Lost and found.

Today was a hard day for me, I found that what you lose you can find, and what you thought you forgot can be forever etched in your memory.

I have started a journey in the past weeks that I have held close to my chest because I have the opportunity to not only seek change but to aid in real change. My love of education has always been a large part of my life, I was brought up to view education as something with higher value than money because it gives you the opportunity for that and so much more. I have always been a great believer in the idea that literacy alone can change the world, that it can solve all of its problems, give a man a library card and he can travel the world and beyond.

So I am in the process of teaching a GED course in a facility where many people would not normally teach, a place of very little freedom and let's say very little privilege. There are people who need this education because without it they will have nothing when they take back their freedom and their lives.

I was asked by someone just last week, "Why are you doing this? What does it hold for you?"

Being a woman, 30, educated, an immigrant, growing up in what people might term the "ghetto", and not exactly a saint I have not found myself at this sort of place before even though maybe statistically I was supposed to. However, I know of it, of its pull of people just like you and I, of its normalcy for many families. I made choices that put me where I am today, but it was also a profound sense of luck that put me here as well, I could be any of these young people by the gentle swish of time.

I told this person that it was because I knew of a young man that I had befriended over 20 years ago who I knew ended up somewhere like this but that I had not been able to help because I was too young to realize that our lives were going to lead in two different directions. We were born in the same place, to the same type of parents, we had much of the same but he would choose one thing and I would choose another and there was that gentle swish of time...

I could not help him then but I could now, I could make a difference just by showing someone that you can change your future, you can attain something greater than the sum of your choices. All you needed was you, a book and a clear head...

So I went through the process, I did everything necessary to make my way to this point where I would stand and assess those in need and give them this chance by facilitating; I didn't know that I would face my reason so bluntly.

I stood in a hallway that I had to enter via six doors, to hold a stack of requests in my hand...with his name on it, requesting the very help I had started because of him, I was faced with my reason in front of me in the letters of his childhood that I still remembered.

You see when our lives changed, he made choices that brought him here...
When I made mine a few weeks ago, it bought me here...

To the same place.

Choices are choices, but sometimes they go hand in hand with the rest of your life...

I have never been more proud of a choice I have made in my entire life.

Just a thought...

There are some relationships that you cannot part from because you are fused with that person forever. Sometimes you see a couple and they seem to be at a crossroads, not meant for each other but still they walk through life, maybe your own parents are that way. But one day, that person is you and you then understand why. Why you go through the motions, why you see them through life, why you put dinner on the table, why you care. Because whatever they do, you would rather take care of them than abandon them. That this is what it is to love unconditionally, this is what it means to love despite situations, despite life's roadblocks, despite even their own actions. Sometimes to love someone is to test yourself, what does unconditional mean to you? So much of life is now based on conditions, but if you repeat the same things with different people is that being true to yourself or not trying hard enough?

The chase for the perfect relationship is elusive at best, at the end of the day we are left only with the emotions we feel and sometimes they aren't the most comforting. A lot of times the only people who understand a relationship are barely conscious of what is happening, sometimes they are over critical of it as well. Ultimately the chance of a lifetime can turn sour or at best be seen as mundane.

So what is it that keeps a relationship going? What allows a person to sit through something day after day, night after night? Is it love? Is it duty? Is it just plain fear?

The answers are not always easy. They are not often even available but I can only tell you one thing. I spent my whole life hearing the words, "I am going to runaway..." This is in a time way before Kanye West, but the ties are still comical. I spent a lot of time in my own personal relationship wondering "Why?"...

"Why not?" Just because life gets harder, because change happens, because a thousand things may occur, among them life's largest issues, money, infidelity, personal loss, and just a lack of time, this doesn't mean that love goes away. It doesn't mean that love fades into the distance and you get left with the easier choices of separation, divorce, and a division of property, it means that if you are a person who is true to her or himself you are left only with love.

With the unconditional love that started it all, because truthfully you wouldn't be in a place to doubt something unless you wholeheartedly believed in it in the first place. So for all of those out there who dream of love, don't let it go because of society's condition that everything has to be perfect. Nothing is, certainly not me or you.

Love unconditionally, you may surprise yourself, it lurks in the unlikeliest places.

A cursory glance...

Yesterday by chance I had a conversation with an old friend where I realized that despite how things may move in your life, how things may change, get better or worse, there is always a foothold where there are people who see things the way you do.

It is not enough to build relationships and compromise your wants and needs for the sake of a friendship instead of friendship, period.

How many times have you sat somewhere and thought, "What can I do to get out of here?", to only realize that you yourself are to blame. To know that despite things that have happened and things that are going to happen, only you can stop the feeling inside you of not being happy.

There is a lot of pressure on people to be happy, to be sane, to keep it all together. But in all seriousness how many people actually are happy? Or is it just that they compromise their needs to keep the idea alive that they are happy? There is a lot of stress on seeing the glass half full as opposed to half empty but sometimes in life the glass seizes to be seen, and that is when you have to realize that life is not always about the good in people, the compromise of a good night out or even particularly anything sane.

There is a lot to be said if you can call someone and tell them how unhappy you are, how devastated you are and how much you would just like to scream and have that person respond, "Yes, I have felt that way, I do feel that way..." That is a great part of friendship not just having a friend.

Take a cursory glance at your life and make sure that you note the amount of people who are there when there isn't anything worth having, taking, or being...you may be surprised as to how many are holding space rather than heart.

Life is about learning not only about living, although we may pass through many a gathering, event, dinner etc...you only pass through one life, make the people in it memorable. Life is invitation only, some people RSVP others don't...have heart, love wisely, love never fades...

~ Cosmopolitan

Corporal punishment or Corporate punishment?

So at dinner last night we came across the topic of spanking i.e. corporal punishment, the idea that you should use physical force to discipline your child. Needless to say there was a lot of buttons pushed and alot of words slung, Is it good? Is it bad? Are you going to raise your kids that way?

Corporal punishment 
–noun
1.Law. physical punishment, as flogging, inflicted on the body of one convicted of a crime: formerly included the death penalty, sentencing to a term of years, etc.
2.physical punishment, as spanking, inflicted on a child by an adult in authority. Origin:1575–85

Spank
–verb (used with object)
1.to strike (a person, usually a child) with the open hand, a slipper, etc., esp. on the buttocks, as in punishment.
–noun
2.a blow given in spanking; a smart or resounding slap.
Origin:1720–30; imit.

While one definition is severe the other is not, but are we really speaking of the same thing? That debate is very divided at both our dinner table and throughout the country...

A lot of people are shocked that this is still allowed in this country, laughingly because we think that we are so rights based that we would never actually allow this anymore. But we do, there are some very shocking cases of what has been deemed allowable as corporal punishment. There are many who are advocating the banishment of such ideals because the U.N. itself has said that it denounces such actions. Rightly so, there is too much variance in the idea of "reasonable" acts and the idea that anyone else has the right to abuse a child then call it discipline is highly controversial. However it is a bit far fetched to believe that if you lightly spank your child for misbehaving it should be compared to strapping your child or hitting it so hard you chip his tooth (Real cases, all deemed reasonably admissible as discipline).

The physical and mental harm from spanking is not reversible, but what is when it comes to parenting? Every choice, every action, every word is probable cause for turning your child into a horrible human being. It is not enough to think that because you show your child right from wrong that they are going to be great human beings. The intrinsic idea that if you show your child good behaviour he will in turn behave well I think is asking too much of someone too young to understand himself/herself.

Personally, and this is all opinion because I only parent my cats, I was parented in a way that now I barely remember, is that good or bad? I don't remember being abused or spanked, I do remember feelings of guilt, remorse, alienation from the usual one way talks of the things I had done wrong. Did this steer me to become a different person than if I had been spanked? I don't think so.

Every situation and every household has its ability to change a child into many things, some are blatant others less so. Abuse is a harsh word for the idea of spanking most people have, I think to relegate it to mean only the cases in front of the supreme court to be a convenient way of us taking up the fight to absolve something that in the long term means so much more.

In this time and age the idea of spanking is not a high factor in child abuse, in my eyes those that neglect their children, argue in front of their children, allow for t.v. to be a substitute for the encyclopedia, never read with their children, buy video games over Lego, feed them McDonald's over home cooked meals and never attend parent teacher meetings are far worse than someone who may spank their child. The idea that corporations have more control of your child's actions than you is a far more scary idea to me than the idea that you are spanking your child. I fear that they will only understand marketing schemes and how to get to the next level on a video game, that they will see aggression as something to look up to and not something that is used only to make you see that what you are doing is wrong. See when I was a kid, a raised hand meant, you better stop what you are doing...not abuse. It never even came with a resounding slap, just the raised hand was enough to know that action was taboo. Now the raised hand doesn't even resonate, you are killing people in video games, you are killing people in movies, and aggression is not something that you see at the movies, it happens in plain sight everywhere.

Everyone knows my stand on non-violence, I have seen enough (believe me) in my lifetime that has shown me it can come to no good but I think its a good time to take a look at the greater picture, we need to understand that crowding our ideals on small topics do not always show how it resonates to our greater ideals. You can say you are against spanking, I am too, will we never spank our kids?... that's to be seen.

I know alot of people who are fine human beings that have lived through actual abuse, not just spanking and I don't think anyone would say they are never going to spank their kids, are they going to abuse their kids? Point blank no. To live through it is to live with it, never underestimate the power of history, even in the most well balanced people it has a way of sneaking up on you.

Time out,

~Cosmopolitan

Mortality vs. Immortality

The slight of hand that takes a life,
The slight of mind that takes a life,
The sight of God that will reunite,
Cannot at end make it right.

The chances of violence occurring is more than slight, as this world is filled with a will to show how much we can destroy, not in war, but in our small part of reality, right in your backyard. Every day the stream of "news" is filled with murder, anguish and despair while we all tune in to it...so many of the headlines seem surreal but they are our reality. This is what our children have to look forward to, as this is what we are now living.

I got a text that told me something that I hadn't heard, that I hadn't tuned in to, and seeing as I now read the paper at my desk each morning and tear apart the CBC website everyday due to remote Internet access at work I was surprised that I hadn't heard about this. It might be my reluctance to watch the daily news where usually the snippets of everyday city life are torn apart for our viewing pleasure. I used to sit and watch and not know the anguish behind it all, but now I do, and I watch with half a mind on the people who have to sit through that also, to whom the news is life, where it cannot be switched off.

So to hear that another life had been taken within the community brings back too many memories that are still fresh and probably will always be, because how do you turn that part off, the reality of loss. It sneaks up every day, because to lose people through tragedy is never easy, nor is it something that you can lay to rest. It just sits their on the periphery of our conscience and doesn't take vacations.

So I sat yesterday and I texted back and forth and wondered aloud why? Why again? Why now? Why to them? ... The answer ultimately is why not? What have we done in this community to foster anti-violence? To foster healthy mental health? To foster a sense of community that is built on sense of self, and a preparedness to deal with the anger everyone feels, to see others as a creation as much as we are. I have not seen that, all I have witnessed is decades of anger, retaliation and the preparedness to terrorize ourselves with visions of fighting for a greater good without realizing that we are fostering a sense of war not only on a battlefield. This sense of war has now entered the minds of those who may have never stepped foot on our homeland, who take what they have learnt and started taking lives without any respect for the actual life they are ending.

It is easy, yes easy, to kill someone, but it is far greater to make it right, because ultimately they won't be able to, they can only run from the law, ultimately though they won't be able to run from the real law, the one that is going to force them to face what they have done. This is not going to come to pass for a long time, and in that time we will see the faces of many more that we will lay to rest but again what are we doing to make it right? The many obstacles that face us now cannot be brought down by education, wealth, or health, because here we have all of those things and a country where we are all equal, but we still allow people to perish.

The root cause of this violence is in each of us, it is in the stories we hear of our own families, our own histories, our own loss, but we alone can make this change. The next time you stand in a crowd where this idea of violence is brought up, because we know we have all heard it, take a stand for a moment in time and say, "What do we gain from this? What are we doing? Is this going to end with a loss of life?" Do not be scared to ask your fellow man these questions, because otherwise you will ask them, "How did this happen? How did they die?"

Use your voice to ask rather than be told.

Love never fades, it does not allow mortality, it will always keep us immortal.

~ Cosmopolitan

Revelations...

Tragedy strikes all the time, all over the world, some of it man made others an act of God but few seek to notice it unless its on every channel.

The strength of our humanity sits on a precipice and its clarity is situated somewhere in the distance on CNN.

The tragedy is something that could not be avoided but the plight of the people there is something that could be solved in the few moments it takes to transfer funds internationally.

It might be a fantasy to think that there is the ability to change things so drastically in terms of economics, the status of money etc. but I truly believe that most of the world's problems could be solved immediately if we wanted them to be or at least if those that hold the reigns of power wanted them to be.

The billions of dollars floating around in entertainment could change the face of poverty. The profits from parking tickets alone across the world in my opinion could eradicate poverty.

Things can be done, but they wont be because the process of the world depends on rich and poor, if just the middle class existed what would we aspire to be or not to be.

The idea of changing the world has spun this world for centuries, but one Haiti at a time they get a chance to show that they are doing "good" but in a few months Haiti will be another catastrophe that will be shelved as a cause too hard for those outside of their nation. There will be the slow regroup of aid and the workers will go back home and the world will turn from Haiti because something else will take over the screens across the first world. The idea that we are helping is extreme, when we here in the first world are the cause of their previous poverty, maybe not literally but certainly in our inability to actually be of aid before this disaster. That is our disaster. Our inability to help before this stage, because ultimately if they were not so impoverished in the first place there would be less of a disaster.

I sat around a table and someone asked, "Why them, why now?", a short answer in the background was, "Because if it was us, who would help us?" That is food for thought.

Whatever you take from this, I hope you don't see my comments as something negative for Haiti. I have the utmost faith in the people of Haiti, they will rebuild, they will strive to do what they have been doing for decades, surviving, with little help from those across the world who have labelled them the second poorest country in the world.

The donations that are pouring in, mine included I hope will help set up the ability for the nation to get back on its feet, it deserves more than these aid dollars, it deserves much more.

A chance for their people to build their livelihoods and feed their children, and regain their natural tenacity for life.

Literal engagement...

Sensitivity is hard to come by. Sensibility is harder still. Sense is hardest of all.

Since I visited that mission I have for days on end have been unable to shake this feeling of bereftness, of not fully being here, of not being satisfied.

A friend of mine says that you have to find your passion, not your calling, not your path, not your wants or needs but an accumulation of all of that, find your passion.

What makes you want to do something. Anything. To make a difference in this world.

I stood there and thought to myself, this isn't something to be afraid of this is something to not want to end up in. But that being human, and being part of society we all have the ability to find ourselves in similar circumstances, is being literally engaged.

What is poverty really? What is it in this time and place? We are surrounded by multi-millionaires who are born out of a record, out of a book, a TV show...we are surrounded by people who seek education for the re numeration behind their degrees, with everyone striving to buy bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger lives.

Poverty is not welfare, it is not getting a monthly cheque, it is not receiving benefits, these are routes put in place so that you do not find yourself poverty stricken. We live in a country where there are ways to put food on the table, to place a roof over your head, to fund your education, but when all else fails sometimes you may find yourself in a line up waiting for a meal...

That is a place that any of us can find ourselves in, when people are losing millions what makes us immune to this cirucmstance? To be afraid of this is to deny ourselves the sense to live in this time and age.

This feeling of engagement made the whole season a time of reflection for me, as I toasted to well wishes for this year and next with those closest to me I realized that to truly live you must imagine your life in context, there are as many ways to lose as to win. To lose someone or to gain someone is of no consequence if you do not walk away from the experience with a firm respect for those who are still here.

I find and loose my passion for things very easily, but I have come to realize these past few days that maybe this is because I haven't found something that I truly feel blessed to be doing.

What I know now is that maybe walking into that mission brought me something that I never knew I wanted to be apart of ...