and settled. Mostly.

Paintings were hung. Cabinets were arrayed with my husbands’ blue china and other pretty things. His hand-woven Iranian carpets were laid down in various rooms.

The oak display cabinet was filled with my husband’s airplanes. I won’t call them models (though that is what they are) as I don’t want to suggest they are child’s toys.

They are models of the planes he flew as a pilot, both in the military and as a commercial airline pilot. They mean a lot to him. He doesn’t fly any more these days.

Today was a day of consolidation and integration. Me and my work party made strides in pulling together the collective remnants of two lives lived separately until only recently.

These strides are both a physical and emotional milestone for me.

It has been hard for me to make a “home” and make it stick. I moved around a lot when I was younger under the delusion that by changing spaces I could ditch my demons.

It took a long time to learn that didn’t work so well. I have owned houses and heaven knows, I tried to turn them into HOMES. But it has always been difficult for me to land and stick.

Not an abnormal reaction given a perpetually unstable childhood. So the quiet satisfaction of putting a house together that aligns with my vision is unfamiliar. Pleasant but unfamiliar.

So with the willing hands of two ladies from my church and the equally willing effort of two good friends we tackled a chores list that was a page and a half long. We got through almost all of it.

Things I’d hoped would happen – like my husband’s planes proudly on display – were accomplished. Gratifying.

I see how much my decorating taste has been influenced by my Asian travels. And by long days sitting in leather and oak soaked libraries surrounded by books. And Masterpiece Theatre on PBS.

Alistair Cooke would be perfectly comfortable and at home in my current living room.

Friends visit from the frigid North next week. I’m almost ready. I look forward to their company.

I am equally enjoying getting ready for their visit.

I am finally pulling my living environment together. It has taken awhile for me to settle in to the process of home-making.

It has more creative elements to it than I had imagined. Can we talk about the process of choosing wall colors? I went navy blue on one room. I middling mango in the other.

If I could only convey to you completely how risque and out of character these bold color choices were for me. And how well they work!

I didn’t really appreciate the whole house decorating process much before now. Certainly not as much as I do now. I was more of a dabbling dilettante. But I’m changing.

I’m just learning to appreciate a lot of things that were either foreign to me or out of reach when I was younger.

I may even doing some baking in anticipation of their visit. Nothing says loving like something from the oven, I’ve heard.

Holding a successful work party with friends and fellows was not something I expected.

And I certainly didn’t expect to enjoy it quite so much.

Keep living, keep learning.

Happy Imbolc!

One of the pleasures of living is to learn something new about something a whole lot of people have known about practically forever. Imbolc and the Irish, for example.

The Irish celebrate Imbolc today (February 1). So much so that it has been declared a bona fide national holiday. And I’d barely ever heard of it.

Except for a regular email nod in honor of this and other annual Celtic occasions from a dear cousin who knows well about such things.

Imbolc – I’ve only recently learned – is an ancient festival celebrating the change of season from winter to spring. Or more accurately, it is the halfway mark between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

Which is a good thing to clarify as that change of season malarkey would not go down at all well with our neighbors who are still in the vise of winter’s frigid grip up North today.

It is a day that nudges us to connect more deeply with nature, as well as to embrace the old Celtic and Christian traditions in Ireland.

Imbolc is also one of four cross quarter day festivals that were spread between the winter solstice, spring equinox, summer solstice and autumn equinox.

The other cross quarter days are Beltane (1 May), Lughnasadh (1 August) and Samhain (1 November) marking the beginning of the ancient Celtic New Year. (Linked in case you want to look them up, too.)

Ways to celebrate Imbolc (from https://www.letsgoireland.com/imbolc/)

  • Fire and light are commonly associated with Imbolc so one of the most traditional ways to celebrate would be to mark the occasion of Imbolc with a fire or candles. 
  • Make your own doll out of straw, rushes, oats or equivalent is a creative way to mark the traditional celebration. There are different videos and tutorials available online that can help guide you on how to do this. 
  • It is also possible to create a small altar for Brigid with candles, perhaps a bowl of milk or some woolen items to symbolize the connection with sheep. 
  • Bake the traditional bread of Bannock, which was baked over the hearth and commonly eaten on the eve of Imbolc may be another appropriate way for you to mark the occasion. 
  • If you want to continue being creative, then you could also attempt to make a Saint Brigid’s Cross and hang it in your home. Instructions on how to make one of these traditional crosses are available here along with some other traditions. 
  • Both the Goddess Brigid and Saint Brigid have strong associations with healing, especially with water. A visit to a holy well or any available stream or river may be a suitable way for you to mark this occasion and be part of your own purifying ritual. 
  • If you happen to be on the island of Ireland around Imbolc, why not take part in one of the Imbolc events there such as the Biddy’s Day Festival or the Imbolc International Music Festival? Other festivities are held at other locations outside of Ireland as well, such as the Imbolc Festival at Marsden in West Yorkshire in England too. From: https://www.letsgoireland.com/imbolc/

Imbolc – like any national holiday worth its salt – also comes with an array of blessings. Handy any time of the year but especially lovely and hopeful on this day celebrating the crossroad between winter and spring.

There are many goodwill blessings for Imbolc as it is a time of joy, rebirth, reawakening and purifying. Here are a few examples:

May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day,
May songbirds serenade you every step along the way,
May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that’s always blue, 
And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.

May the blessings of light be on you,
Light without and light within,
May the blessed sunlight shine on you till it glows like a great peat fire.

And this homage to the only Irish female saint, Brigid.

St Brigid’s Blessing 

May Brigid bless this house wherein you dwell
Bless every fireside every wall and door
Bless every heart that beats beneath its roof 
Bless every hand that toils to bring it joy
Bless every foot that walks its portals through
May Brigid bless the house that shelters you

More Irish blessings can be found here. 

There is so much to read and learn about Imbolc. So much that I couldn’t possibly do a deep dive here. But I will explore on my own and will likely also look more closely at those other cross quarter celebrations.

I quite like the meaning and traditions behind Imbolc as I understand them. Could be the start of my own annual rituals and tradition.

My Irish-born great-granny Mary Shannon would be pleased.

Overextended

A happy life, I’ve learned, is all about balance.

A happy life usually has equal parts of joy and stress and in manageable measures.

There will always be challenges in the tasks of daily life.

We take care of ourselves. We create and check items off our “to-do” list. We pay our bills. Send congratulatory birthday messages. Take the garbage out. Eat.

But then there are those other times. The times when stress is greater than joy. When the tasks that need to be done match the complexity of Santa’s gift list. (How DOES he do it?)

Lately, I find myself in Santa’s shoes – metaphorically.

I’m setting up house and the process seems to have gone on ad infinitum. That is an exaggeration but you may relate to the feeling.

When the budget report is due at work. The term paper is due tomorrow. The school bake sale is on the weekend and you haven’t even picked up baking supplies yet.

The end of the month means all the bills have to be paid on time or face penalties and interest charges if they aren’t. Is there enough in the account to cover everything?

It is cyclical. I think that is god’s trick to keep us all moving forward. I mean, if everything were taken care of for us and we had nothing to do or plan for, what could we possibly do with all of our free time?

Part of being busy for me is personality and character based. I love being busy. It is something of a creative exercise for me to plot and plan and devise what new projects I can take on.

Whether those projects are focussed on my hubby or in the kitchen, the garden, the house, or the world at large, I am always happier when I have tasks to accomplish.

And happier still, when I have the means to accomplish those tasks. That means the health and energy to tackle them. The money to acquire the necessary components for the task(s).

If I’m honest, overextended for me is a way of being. I say I don’t like it when stress is out of control and I am wildly out of balance between happy time and fretting. But who created this imbalance, I am compelled to ask?

Er, me? Okay. Yes. Guilty as charged. It may be that overextension has become a habit of mine. I raised two children as a single parent. Those were days of fairly nonstop overwhelm.

Speaking personally, no one advises you exactly how much time, attention and hard labor (well beyond the initial birth pushing to get them here) that babies and children require.

That is likely an unspoken agreement on the part of humanity to ensure the population keeps replenishing itself. Because if everyone knew at the outset exactly what the whole child-rearing/parenting gambit was going to entail, it might discourage people from having them.

In this current slice of overwhelm I am living through, I am quietly seeking solutions. Prioritize to start. What has to be done? (And what are the consequences if it isn’t?) What do I want to do? (And why? Personal satisfaction or to please someone I love?)

Or, frankly, the third block on my priority list is that it doesn’t matter. If I ever get around to doing this thing, it likely won’t matter but I’ve always wanted to try it and wouldn’t it be neat if I could? (Rock tumbling and polishing comes to mind. Don’t ask. A childhood hangover.)

So time to make a new priority list. Time to carve up those tasks according to my little chart of need/want/maybe. Time to engage the help of others (when and as possible). Time to give myself a break.

And while I’m at it, I’m going to give myself a hand and an “attagirl” for what months of attacking “to-do” lists has already helped me achieve. I don’t normally promote looking backwards as it usually accomplishes little to ruminate about the past.

But occasionally, when you need to take a breath and a breather to reorient yourself to what you need to do, it is good to remind yourself of what you have accomplished.

Likely at a time when you were in a place very much like the place of overwhelm you are trying to dig yourself out of today. Remind yourself of what’s been done to date and how far you’ve come.

Sip and savor that cappuccino. Read a little from a best-selling new novel between tasks. Sit in the sun and appreciate the garden you planted that wasn’t there before you came along.

It’s an important strategy boost to reenergize yourself for the tasks ahead.

I believe it is called balance.

Faking Adulthood

Boy, did I try too hard when I was young.

When you operate in life with low self-esteem, you are always trying to prove yourself. Constantly and to anyone who floats into your life and consciousness.

You are always trying to get people to believe you are worthy of their attention, love, care, inclusion.

When you have low self-esteem, this is very hard to do.

It is hard to sell someone on something you don’t really believe yourself. It is hard when you are filled with dark imaginings and can only dream of having light and love in your life.

I am not fully conversant in how one goes about building self-esteem. I believe it is an individual journey. But I know a lot about tearing one’s self down and tossing it in the junk heap.

It’s rather simple actually.

You just have to stop caring about yourself.

For years, I went out into the world with the firm belief that I didn’t matter. To counter this belief, I was very serious about just about everything. I needed to instill gravitas where I had none.

I loaded my pockets with metaphorical beach rocks. I was very serious. Very grown up. when I was still a child.

It was an odd form of self soothing and comfort. If I didn’t matter, I reckoned, then whatever hurt someone committed against me would barely register on my own internal emotional pain meter.

It did on some level, of course. But the felt impact usually wasn’t strong enough for me to stop what I was doing (or what was being done to me), stand up, turn around, face the perpetrator and simply say, “No. I will not be treated this way.”

I shudder at the irony of how simple that would have been. How other girls could do it without blinking an eye. The mothered daughters.

But that was my concocted game face. I wasn’t like “other girls” so didn’t need (or deserve) what they took for granted. (More another time on how feeling “special” creates a weird sense of entitlement and license.)

When my self-esteem started to develop, a lot of bad things stopped happening and started turning around.

Wayne Dyer famously said: “You teach people how to treat you.” My life started turning around when I decided that I deserved better treatment than I was accustomed to. I was the author and the pen.

It took practice and courage but, eventually, it worked like magic. Such is the trajectory of healing and growth. Glad I am here instead of still being there.

Imagine how validating it was to discover Aldous Huxley felt similarly in his youth. We are advised to walk lightly in this Earth. We are of it but we are also spiritual entities of light and love.

If we but allow those qualities to represent us in our day-to-day life.

Avoid the quicksand.

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.

Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.

Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.

Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.

Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.

When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.

No rhetoric, no tremolos,

no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.

And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.

Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,

trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That’s why you must walk so lightly.

Lightly my darling,

on tiptoes and no luggage,

not even a sponge bag,

completely unencumbered.

Aldous Huxley

(Book: Island [ad] https://amzn.to/3SeAC9P)

Fun, You Say? Maybe

If I have a kindred spirit I look to most often among dead writers. I cleave toward Dorothy Parker. She was raw and incisive in her observations and commentary.

Parker was famously known for her wit and sharp repartee. She also talked – and wrote – about sex more than her contemporaries, especially women.

That set her apart. To approach the subject of sex and relationships with a certain derring-do endeared her to me.

I haven’t yet found the courage to talk about sex as I experienced it in my lifetime. Too heavy and loaded in certain memories and affect.

I admit to a certain enviousness in Parker’s ability to write teasingly and often sardonically about men and sex and love.

When asked to use “horticulture” in a sentence, Parker snapped: “You can lead a whore to culture, but you cant make her think.”

Of high-brow college girls, she quipped: “If all the girls at Vassar were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

A high-brow form of Mae West was Parker. She taunted and teased and treated the subject matter with both a sense of familiarity and emotional distance.

It is not surprising to me that her own romantic and love life was less sizzling than her prose on the subject matter. Sayin’ – as I’ve often said before – ain’t doin’.

Such life experiences often scan better in the written word than they do in reality. I can relate.

Herewith, her poem reflecting on trysts and other manifestations of love and sex at the dawn of its disappearance.

No doubt, like Parker says, some men I knew were a lot of fun.

Good for a good time if not for a long time. Others, not so much

The Little Old Lady in Lavender Silk

I was seventy-seven, come August,
  I shall shortly be losing my bloom;
I’ve experienced zephyr and raw gust
  And (symbolical) flood and simoom.

When you come to this time of abatement,
  To this passing from Summer to Fall,
It is manners to issue a statement
  As to what you got out of it all.

So I’ll say, though reflection unnerves me
  And pronouncements I dodge as I can,
That I think (if my memory serves me)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

In my youth, when the crescent was too wan
  To embarrass with beams from above,
By the aid of some local Don Juan
  I fell into the habit of love.

And I learned how to kiss and be merry- an
  Education left better unsung.
My neglect of the waters Pierian
  Was a scandal, when Grandma was young.

Though the shabby unbalanced the splendid,
  And the bitter outmeasured the sweet,
I should certainly do as I then did,
  Were I given the chance to repeat.

For contrition is hollow and wraithful,
  And regret is no part of my plan,
And I think (if my memory’s faithful)
  There was nothing more fun than a man!

Dorothy Parker

What A Day

Technologically challenged today.

I merely tried to reboot the internet.

This should not be hard in this day and age.

And it wasn’t hard. It was darn near impossible.

I recently read this New York Times article. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/06/technology/smartphone-addiction-flip-phone.html

A reporter decided to switch out her smartphone for a flip phone.

In this day and age, that is courage, my friends.

It is a burgeoning movement. Well, burgeoning may be a stretch.

But more and more people are trying to opt out and do a tech and smartphone detox.

The article below in Reader’s Digest magazine was published a couple of years ago.

Same theme as the NYT article. But an even stronger and an even more positive result.

So the irony of this is, I, of course, copied the link to paste it in this post. Not once, it seems but four times!!

I’m done for today.

The dead then slow internet connection left me to write this post late in the day.

I am sharing the burden of my tech frustration with ya’ll.

Which I realize isn’t really even fair.

I am sure you all have plenty of tech and smartphone related frustration stories of your own,

I Quit My Smartphone—And It Changed My Life
https://www.readersdigest.ca/health/healthy-living/i-quit-my-smartphone
I Quit My Smartphone—And It Changed My Life
I Quit My Smartphone—And It Changed My Life
I Quit My Smartphone—And It Changed My Life

Lying Fallow

Here’s a post I wish I had written. It is about the importance – in fact, the necessity bytime – of doing nothing. It is a familiar concept in an agricultural context to let a field lie fallow.

That is, leaving something alone to rest for a period of time to let it replenish itself and regenerate. In the words that used to be popular in social parlance a few years back, making time to “sharpen the saw.”

Many people work themselves to the edge of, or even into actual, burnout. Many don’t feel they have any other choice. Single parents come to mind. And young men in a hurry.

But overworking can be a trap. I have learned that my effectiveness diminishes the more spent I become. I end up going through the motions but without much output or productivity to show for it. I am effectively treading water and sometimes, hardly even that.

Many people work consistently and doggedly toward an ephemeral or ideal goal when they don’t have to. A relentless and unbroken cycle of nonstop work can set us up for devastating downturns or even long-term failure.

The cycle is usually easy to identify. We work like crazy for months, even years, until something in us or around us breaks down or stops working. Our health. A marriage. Kids. Without taking deliberate “fallow time” to regroup and replenish ourselves, this dysfunctional outcome is pretty predictable.

So I seized on this essay by Julie Peters when I found it about the value of doing nothing. I was compelled to share it. I am sharing it because I needed to hear it. Maybe you do, too?

“I’ve been spending a lot of my evenings lately sitting at home watching Netflix.

Not very romantic, I know. On these evenings, after long days of meetings, teaching, yoga, meditation, writing and all the rest of it, I think, shouldn’t I be doing something more productive with my life—or at least more interesting?

We live in a world that privileges work, productivity, and speed, so when I take the time to do nothing in particular, I feel guilty. I am not carpe-ing any diems here. So why do I feel such a strong need to sit on my couch and watch TV shows from the early nineties?

I think it’s for the same reason growing fields need to sometimes lie fallow. Farmers will occasionally plough a field that normally grows a crop like corn or wheat, and simply not seed it for that growing season. The blank, unseeded space is a “fallow field.”

During this time of apparently nothing, the soil is regenerating, and restoring its fertility so that by next season it will be ready to grow. The farmers don’t treat the soil, inject it with fertilizers, plant better seeds, or poke at it with a magic wand. They just get out of the way. 

We want so much to have control over our lives, our health, and our happiness. In the yoga and wellness communities, we have lots of extra tools that we can’t find in conventional medicine. So what do we do? We constantly mess around with our physical issues and mental health—at the expense of the simple, humbling medicine of just getting out of the way.

A yoga teacher friend of mine had a pain in her shoulder, and she had learned all these fabulous techniques to help to release it. She was stretching it, strengthening it, rolling on it with a dowel, lying on golf balls, anything she could think of. After months of incessant pain, she finally went to see her doctor about it who asked, “Have you let it rest?”

We are a culture of human doings, not human beings. We are not in the habit of taking time off to let the body and mind do their mysterious internal work. Have you ever tried going to a coffee shop alone and drinking the coffee—maybe just looking out the window? You feel like a whack-a-mole lifting your head in that sea of noses buried in smartphones, newspapers, and laptops.

It’s hard to trust that just because you can’t see growth or change doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. My writing, for example, benefits greatly when I leave it for a few hours to think about other things.

Ideas come to me while I’m walking the dog or taking a dance class. Giving my instincts a chance to talk to me passively can be helpful. Sometimes it’s also a little scary: if I give myself the space to think and feel properly, I might discover that I need to change something.

So sleep late, watch a dumb movie, stare out the window, or go for a walk. Taking the time to lie fallow, whether it’s a few minutes at the end of the day, or months of quiet after a stressful or traumatic event, can regenerate your creativity, energy, and whatever else you may not even know that you need. Trust your fallow field, and it will be ready when the growing season comes.

Julie Peters

Pablo Neruda Said This

I agree with him.

“You start dying slowly;

if you do not travel,

if you do not read,

If you do not listen to the sounds of life,

If you do not appreciate yourself.

You start dying slowly:

When you kill your self-esteem,

When you do not let others help you.

You start dying slowly;

If you become a slave of your habits,

Walking everyday on the same paths…

If you do not change your routine,

If you do not wear different colors

Or you do not speak to those you don’t know.

You start dying slowly:

If you avoid to feel passion

And their turbulent emotions;

Those which make your eyes glisten

And your heart beat fast.

You start dying slowly:

If you do not risk what is safe for the uncertain

If you do not go after a dream

If you do not allow yourself

At least once in your lifetime

To run away from sensible advice

Don’t let yourself die slowly

Do not forget to be happy!

~ Pablo Neruda

Views Differing

If I needed reminding about the power of ideas, I got it yesterday.

I have long been irked by the lack of civil discourse between political parties on opposing sides of the policy and values fence in my current place of residence.

Unnecessarily hot – often hateful – and somewhat reminiscent of fights among teenagers in a school yard. Equally impotent except that views held by adults have more currency and shape political systems.

Yesterday I was discussing the relative merits of the Canadian and US health care systems. I was born in Canada. My values were shaped there. I benefitted my whole life from free health care when and as I needed it.

I explained my view is that we encourage social stability and suppress violence by providing for the least among us in society. Sure there will be abuses of the system.

But in a country like Canada, I believe we collectively accept it is a necessary cost. (I won’t argue the current state of health care in Canada. Or lack thereof. That is a whole other blog post.)

I decried the story I once read of a young man in his twenties who died after falling into a diabetic coma because he was parsing his insulin use due to the cost. I was appalled that anyone should lose their life for lack of health care.

My American friend has an opposite view. “People should die,” he asserted, “if they can’t afford health care. It is a business not a right.” It would be more than fair to say our views diverge sharply in this regard.

This is someone who does not appear to have had any significant financial or other upheaval from life setbacks that may have altered his point of view.

That said, I appreciated his candor. Even though the attitude astonished me. There was a lot of ensuing discussion about personal responsibility with which I agree. But I know the trap of addiction and am lucky enough to have overcome it.

Otherwise I may well have been one of those who succumbed to the vagaries of my disease due to an addiction I could not overcome.

That conversation cemented my view that capitalism is the key driver of values for many Americans. Sadly, however, there seems to be a paucity of awareness of just plain wrong-headedness about what the term “socialist” means. Which is what a lot of Americans think Canada is.

I was reminded of the term “confirmation bias” whereby people seek out and accept only those views and people who are aligned with what they already believe. I am pretty sure I do the same.

But I find value in trying to get my head around what shapes and drives alternate opinions. What is cooperation and growth but compromise based on mutual respect for each other’s opinions, even if we don’t share them ourselves.

I am unlikely to be swayed by someone arguing the merits of living off roadkill or bush meat, for example, but I get that some people in other cultures do.

I am not going to try to change anyone’s minds about what they believe. Everyone rationalizes their POV according to their own needs. Missionaries all over the world have tried that tactic for centuries with varying degrees of success and usually at a very high cost to the colonized.

And that said, while I may respect their point of view and entitlement to it, I am unlikely to accept a dinner invitation from the roadkill proponents any time soon. Okay, never.