My Insides Are Awake

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.

- Carl Jung

Why So Ironic?

I read an article in Relevant Magazine recently on the nature of our generation being uncharacteristically sarcastic and culturally ironic:

"There are reasons for our embrace of irony.  We grew up in a world where earnestness failed us.  Cold Wars were waged very sincerely, ideologies were bandied about with the best of intentions.  Our parents married and divorced in all earnestness, and wide swaths of American homes were devastated by the sort of domestic disharmony that shattered any pretension of white-picket-fence-perfection.  Meanwhile, we grew up in a constant flux of advertising and brand messaging.  The conglomerates cornered the markets, the ad agencies figured us out and MTV sucked our souls dry.  But we also became savvy, and with the Internet and all the wiki-democratization it offered, it became easier to see through the charades of various culture industries and power-wielding hegemonies.  Flaws were exposed, seedy schemes revealed amid the formerly shrouded machinations of "the man."  Nothing was sacred anymore, and all was ridiculous." - by Brett McCracken, The Rise of the Ironic Class, Relevant Magazine, May-June 2009

Waiting 'til it hurts

I've been having problems with my back for the past two years.  Initiated by years of computer work and stress, the pain can often get to the point where I am nauseous and have a headache that simply won't go away.

The funny thing is that I know the solution: do my stretches regularly and exercise to strengthen my core.  

But I wait.  I don't do my stretches or strengthen my core.  I live counting on the fact that I feel good now, so I'll feel good later.  When the pain comes, I then get frustrated and angry, wondering why I am 'chosen' the be the one in so much pain.   

I'd like to say that my back pain is the only case of this controlled ignorant invincibility.  It isn't.

I've realized lately that, in so many things, I change only when it hurts.  I get up in the morning, make my coffee, and then choose to watch TV during breakfast over reading my bible because 'I'm okay today'.  I then work all day, never stopping to pray or rest to hear God because today is a good day and I 'don't need him' or am 'okay on my own.'

Then I break.  It's been building the whole time--pangs of fear, pride, anger or whatever, that show up throughout each hour. And it wasn't painful, so I didn't notice it, never mind talk to God about it.  

I'm realizing that that there are prompts in my day that I ignore: prompts that say "all is not well in this moment."  I need to listen to those prompts because that is God in me saying, "hey, you need me now....not just later."  

It's time to do those stretches now, to strengthen my core when it doesn't hurt, no matter how inconvenient it feels at the time.  Sure, that doesn't mean I can avoid pain altogether.  But it does mean that God is in everything, trying to give me what I need in every instance, even when I ignore him.

I know this is a lesson I'll spend the rest of my life trying to learn.

Branding Alberta

This must've been a fun, but hard, branding project:

I think it is spot on.  The orange colour reminds me of the golden wheat fields and somehow fits Alberta's western flair.  The script is active, yet not too feminine for such a stereotypically masculine province.  And the tagline is so true to the spirit of Albertan life.  In classic "go big or go home" gusto, the provincial government is spending $25 million dollars for the project.  

As a former Calgarian, I just might salute the initiative and go put on my cowboy hat.

Official Royalty

Have you played today?

I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to child psychology.  I find it fascinating.  My love for it all started when I read a book about the impact of no-fault divorce legislation on children.  The book covered the results of a study of a controlled group of kids of divorced parents over the course of 25 years.  It also compared those results with that of children who grew up with unhappy parents that stay together.  

A great new documentary, called "The Lost Adventures of Childhood", covers the role and impact of play - both free and structured - on child development.  It's pretty amazing.  

Free play (without parents, engaged supervisors, rules or structure) allows children to be themselves, take risks, experience uncertainty, get hurt, learn cooperation, be creative and try new things.  Structured play, when the only type of play in a child's life, has been so organized that it is maturing children too early. This includes organized sport and clubs that are so intensive that it emulates the responsibilities of an adult. This creates followers rather than leaders, forces children to be the same or risk losing out, and stunts their ability to succeed later in life.  

I remember playing freely as a kid all the time.  In fact, many of us who did likely have dozens of stories that are retold by their parents today about how we played.  Stories that are funny now because they are uncannily similar to who we are today.  My family's unfinished basement, in fact, became three businesses over the span of two weeks when I was home from school recovering from an appendectomy.  A grocery store, a bank and a law firm.  I made my sister into the stock girl, customer or client and played for hours.  Bossy, enterprising, creative and oddly organized.  Sound familiar?

Check out the documentary if you can. I can't find when it is showing again, but hopefully it will reappear.  And, more importantly, don't get sucked into everything that modern child rearing is today.  Some of its structure is good, of course.  But a lot of it isn't.  When you have kids, let them be....kids.  I feel lucky that my parents did.

Good News

No - no new job yet.  But one of my favorite--and thought no longer--Vancouver events is back.

AND we've got a new radio station coming our way.  

It's great to see some commercial growth happening when so many companies are feeling the pinch...or, if I may, the punch.