Derby Story

I have a new hat. A derby, which is a hat with a lot of personality. And it’s added something to my life. An accent, an opening, a challenge? All three and more. I didn’t know how much I’d wear it, but I took it out of the bag as we left the store and I’ve worn it almost every day since. 

The hat makes people take notice, and that gives me the desire to wear it, and a competing desire not to. It’s one of those swords that cuts multiple ways. Because it grabs people’s attention and declares that there’s something special, or fun or interesting going on. And I don’t necessarily feel prepared to live up to that.

When I first started getting the extra attention, it caught me off guard, and I often turned away from it, avoiding eye contact, not acknowledging the looks. It was like when someone mistakes you for someone else. They call out, they break into a loud smile, and you know you aren't who they think you are. To avoid the embarrassment, I was pretending not to notice them noticing.

But I didn’t avoid eye contact for very long, because it didn’t reflect what I really felt. I love this hat. I love how it feels and how it makes me feel. And how is that? Proper is one word. I feel proper in my hat. Cool and comfortable and just right. Not cool as in hip, though some people take it for a hipster’s hat. It doesn’t make me feel ‘with it’. It makes me feel like I’m in just the right place and have everything I need.

And so, feeling that, I started to relax and smile. I figure that the good feeling might just translate, it might communicate. After all, it makes me feel good to see someone wearing something unusual that I like. As I started to smile more, people started to speak to me. “Nice hat”, “Love that hat”, ‘What a cool hat’. ‘I haven’t seen a hat like that in years!’ And sometimes, a little conversation followed. Where did I get it. Where can they get one. Is it a bowler or a derby….. 

And a lot of people would say, “I couldn’t pull off wearing a hat like that.” Which of course I understand, because that’s the story of the first few paragraphs. A hat like that is something you feel you have to live up to. There are expectations that go with it.

But after awhile, as I became more comfortable with my derby, as I wore it day after day, I spoke to them about how it felt to wear it. I told them, “Of course, you can pull it off. You don’t have to sell the hat. The hat is gonna sell you. All you have to do is be yourself. And smile.” Which is curiously true.

I never bought into the notion that ‘the clothes make the man’. And I don't get fashion at all. But my derby makes it clear to me that, not only does what I wear affect how others see me, it affects how see myself. I can’t deny it. In my derby, I feel like an accented me. I feel like I’m presenting something of myself, rather than hiding in my anonymity. It’s a way of being more personal with the world.

I get compliments on the derby almost every day . And quite a few curious or friendly looks, nods and smiles. It’s even drawn a snicker or two; can't ever please all the critics, I guess. But that's only a small annoyance. And worth it to break through some of the stranger-to-stranger iciness in this city I so love.

Encounters with Past and Future

Now and then, I run across an old client, someone I worked with years before. I’ve spent most of my working life in social services, and much of that with youth ranging from 13 to 20 or so. And because youth grow so quickly, when I meet one I haven’t seen in awhile, the change can be remarkable.

My work has been in schools, where I focused on drop-out prevention, in group homes for runaways and throwaways, and sometimes in detention centers or halfway houses for those ending periods of incarceration. So they’ve mostly been young men (occasionally women) whose lives have been full of hurt, failure and disappointment.

Youth have the reputation of being difficult to work with, because they have so much energy and emotion and they haven’t developed the skills to manage or even understand them. But these are some of the reasons why those of us who’ve focused on youth work find it so rewarding. All that energy and emotion is the mark of a person in movement, going through change. And it’s easier to help a moving, growing person find direction, than it is to generate motion in an older person whose direction is set or who perhaps hasn’t moved at all in years.

Social workers can be as judgmental as anyone, though we try not to be. And, especially in my early years, it wasn’t unusual for me and my colleagues to decide who was on a positive course and who wasn’t. This one, we’d say, was hopeless, but that one was going to make it. This one never listened and didn’t want to do better, but that one had a good heart and just needed a chance.  And these are just the kinds of lazy judgements that my occasional encounters with former clients have helped me to stop making. At least to try and stop making. I don’t know that the human tendency to judge and predict is ever put to rest.

I have two, glaring examples. Two young men whom I worked with in the same group home at different times, both alienated from families that lacked the wherewithal to provide the basics of a secure and loving home, both high-school aged and Black. I’ll call them Kevin and Eric.

Eric was a hell-raiser. He was very angry. He blamed everything that happened to him on someone else. He was so entitled and impatient that even positive interactions quickly went downhill as soon as he had to wait for anything, or if the slightest obstacle presented itself. It was as though he was always looking for a fight. You couldn’t criticize him, or even advise him, because he interpreted anything like that as an attack. And he was very intelligent, and had comebacks for almost anything said to him. He exhausted everyone who worked with him and alienated anyone who tried to do something for him. It seemed that he was always on the verge of exploding and he constantly got into fights and arguments with the other kids, who mostly feared and avoided him. We all expected, even predicted, that Eric had a hard road ahead. His anger and his selfish motivations seemed to foreshadow problems with the law. It was hard to imagine him ever succeeding in work or in school.

Kevin was the opposite. He was quiet and even-tempered and easy to engage. Not only did he respond well to counselling, actually testing suggestions made to him and digging down into the feedback he received. He actually sought out staff when he had problems. He was very self-aware, and took responsibility for where he was, the mistakes he’s made, and what he’d suffered, even to the point of sometimes down-playing the unmet responsibilities of others. He actively discussed his options and the future he’d like for himself and didn’t seem to hold any unrealistic expectations. And, he was empathetic, often sharing and showing concern for the other youth he lived with. All of us who worked with Kevin though very highly of him. It seemed that he was primed to flourish, as soon as he was able to find himself in a stable, nurturing environment.

From my preamble, you’ll already guess that things didn’t turn out as expected. Some 4-5 years later, I encountered both Kevin and Eric, in situations I would never have predicted.

On one occasion, I was volunteering with a group that made visits to a state penitentiary, to give readings and talk about literacy and culture. As the inmates come into the meeting room, I saw Kevin. We instantly recognized one another and got to speak privately for a few minutes during the program. He was a couple of years into serving a sentence for assault and kidnapping. He’d made some bad choices, which he acknowledged as readily as he ever had. He had a ways to go before he’d be eligible for parole. He was trying to make the best of it, he said.

A few months later, I was at a community meeting of directors of several programs who were seeking to develop some youth leadership programming. One of them came in with a young man he introduced as a protégé, who turned out to be Eric. Eric was in his second year of university, where he’d established himself as a leader. He was involved in community work and had plans for his future. We got to speak briefly, during which time he remained somewhat aloof and unsmiling – not surprising. But I did not detect the anger that had always been so palpable.

Who can say how much their group home experiences, under the care of myself and others who wrongly predicted their futures, ultimately affected Eric and Kevin? Even if I’d have cared to say so in the past, I wouldn’t dare now. Not only do I not know how I impacted them, I don’t know anything, really, about the ultimate outcomes. These two meetings may be as mis-leading as they are revealing. Did Kevin make parole? And what happened then? Did Eric graduate and make contributions to his community? And whatever became of all that anger. I’ll probably never know.

As I write this, I fault myself for not having further contact with either of these young men. It was a transitional time in my own life, and the group home where I’d encountered them had depleted me. I think I just didn’t feel I had the resources to do so. But I sure did learn from those encounters, and they made me a better worker, and I’ve shared this anecdote with dozens of colleagues since then.

We err when we think we know another person’s future, what they have in them, or how they are impacted by their experiences. If we make judgements, and if we allow these judgements to limit the kind or degree of support we offer (which is almost inevitable if we believe our judgements) we do a disservice.

These are only two of the encounters I’ve have with former clients. Quite a few others have revealed to me that when I thought I wasn’t being heard, I was actually having a substantial impact. Where I thought an interaction was negligible, it’s sometimes planted a seed that grew over the years. I’ve had former clients recount conversations and interventions I had totally forgotten. And these interactions have not always been positive and to my credit. I’m very grateful and relieved that many of them have been.

These chance meetings have reminded me of things that my parents, teachers and other adults said or did with me that have stuck with me through all my life, that have motivated me in both positive and negative ways. It’s made me more careful about what I say and do, and about how I say and do it. Sometimes, it’s a matter of explaining what my motivation or intent is. At other times, it leads to an admission that an action or decision isn’t arising out of certainty. And most of all, it’s taught me to ask more questions of clients, and to listen more, and sometimes, just to pause. Because we never can know the full ramifications of the judgements we make about others. And we’ll never be fully aware of the seeds we’re planting and how they will grow.

CBT Time

My newest therapy is Cognitive-Behavioral. It’ll be my second group at CAMH, after one exploring aspects of substance use and addiction.

I have a pretty healthy appetite for therapies and have all my life. To me, one of the key values is that each therapy provides a unique way of learning, and a fresh way to approach a challenge. So I’ve experienced many varieties of treatments and regimens, from individual psycho therapy, to daily journaling, Vipassana meditation, to the Landmark Forum, morning pages, several types of formal and informal groups, and Yang style Tai Chi, all 103 positions, practiced every morning for a few seasons, on the 8th floor deck, right outside my apartment in downtown Toronto.

My enrollment in this latest group is all about my failures to manage myself well, and especially, the gross ways that I abuse and waste time. The diagnosis from my initial assessment was depression. That was a surprise. Though I’ve worked on the front line of the social services for decades, and with many depressed clients, never did I think to apply that term to myself.

I’ve only got my toe in so far, but I’ve begun a form of self-monitoring: scoring each hour of my day according with how ‘depressed’ I am. And as is inevitable, such self-monitoring has high-lit some aspects of myself that I hadn’t paid attention to. It’s brought a perspective on self from a slightly tilted angle.

I don’t suppose that it’s directly related, but I’ve also been dreaming. That is, I’m paying more attention to my dreams, being consciously aware of the flavors of my wakening. What is it I’ve just stepped out of? What was I in the middle of doing, of feeling? Who was with me? It’s been ever since listening to a recent Fresh Air episode about dreams. Not nearly so intent on mining and remembering as I was more than thirty years ago, when I kept a dream journal. These days, I simply shift my awareness backward a bit, to whatever gave rise to the moment. And there’s always dream stuff lying there, something otherworldly, but at the same time deeply private and intimate. 

This morning, an old love who is now deceased was there. We were trying to get something done, so our attention wasn’t on each other. But she was a very solid presence in the dream, just as she always was in life. And inside the dream, there was a tiny bit of unconscious awareness, that she couldn’t really be there, which made it more special to be with her. Just that tiny bit of extra awareness, as from a dream.

Picking Flowers, Dodging Thorns

I don’t have to pick every flower.

And I shouldn't worry about every thorn.

These are mantras to help me guide myself into my near future.

They relate directly to the core Buddhist teaching that I’ve been trying to internalize: to eliminate both craving and aversion from my life.

I remind myself that I don’t have to pick every flower, so as to focus better on what I do want. Because, while there’s no crime in picking a flower, in my experience, simple wanting turns into craving at the point of ‘more’. It’s where ‘enough’ loses meaning, and wanting becomes a frame of mind in which I willfully imprison myself.

And I tell myself not to anticipate thorns because it only creates the illusion that thorns are everywhere. A thorn encountered, though it stings, is a simple thing. But the feared and avoided thorns burn and never stop burning, and they’ve kept me out of too many gardens.

Let me learn to more deeply appreciate each and every flower I encounter, but to pick only a few. Sometimes, more isn’t really more at all.

The thorns…I can trust them to be there, dance around them when I can. And when I’m pricked, don’t holler. Whatever harm is already done.

Why flowers? Because we think of picking flowers as a natural thing to do, generally disregarding the fact that in doing so, we kill them, while leaving them as we find them, allows theiir beauty to endure. The thorns were a fitting afterthought.

The Cruel & Cool Jokes of Nature

The way I see it, there is a great pair of jokes played by nature on us humans. Tricks of time: one cruel and the other almost cool enough to make up for it.

First of all, why is it that time speeds up so much as we get older? It’s so damned unfair. When we’re young and impatient for the things we look forward to, time crawls at a snail’s pace. A week can feel like a month, an hour can feel like half the day... until school is out, or we can have dessert, or get to see that movie that’s been advertised forever.

We get older and time speeds up. It’s easier to wait for what we want. We have more patience, and more perspective, it seems. It feels like maturity. But then, that speeding up continues. And continues. Even accelerates. We get into our thirties and we begin to want to slow things down a little. We begin to realize that the longevity that has stretched into the dim future all our lives is not infinite. We’re already into adulthood – that period of time we were desperate for as children – and now it’s speeding by. Our twenties are already behind us, and the years are only running by faster.

I’m into my sixties, and every year seems to last about as long as a month once did. Whatever there is still to do in life, I’d better get to it pretty damned fast, because memory and energy are diminishing as fast as my future.

But, there’s the silver lining. It’s how wonderful it is being an older human being. When I was a teenager, I imagined that the best part of life ended by age fifty, if that. People that age and older seemed to be mostly worn out and used up. I didn’t imagine there could be any real pleasure is being alive at that age. I figured that what kept them going was mostly the dread of the alternative. Wasn’t much to look forward to, so I didn’t think a lot about being older. In fact, I somehow didn’t expect to become an old man. Something would surely save me from the fate of being among the living dead.

But it isn’t like that at all. Being old doesn’t feel much different than being younger. Sure, the body doesn’t work as well as it did, and I’ve noticed that I’ve begun to shrink, but there are so many ways in which life is better. That’s the wonderful joke of nature.

The most surprising thing is that I feel like the very same person I was in my twenties and thirties, but all the experience and choices of the past have begun to pay off. They haven’t all been good experiences and choices, of course, but bad ones have led to better ones, and the good ones have given me so many tools for facing the present in ways I couldn’t before. Patience and perspective are part of the story. But there’s also the shifting of priorities and appetites. I want better things than I used to. And my values are an outgrowth of lived experience, and are therefore more solid and reliable than the values that were so much generated by the noise of the world. And these days, the worth of a choice stems more from its generation than from its consequences.

I’m deep into the second half of my life, possibly into the fourth quarter. I don’t project a lot about what the rest of life will be like. Will the acceleration of time continue? Will life continue to feel this good? Experience confirms that projections can be very wrong. And even if they're right, it’s probably best not to live inside of them. I have foreseen so much pain and difficulty where there turned out not to be any.

I’m sure curious though. And I’ll try to make the best of whatever comes. I know from experience that there will be constant surprises. Every day is full of them.

Getting ReConnected

     It’s already been a month since our return to the steady and regular lives we lead. We aren’t feeling the physical effects anymore, or the sense of time and space warp from the trip, but we’re still moved by the epic scale of our adventure. We negotiated 14,600 kilometers or 9,000 miles; 29 days; 12 visits including 6 stays with friends in 5 Provinces and 7 States; 18 different motels rooms. It was a month of almost constant movement. Only twice did we spend two nights in the same bed. On four successive Wednesdays, we met up with friends in Calgary, Seattle, Los Angeles and Houston. Ponczka and I had the odd experience of looking backward at earlier events on the trip and feeling simultaneously that they’d just happened and that they’d happened weeks before. And, it was a dream of a lifetime.

     For how many years had I been contemplating this trip? I was so grateful to replace all the vague and shifting notions about what the trip might be, with the vivid reality of it: the sights and encounters, hugs and conversations, meals and walks, forever updating my inner scrapbook of my life. So many people and places, touching so many different parts of my life, even back to my beginnings. I’d wanted this for myself, but I wanted as much to share it with Ponczka, to give her a deeper glimpse into my has-been, even the might-have-beens.

     I love cities and I love the in-between places. One of the disappointments was to find that all the cities that I’d known before (but hadn’t visited in twenty-five years or more) have become bigger, busier and more alike. It was harder detecting that West Coast vibe – if it still exists. We were in such a flurry of movement and meetings that we didn’t give ourselves time to notice.

     The rubbing up against technology was an interesting experience, as well: the ease of taking photos and videos, then posting them that same day, to share with friends scattered around the world; using AI to handle so much of the navigation, not only guiding us to motels, but comparing rates and amenities; and of course, communicating while on the go. The last time I did a cross-country trip, none of this was possible to do in the way we did it, not even simple phoning ahead. It changes things enormously, this connectivity. The ability to pay for things, and to withdraw money effortlessly, changes the ways of travel as well. Because there was a time when one was wise to do a rough calculation of expenses in advance, then to carry that along on the trip, maybe investing in traveler’s checks to protect against theft or loss.

     I’m putting up videos and photos in an attempt to share some of it all. Impossible to ‘capture’ it. It was such a unique ride. Already, I’d like for us to do it all again, but to take more time – three or four times the time. Because, for everything we saw and did during our trip, we passed on three or four things we’d like to have seen and done. It was all more than worth it.  

Growing With Purpose

I’m reading Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, and it’s making me more conscious – and self-conscious – about the ways I think, the ideas I have about life, and where it all comes from.

Among other things, it led to thoughts about what I live for. And it came to me that, if I were to choose a motto, I could do a lot worse than this:

Living Well

Living Well with others

Supporting the striving of others to Live Well

If I adopted it though, I’d have to admit that it’s more of a summary drawn from looking backward than it ever was a mission statement as I moved forward. I haven’t been as intentional in life as I once aimed to be. Now, that seems not such a bad thing. I’ve repressed, edited, muted myself in lots of ways. But this has stemmed, in part anyway, from wishing never to cause harm. I’ve been careful.

And, I’ve been afraid. I’ve feared the potential, unrealized repercussions from a world I haven’t easily allowed myself to trust. Only gradually have I realize that I belong here, that Earth, life, this moment are where I belong, where I was created, designed, or simply evolved to be.  There’s no escaping the harm. It’s built into the Living.

So my intention has always been, in part, to hurt as few, as seldom, and as lovingly and humbly as possible. And I believe I’ve done alright by that. I’m also aware that my own share of hurt has been relatively small, and that so, so much has gone right for me, all my life long. So much love and consideration has flowed inward. And so often from souls who didn’t owe me a thing, who maybe didn’t even know me.

A plane on which I’ve been a failure so far is in creating something that in and of itself shifts living toward the good. A book is such a thing. A food bank is another. A child, however it may seem to turn out. Some forms of creation are indeed abandonment to a creative power that is beyond us, that we cannot wield like swords, or pens, but which we can only aspire to be the swords and pens of. Yes. Good. Or God. Even Science, if you refer to that science beyond what we think we  already know, the science that pulls us forward, into what we haven’t even imagined.

In keeping with my motto, I’ve been trying to reconstruct myself. Sounds brutal, but it’s not. But I do mean a repairing, a cleaning, the tossing out of some junk. About time. And just in time for a last act, if the Good be willing. I intend to repair my relationship with time, that I’ve abused and blamed for so much that burdens me. I’ve always made it time’s fault, even to the point of sometimes wishing it would just go away. Now, I’m learning to cherish every minute. Still learning, yes. And trying to make amends to this ally of all my life.

And I’m wanting to relieve myself of all the things I’ve clung to and used, in hope that they would soothe the hurts and dispel the fears in me. What are all these things? Too many to name. Too limiting to name. They are everything under the Sun, all that it provides that nourishes and enhances, and wanting it all too much. Love, sex, food, control…..oh, why do I even start!

I want to stretch open a space that’s always been there in me. It’s a space of total connection to life, of freedom so complete that it makes the word superfluous, a space in which being me stops being a protection against life, but a submersion into it: like that very favorite experience of mime – floating on the skin of a lake, muscles completely relaxed, face turned upward toward the infinite sky. Kissed by Earth, on the tip of the tongue of the Universe.