Me & Ryan Gosling, Pooped at a Wedding

Last summer my friend got married! Ryan had a shoot that day so he couldn't make it for the wedding, but he arrived near the end of the night. We were all pooped, but he wanted to party! Nobody puts Ry Ry in a corner.

Inspiration! The trick to forgiveness

Forgiving people can be hard.  Like, really hard.

This video gives some extra tricks to forgiving someone.  One is that when someone is angry and saying or doing things that will require forgiveness, chances are they are actually scared.  Fear makes us do all sorts of things.

Another is the idea of the strength behind the weakness.  We all have strengths, and each strength has a "shadow" weakness.  As the video puts it, someone who has the strength of thoroughness at work might also be thorough in pointing out every grammar error they see around them.

Maybe next time I need to forgive someone, it will help to remember their fears and their strengths.

Via School of Life.

Dating while religious and listening to #GoodMuslimBadMuslim

I just started listening to the podcast #GoodMuslimBadMuslim.  It's a fantastic podcast that I highly recommend, full of discussions of what it means to be Muslim, what is a "good" or a "bad" Muslim, what it's like to live as a Muslim in America right now, and just plain what it means to be good or bad in general.

Here is how they describe themselves:

To the Muslim community, we are "bad" Muslims - we listen to music, we don't pray regularly, we date or get married to white men (Zahra), identify as punks and radicals (Taz), we perform and share our lives with comedy and writing. So we are bad. So so bad.

To non-Muslims, we are "good" - we don't drink, we don't do drugs, we are not criminals, we are social justice activists and community leaders. We are successful, published, accomplished.

I love this description!  I often attempted to make similar explanations of my Mennonite-ness, except Taz and Zahra, as successful, published, and accomplished community leaders, do a way better job than me at breaking it down.

In a time when assumptions about who Muslims are and what they do are so widespread and contentious, it would behoove us all to listen to this podcast as one of many voices helping us understand the multiple identities and lifestyles that make up the Muslim faith.

I started by listening to the episode Muslim-ish.  I learned about experiences of surveillance, that Richard Dawkins (who I already had decided was a general pompous jerk) is a racist and sexist, that Janet Jackson is now Muslim, and that nobody takes Eid into account when planning events.

At one point, one of the women (I'm pretty sure it was Zahra) talks about having gone on a date with a white guy, and how frustrating it was for her to once again be asked the question "how Muslim are you?" 

In their discussion of that question there is one misunderstanding that comes up: that a Christian or a Jewish person would never get asked how Christian or Jewish they are.

As someone with a Christian background, I can tell you that I think some version of this question has come up with every person I have dated.

Why?  A religious label doesn't actually tell you much about what a person truly believes or how they live their life.  I am Mennonite and I can bet you that 90% of the things you think that means in terms of my beliefs and lifestyle are not quite accurate.  I went on a date once with a guy who identified himself as Anglican and went on to describe all religious people as lunatics.  Even being an atheist can mean totally different things to different people.

Whether you're dating to have some sexy fun with a cool person or to find love and marriage, you need to know more than the label a person gives their belief system to know how these activities might work out for you.

When we ask how religious our date is, of course, we really want to know some combination of a whole bunch of questions including, but not limited to, the following:

• Will you have sex with me before we are married/will you expect me to have sex with you before we get married?
• What about kissing and other sexy activities?
• What about living together before marriage or even getting married at all?
• What are the most important things in your life?
• Do you follow your faith's dietary restrictions?  How strictly?
• Do you go to church or temple all the time or just sometimes or not at all?  Do you want me to go to?  What if I go to a different church or temple?
• Can we talk about faith or does that scare you?
• Does your religious faith influence every part of your life, or is it just a name you use to describe your basic life philosophy?
• Will you want to raise your children with this religion?
• Does your family do any prayers or songs before meals that I'm not going to understand?
• For your religion, are you super conservative or super liberal?
• Do you have to marry someone who shares your beliefs?  If we don't share the same beliefs is this limited to being a fling?  (The fling question ties back to the sexy behaviour questions.)
• Do you think that men and women are equal in an actually visible way?
• Will you try to convert me?  Can I talk about my beliefs without you thinking I'm going to convert you?  Will you convert?

The trick here comes from the amount of knowledge a person has of your religion coming into the conversation.  If you share a religious background, you don't necessarily need to ask the broad, awkward "how [insert religion] are you?" question because you know the lingo and can ask more specific and nuanced questions.  You can ask about their sect or denomination, how they observe holidays, and where they attend temple or church.  With your keen insider knowledge you will glean a lot of useful information from those questions, because you know what those things all mean.

What if you are coming with little to no knowledge of the religion?  Without background knowledge, you probably don't even know where to start.  You're not going to blatantly ask all the real questions running through your mind because everyone tries to act all cool on first dates and it's apparently uncool to just ask straightforward questions.

Thus, the broad, inelegant question emerges: "how Christian/Muslim/Jewish/Buddhist/Hindu/Sikh are you?"

It is totally awkward.  The person asking it probably feels awkward because they know they are not quite getting the question right, and they feel kind of embarrassed and exposed for not knowing enough about your religion to ask a better question.

The person answering feels awkward because they suddenly have to evaluate and rate their personal beliefs against where they think a general perception of their religion lies.  It can be really hard to articulate beliefs, especially when it has become suddenly clear that the person your talking to has no frame of reference to understand yours.

Personally, I just wish people would get over this idea of being "cool" on dates and would just ask the real questions they want answers to.  This was always my shortfall in dating: I would just ask straightforward questions and give straightforward answers.  A lot of people don't like this.

It is likely that the "how religious are you?" question is way more loaded for Zahra and Taz than it is for me.  While no one seems to know or understand what a Mennonite is, Christianity is basically the default religion of North America and so even if I don't fit into mainline Christian faith, most people I encounter have a basic idea of where to begin talking about it.  The default understanding of what being a Muslim means is very different, and so they are dealing with a whole different set of assumptions when these questions come up.

Okay, so let's say you're on a date.  If you are trying to play the game where you pretend you don't actually want the things that you want and thus can't bring up questions about sex, marriage, babies, or gender roles, then let's rephrase the awkward question.  Instead of "how [insert religion] are you?" try asking "what does being [insert religion] mean to you?", "what does your faith look like?", or even "how do you practice your faith?"

I can't speak for Zahra and Taz, or for any other person with some religious attachment, but for me, this is a much better question.  It still might be a bit awkward, but it lets me articulate what I believe without having to try to measure it against some imaginary 1-10 scale of frightening-zealot to reluctant-holiday-observer.

Cute! Gertie makes a new friend.

Cute cute cute! Yesterday Gertie met my friend Kathy and they instantly bonded. Soul mate material. I took a zillion pictures of their cuddles, and this is one of them.

Singalong! Zombie Christmas by Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler

I love Christmas and I love Christmas music (don't worry, I don't get the holiday machine rolling until December, I'm not an animal).  The traditional carols are my favourites, but I also can't help but fall in love with these newfangled holiday tunes like those of Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler.  I mean, Zombie Christmas?  What could be better?

ZOMBIE CHRISTMAS

by Emmy the Great and Tim Wheeler

I was lying in my bed on Christmas Eve

Then something happened that I couldn't believe

The sound of chains dragging down the street

It was a Zombie Christmas.

It all went wrong when the day became night

Everyone in town had to run for their lives

Couldn't even check if my gift had arrived

It was a Zombie Christmas.

All the angels singing:

Christmas time has come,

Oh man you'd better run, run, run!

All the bells are ringing:

Christmas time is here,

I hate this time of year!

Winter wonderland and a silent night

It's only gonna happen if you put up a fight

Just be careful, because they bite

It's a Zombie Christmas

They don't feel the cold when it's 50 below.

You see them sucking brains out in the snow,

And don't get caught beneath the mistletoe

At the Zombie Christmas

All the angels singing:

Christmas time has come,

Oh man you'd better run, run, run!

All the bells are ringing:

Christmas time is here,

I hate this time of year!

They came in through the chimney when the people in the house were sleeping.

They didn't fill our stockings and there wasn't anywhere to hide.

Well I don't want to have my last Noel,

We'd better kick those zombies back to Hell

If we want to live to tell the Zombie Christmas!

All the angels singing:

Christmas time has come,

Oh man you'd better run, run, run!

All the bells are ringing:

Christmas time is here,

I hate this time of year!

All the angels singing:

Christmas time is here

I hate this time of year!

Learning! Art will make your kids into better people

If you aren't a person who is involved in the arts, chances are you have at least heard us artsy folk talk about how essential the arts are to humanity and education and everyone all the time.  I will admit, sometimes we're just saying stuff that sounds really "big deal" and has nothing to back it up.  A lot of it does, though, and now there is one more piece of concrete, scientific evidence to back up the value of art: researchers at the University of Arkansas have found that exposure to art gives young students "greater tolerance, historical empathy, as well as better educational memory and critical thinking skills."

So... basically, they become better human beings AND are better at learning and thinking critically about things. Educational outcomes, achieved!

Source.

Me & Ryan Gosling Having Fun with Moustaches

My office is a silly place. One day the staff was having fun with moustaches when Ryan dropped in for a visit. He had the perfect timing to photo bomb my web cam pic of myself in my 'stache. If there's one thing my sweet Ryan is good at, it's getting into photos!

Inspiration! Hope or expectation?

"Hope is fuel, it moves us forward and it amplifies our best work. Expectation is the killer of joy, the shortest route to disappointment. When we expect that something will happen, we can't help but be let down..." - Seth Godin

I think Seth Godin is, as usual, right on the money. The trick is, how on earth do you tell the difference? How do you keep hope from turning into expectation?

If I think about it, I think that hope is more positive and open. Hope looks forward with optimism and sees possibility. Expectation, on the other hand, is specific and clingy. It needs and grasps and can only be satisfied in one specific way, and even then, will it really be satisfied?

Intellectually, this makes sense, but I honestly have no idea how to apply it to life. If there is a possibility hanging out right in front of you, how to you keep yourself in the realm of hope and out of expectation?

Okay, here's something: maybe it's about the outcome. If we fixate on a particular outcome, picturing what our life will be like and planning around it, then we are living in expectations. If we don't worry about what will actually happen and just focus on the process, on moving and doing and working and trying, then we can just hang out with hope.

Except then that sounds dangerously close to the life philosophy of expecting the worst so that you're surprised when good things happen, which I generally don't subscribe to as a great way to live.

Besides, hope isn't entirely removed from outcome. Hope doesn't generally refer to enjoying the process and not the product; hope generally refers to some end result. We hope for change, for improvement, for love, for happiness, for things to go well, and for help, among other things.

If you haven't noticed from my back and forth here, I am genuinely trying to figure this out. What do you think? Any ideas on what the actual difference is between hope and expectation?

Cute! Gertie the Kneady Cat

Gertie is a needy animal. She can also get her knead on like none other. (Hey-o! Did you see that play on words?) I tried to make a gif out of a video I took of her kneading all over me in bed, but it basically turned into a two-frame stop motion animation. 

Well, it's still cute, right?  Or maybe seizure-inducing?

Singalong! Song for a Winter's Night by Sarah McLachlan

It's Christmas!  And by "Christmas" I mean that it's December and so now we can start doing Christmas-like things.  Don't worry, though, I'll start you off gently with a song that has no jingling bells or sleighs or baby Jesuses.  It's more of a wintery celebration song: "Song for a Winter's Night" by Sarah McLachlin.  Fun fact that's fun only to me: I did a dance to this song in my ballet class in grade 11.  It was very pretty.  When we did it in competition once they announced it as "Song for a Virgin Winter's Night" .... for some reason.

SONG FOR A WINTER'S NIGHT

by Sarah McLachlan (originally by Gordon Lightfoot)

The lamp is burnin' low upon my table top

The snow is softly fallin'

The air is still within the silence of my room

I hear your voice softly callin'

If I could only have you near

To breathe a sigh or two

I would be happy just to hold the hands I love

Upon this winter night with you

The smoke is rising in the shadows overhead

My glass is almost empty

I read again between the lines upon the page

The words of love you sent me

If I could know within my heart

That you were lonely too

I would be happy just to hold the hands I love

Upon this winter night with you

The fire is dying now, my lamp is growing dim

The shades of night are liftin'

The mornin' light steals across my windowpane

Where webs of snow are driftin'

If I could only have you near

To breathe a sigh or two

I would be happy just to hold the hands I love

And to be once again with with you

To be once again with with you

Learning! The insanity of people who run too much

I have always been suspicious of people who run too much for fun.  I mean, running is essentially pure torment and misery.

I get why people do it to be skinny, in the way that we humans do a LOT of torturous things to get skinny and running isn't so bad when you consider spending weeks consuming only water with lemons and cayenne pepper in it.

I also get people who do it because their lives depend on really high levels of physical fitness.  If I was chasing mastermind criminals down the street whose legs are enhanced by their magical abilities, or if I was trying to run away from said criminals, I would wish I had run more often.  I get that.

But then there's the people who just run big crazy marathons for fun.  Say WHAT???  Insanity.

Turns out, there are some kind of insane things that happen in the brains of ultra-marathoners, including ultraeye syndrome, when the cornea swells to the point where it impairs vision and people can only see basic light and shadows, and basic fatigue-related hallucinations that might be more common in people who are running for days on end.

Huh! Interesting!

Source.

Me & Ryan Gosling Playing Guitar

Some of you may know that Ryan is quite the musician. He had (has?) a sweet band called Dead Man's Bones. Well, you probably don't know that I play the guitar too! Just in more of a "sort of" kind of way. Here Ryan was trying to get me to play one of his songs, but I was just goofing off instead. He was a bit annoyed, but ultimately he agreed that my songs are way better than his. What a classy guy, my Ry Ry!

Inspiration! The sweet freedom of not having so many things

I was going to post this week about the joys of getting rid of things.  I recently did a wardrobe cleanse, where I mercilessly got rid of anything I didn't really want to have.  Yes, I still have more clothes than I need (purge 2.0 is coming), but as soon as I was done, I felt sweet, sweet freedom.

Then Black "Friday" and its multi-week extravaganza of sales came along (it's infiltrated Canada now, too) and I felt this sudden obligation to buy things.  Like I was going to be a fool if I didn't take up every retailer in the world on their amazing deals, even though I don't really want them.

This was strange.  I love a deal.  I am a Mennonite.  We are stingy.  Usually I get pretty into big sales - I go through the deals and figure out what I will need in the future so I can maximize the savings for as long as possible.  This year, though?  I just didn't want to.

Then today I read this article in Quarz titled "How the American middle class has lost its taste for mindless consumerism".  This brought joy to my heart (oh how our disposable consumer culture makes me feel all heavy inside), and seems to tie in nicely with my desire to purge without the subsequent binge.  With my unexpected internal rejection of the biggest sale day of the year.

You see, lately I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed by life.  Everything has been a bit too much.

This "too much" feeling has transferred over from work and other projects and obligations to every area, including all my stuff.

Having a lot of things used to feel like a safety: it meant that if I ever needed something, I would have it.  I would be okay.  I won't have to go buy it later when I potentially won't be able to afford it.  The fact that I have 30 pairs of underwear and 20 plates and a bunch of dresses I don't even want to wear made me all secure-feeling.

Sure, there's some logic behind this, as well as a wonderful rejection of the disposability and consumerism that teaches us to buy newer, shinier things and throw away anything that isn't perfect or immediately useful because we can just buy another one anyway.

So there is a balance to be struck - somewhere between usefulness, quality, and cost (both in terms of money and space).  All these considerations, plus the Marie Kondo "Spark Joy" craze, has inspired me to re-evaluate all my things.  What am I holding on to, and why?  What am I buying, and why?

Saying no to a purchase doesn't have to be an exercise in self-denial.  Instead, maybe it can be an exercise in self-realization and freedom.

In the same vein, letting go of things we own doesn't have to be a painful ordeal of letting go.  It can be an experience of gratitude for the functions things once served and the usefulness they can bring again to someone else.

So let this be your inspiration - whatever you're holding on to that you don't actually want anymore, be honest with yourself about it, and let it go with joy and thanksgiving.  Whatever you think you need to buy because it's Black Friday or Cyber Monday or Give Us All Your Money Day, let's be honest with ourselves about those, too.  Are we bringing items of usefulness, quality, or beauty into our lives?  Things that we will be glad to have around in a month or a year?  Maybe leave it for someone else to enjoy instead.

Who needs all that extra junk around, anyways?