I recently heard a healthy middle-aged man describe the effects of COVID-19 on his life. COVID-19, he said, hasn’t affected him at all; he, his aging parents and his very elderly grandmother have not been ill. He may not be vaccinated. I found his viewpoint surprising. While no one I know or love has contracted…
The Christmas spirit only asks us, as Mother Teresa famously said, that we “do ordinary things with great love”
With traditional ways of celebrating on pause, Christmas 2020 was definitely one for the books. Despite COVID-19 – or maybe even because of it – I, and many people I know, celebrated the Christmas season well. As one of my good friends remarked, COVID-19 didn’t spoil her Christmas. She mused that she made new memories;…
The traditions and rituals of the festive season have a part to play in creating a sense of normalcy during this time of pandemic
I almost lost my Christmas spirit, thanks to COVID-19. The reality of no family dinners, no gathering with friends and no church services to attend threatened to dampen my enthusiasm for the holiday season. Not wanting to be Scrooge, I took action. One grey, dreary day in early December, I tromped through the yard, cutting…
The pandemic gives us a golden opportunity to be altruistic or egoistic
“Stay the blazes home,” was Premier Stephen McNeil’s frustrated plea to the citizens of Nova Scotia in April of this year. The plea resonated across the province; it captured the imagination and gave rise to a humorous bout of creativity. People could buy Stay the Blazes Home beer, T-shirts and other memorabilia while chanting a…Enjoying a break from work can be a spiritual imperative that is necessary for the well-being of the human spirit
“Never do today what someone else can do tomorrow.” In the same category is an Italian saying, “il bel far niente,” or “the beauty of doing nothing.” These adages seem to advocate laziness, selfishness and irresponsibility, but I think there’s a deeper wisdom at play: Doing nothing is good for us. The pace of our…
Uncertainty, constant change, anxiety, isolation and loss have become our universal companions. But this too will pass
Over the next days and weeks, people of faith will have to be flexible and creative because COVID-19 has upended religious celebrations. Passover, Easter and Ramadan will have to be observed virtually in the home, making use of online streaming of religious services. FaceTime, Skype or Zoom will be useful in exchanging greetings in lieu…
Grateful people sleep better, exercise more frequently, are happier and more altruistic
Showing gratitude is good for us, and yet gratitude does not come naturally or easily to most of us. Our brains are “like Velcro for bad experiences, but Teflon for positive ones,” wrote neuropsychologist Rick Hanson and neurologist Richard Mendius. This tendency towards the negative makes it difficult for us to be grateful. Research has…
Consumer spending is important to a healthy economy, but each of us needs to decide where we draw the line between our wants and our needs
I felt guilty tossing mixed household and construction materials into container bins at the landfill. We did our very best to reuse and recycle, but we still had a couple of truckloads of stuff to discard. I hadn’t been to the landfill for years, maybe decades, and I was shocked at the change in the…
Terms such as physician assisted dying or assisted suicide make lies sound truthful and murder respectable
Euphemisms have been around at least since biblical times when to uncover a man’s foot was an idiom for making sexual advances. Today, as in the 10th century, people “sleep together”, and everyone knows the intention behind an invitation for a “nightcap”. In classical times, “curled up”, “gone to sleep”, or “on a journey” were…
Inky's escape is allegorical of the restlessness of the human spirit. Like Inky, we are not satisfied with the place we inhabit
There are some amazing stories of pets finding their way home after long absences. But an octopus? Octopi are intelligent, curious creatures. They are so intelligent that aquarium keepers use an enrichment manual to help ward off boredom for octopi in captivity. Aquarium octopi have toys like Mr. Potato Head and Lego, and some can…
The commentary in my head was curiously uplifting despite its morbid subject
It was a crisp, sunny morning for a run along Toronto’s Kay Gardner Beltline Trail. Having spent the previous day travelling, I was anxious to get moving. I turned on my tunes, hit the timer on my watch and quickly fell into a comfortable rhythm. I was relishing the beauty of the changing season. The…
There’s no U-Haul behind the hearse to carry it all anyway
Nearly 25 years ago, I declared a war on stuff. I was helping to clean out the house of a favourite relative who had died and there were moments when the sheer volume of stuff threatened to overwhelm us. Everything had to go, right down to the last nail in the shed. It was then…
Just as technology can bring us together, it can also separate us
Communication technology has come a long way in a relatively short time. In my lifetime, we have moved from twice daily mail delivery and phones that required the services of an operator to connect callers, to the instantaneous communication of smart phones and text messaging. At the click of a mouse, we can “join the…
The staycation renewed my appreciation for the familiar and nurtured a more generous heart
When I was a kid, a typical back to school assignment was writing about our summer vacations. I never much liked the topic. My summers, with a few notable exceptions, were pretty much indistinguishable from each other. I had nothing much to write about, or so I thought. At the time, I did not realize…
New tolerance demands that we accept either the most popular view or the view of the most vocal group or shut up
“I am intolerant of intolerance” has become something of a mantra for suppressing unpopular opinions. Today’s “new tolerance”, as it is called in academic circles, is redefining our understanding of tolerance and shaping our behaviour in public spaces, but it is no friend to the exercise of conscience and freedom of speech. In the past,…