Do you care about the earth?

At the dinner table the father asks his children, “Who cares about the earth?” The son and the daughter announce in unison, “I do!” The father says, “What are you doing about it?” They quickly respond, “Recycling.”

The father inquires, “Do you care about the earth the way you care about other things?” At which point they begin to discuss the things they care about, the family, Blackberry the family dog, and they discovered the list was relatively short.

He persists with questions like the following, “Do you really care about the earth?”, “What is the earth?”, “Is it the magma you love?”, and finally he proposes, “I believe people say they care about the earth but really they don’t.”

The following morning as they leave for their respective daytime destinations, the father asks again, “Do you care about the earth?”
They answer in unison, “No.” As they enter their car and take their respective seats the son pauses and suggests the following from the rear, “It’s really about being grateful. If you’re grateful, then you will do something. The earth can’t care about you so how can you care about the earth. It’s not the same.”

“That's brilliant”, the father says as he reflects on how grateful he is to have children. He also realizes that he didn’t take time to acknowledge his daughter for being who she is and the father makes a point of rectifying this later the same day.

(The father makes a mental note about how the earth may in fact 'care about us'.)

Is there something wrong with our math?

Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.

Watch this video at the Rocky Mountain News. Clearly, this was more than a business idea (and no apologies are necessary).

It seems to me all of us have put too much emphasis on financial and physical capital. Where did our attention to social capital go? In the words of Robert Putnam "By 'social capital', I mean features of social life--networks, norms, and trust--that enable participants to act together more effectively to pursue shared objectives." Somewhere along the line we lost sight of the first piece of the capital in the equation.

social capital + (financial capital + physical capital) = value

The financial crisis has become a social crisis because the latter is distinct and contingent on the former. I'm not proposing socialism, I am just suggesting that social capital is worthy of being part of the real value equation. Economists would like to interpret jobs as a measure of 'the social', when if fact 'the social' should be some kind of measure of the job. For example, I would like to think that writing is an important social act, first and foremost.

So if the numbers don't make a business, if I can't get a bigger car, if the newspaper doesn't get enough advertisers because of an economic downturn, if inflation makes premium education inaccessible, if you can't pay me..., then the idea is by definition "of too little value", it fails and another good thing comes to an end.

Tuba's rock

The concert is a half an hour away and the children are in chaos in their makeshift playground. Parents are trying to accommodate the anxious children when a man with a tuba appears out of nowhere with a stool in his hand and he proceeds to position himself at the top of a low rise in the hallway. The children are fluttering at his feet like butterflies on a branch as he readies himself. My 4-year-old son is perched on my shoulders, he is the head and I am his legs, and I walk toward the musician in anticipation as he puts his lips up to this gleaming monster. Deep uncommon tones, soft and deliberate caresses, each one begins to fill the expansiveness of the space as if the rooftop is beginning to breathe with each new note. As he plays I can feel the sounds on my chest and the vibrations are resonating as if from the inside of my heart out into the room. Instantly I think of my son and I look up at the wonderment on his face. I knew he could feel what I could feel, it was the first time for both of us. I thought, this is what it is to be alive my son and I cried in the lobby of Roy Thompson Hall.

Cute baby

Watch this video at your own risk. If you begin to feel viewing this will cause you permanent psychological damage I have included the full transcript below.

Oah. Oah.
Come heeeere.
Stand up again.
Yeaaaah.
Aahahaha.
Yeaaaaah. (adjustment for safety)
Big boy.
Yeaaaah.
Hehehe.
Heeee’s walking.
Do it again.
Whoops.
Hehehe. Getting’ tired huh?
You can do it.
Ooooooh.
Yeaaaah. Come heeere.
Look at you.
Hahahahaha.
Oooooeeee.
Hehehehe.
Oh that’s a most efficient way of getting here.
Come here (unintelligible)
Come on. Come on big boy.
Yaaaaah. So exciiiiting.
Yeeees. (clapping)
Yeaaaaay.
That’s Camilo walking for the first time by himself.
It is June 29th, 2008.
Hehehe.
He’ll be 14 months old next week. Mhm.
Ooooh. What a big guy.
Hahahaha.
You’re makin’ us proud.
Hehehehe.
Whoop. (adjustment for safety)
Hahahaah.
He stands up by himself.
Good boy.
Hahahaa.
Your so gooood.
That’s exciting. (mother hugs and kisses him)
Hmmmmmh. (check out the mother’s toes)
You got bit by the bug Camilo. Now you’re gonna wanna walk all the time. We’re gonna have to be on guard.
Hey smiley guy. You gonna walk over here.
Come on let’s walk.
Oh ya. Heheheh.
Hmhmmm.

I count 51 phrases/sounds of encouragement give or take a few, 2 actions of care and safety, 1 overt display of physical affection and 1 indication of empathy over the course of 4 minutes and 5 seconds.

Parenting aside, here’s my point. When was the last time someone encouraged you? When was the last time you encouraged someone else? Why is this thought so unfamiliar and so uncomfortable? For those of you who are still pondering these questions, may I suggest that you make a point of encouraging one person, once-a-day. For those of you who already do, my hope would be that your words of encouragement sound nothing like this baby’s father.

Yo vengo a ofrecer mi corazon

I COME TO OFFER MY HEART
Written for Mercedes Sosa by Fito Paez

Who says that everything is lost?
I come to offer my heart.

So much blood that the river took with it,
I come to offer my heart.
It will not be easy,
I don't know what is happening
It will not be as simple as I
thought it will be
How can I open my chest and
take out my soul?
A slash of love.

Cradle of the poor always open,
I come to offer my heart.

I will join the ends of the same
loop, And I will leave in peace,
I will go slowly,
And I will leave in peace,
I will go slowly,
And I will give everything I have,
and, you will give me something,
Something that will help me a little bit.

When there is no one close or far,
I come to offer my heart
When the satellites can't reach,
I come to offer my heart.

I talk about countries and hopes,
I talk about life, talk about
nothing, talk about changing our
home, of changing it for simply
changing it.
When there is no one close or far,
I come to offer my heart
When the satellites can't reach, I come to offer my heart.
I talk about countries and hopes,
I talk about life, talk about
nothing, talk about changing our
home, of changing it for simply changing it.

Who says that everything is lost?
I come to offer my heart.
It will not be easy,
I don't know what is happening
It will not be as simple as I
thought it will be
How can I open my chest and take out my soul?
A slash of love.

Cradle of the poor always open,
I come to offer my heart.

Like an untouched document
I come to offer my heart

I will join the ends of the same loop,
And I will leave in peace, I will go slowly,
And I will give everything I have,
and, you will give me something,
Something that will help me a little bit.

Chemical Valley

Michael, my assistant designer arrived at work today complaining about a lingering a sinus cold. In the month that follows he will visit two doctors and willfully surrender to their prescribed remedies of antihistamines and antibiotics. His right eye will begin to protrude and his headaches will become more frequent and more severe. On a weekend of unbearable pain, he will go to emergency at Mt. Sinai Hospital where an MRI reveals a tumor the size of a golf ball between his eye and his brain.

My suspicions lead me to his hometown, Sarnia, which is situated in an area called Chemical Valley. Forty percent of the chemical companies in Canada are in “the valley”. Last month a report was released called Exposing Chemical Valley - An investigation of Cumulative Air Pollution in the Sarnia, Ontario Area. The executive summary reads as follows "What is particularly striking about the air pollution in the Sarnia area is the amount of toxic pollutants released. In 2005, the NPRI facilities in the Sarnia area emitted 5.7 million kilograms of “Toxic Air Pollutants,” including numerous chemicals associated with reproductive and developmental disorders and cancer among humans. These toxic air emissions are more than the NPRI releases from the entire provinces of Manitoba, New Brunswick or Saskatchewan and greater than any other community in Ontario."

Michael will begin to bleed from his nose from time to time. This spontaneous hemorrhagic condition though innocent and non-threatening in appearance can be terminal if it is not dealt with immediately. The emergency operation will require one surgeon to extricate the tumor and another to reattach the front of his skull. The hope is to remove the entire tumor with this radical procedure. Michael will survive the operation because of his good physical health. The tumor is removed successfully. On Michael's insistence, his father will call me after the nine-hour ordeal. The conversation is a struggle for Michael's father as he stoically describes the trauma engulfing his family and his only son.

There is over fifty years of environmental chemo-enhancement in the Sarnia area. There is a dearth results on the damage being done to the ecosystem on the part of American and Canadian environment-related government services. The journalists have done their part over the years, triggered by mysterious floating blobs the “size of a basketball court” in Lake Ontario, the unusually high frequency of chronic symptoms in the aboriginal community and the continuing empirical evidence of damage to Sarnia’s air, water and the health of its community. The citizens have repeatedly organized their protest to draw attention to the anomalies that permeate their environment and the community.

In the period before Michael’s radioactive therapy and the administering of 'chemo elixirs’, his cancer will grow back. "I just want my life back,” he says without resentment, just a tired expression on his face. The radiologist warned that he might be blind and deaf on one side due to the proximity of the tumor and the aggressiveness of the therapy, regardless there is no alternative. Miraculously, Michael survives his ordeal of cures - the cutting, the burning and the poisoning - and after a punishing year of interrupted time he will resume his life as a young Toronto designer, all of his senses intact.

Could this intrusion on Michael's life have been prevented? Probably not. However, it appears the elected officials in Sarnia and the citizens of Sarnia themselves have made disastrous trade-offs alongside the companies that fuelled their local economy. Clearly the perpetrators are the chemical companies, but surely those with the power to protect the community and the citizens whose responsibility it is to help each other are complicit. Sound action was undermined by denial, short-term agendas and procrastination at great human expense. Decades of collective compromise, perhaps democracy at its worst, has proven to be a flawed strategy deferring the real battle for others to fight from hospital beds.

Today in the studio, long before the diagnosis, I pass an article to Michael on an abandoned fiberglass factory in Chemical Valley. He recalls, “Hey, I used to skateboard in that building.”

A sunrise, a sunset

I am fortunate to have people around me who are kind enough to indulge me from time to time. On this occasion I looked up from my coffee and onto the sky with a need to know how others might interpret a simple idea. Soon after I arrived at my office I sent an email to some friends that read, “What is a sunrise? What is a sunset?”

Quite personally a sunrise is the most natural and glorious reminder of life; a sunset the realization that we are mere mortals in the big picture. Everything in between is 'stuff' that we label, try to control and if we're lucky - understand. Sunrises/sunsets: two sided chameleon bookends.
R

What is a sunrise? the beginning - hope, aspiration, inspiration, intention
What is a sunset? a pause to reflect and refuel
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. That is where they should be. Now put the foundation under them. -- Henry David Thoreau
L

What is a sunrise? - A new beginning; a new day; the perfection of this infinite universe.
What is a sunset? - A conclusion; harvest; another day of existence; the dawning of night.
S

a sunrise to me represents hope for renewal - the experience of being bathed in warmth and seeing things clearly for what they are....it is a time to appreciate what regeneration can provide......it is the beginning of another journey called a day.....it is the great equalizer.....it is promise and possibility....and proof of something greater....it is vitality and strength

a sunset to me is a respite.....a small door into tranquility......it is change...it is movement....i can look at a sunset and watch it happen.....ending.....it is the yang.....reward......excitement about possibility.....freedom......contentment....bring on the peace!!!
T

a sunrise is a promise
a sunset is a celebration
D

Eggs being tossed in a skillet. They go up, they go down.
J

A sunrise is a reminder that we are blessed to have the opportunity to love again. A sunset is an opportunity to give thanks for the gifts of the day and to acknowledge ourselves for our contribution.
O

I had the thought of the world breathing in for a sunrise and breathing out for a sunset.
JBJ

A sunrise stirs the eyes
That the sunset puts to bed
C

"Sunrise" and "Sunset" are two things I/you/we can be sure of in life - continuous and infinite!
Certainty is a rare commodity
W

A sunrise is hope
A sunset is peace
E

I appreciated the variety of perspectives, the individuality, the courage and commitment in each thought. Time passed and I was curious to know why one of my friends had not responded. I phoned to ask him why, “Where’s your email on sunrises and sunsets?” He said, “You haven’t heard? My mother died.” I paused and I expressed my condolences. Then he added, “And you know what my eulogy will be about don’t you?”

I recently forwarded this story to a new friend who had experienced the sudden death of a close friend and she responded with:
For me,
Sunrises are about starting fresh.
Sunsets are about entering into the eternal--the world of Magic.
M

“What is a sunrise? What is a sunset?”

Children are not broken

I was born to fix things. It is a rewarding and enjoyable preoccupation with houses, boats and anything else I can dismantle and reassemble. My first instinct as a parent was to try to fix problems as they came along, but it proved to be a disastrous approach in many instances. The flaw in this approach is two-fold; first, it assumes a child is broken. It has been my observation that this simply is not true. Second, it presumes I know how to fix whatever is broken. My conscious history provides little support in these matters and it appears my generational background compounds the problem in more ways than I would like to admit. I have found the born-to-fix parenting method focusses on my needs more than those of the family and for this reason I have chosen to abandon it.

One summer evening I returned home from work and as I walked into the kitchen I instantly became aware of the pandemonium in the room. Two children below the age of four at the peak of their energy, full of curiosity and highly receptive to the slightest amusement adds up to high pitch, high volume and high action. One glance at the rouge of my wife’s frustrated cheeks and the Vesuvius-like expression in her eyes, told me the situation was desperate. It was clear from my children that they were not going to be receptive to my opinion on orderly behaviour so I turned around, I proceeded to the bedroom and I changed from my business attire to more comfortable clothes. This allowed me the time to pause. On my return the question that needed to be answered was not; how do I reverse this calamity? Without triggering my born-to-fix habit the critical question became; how can I love them in this moment? I had no preconceived plan, no expectation and no solution at hand.

What transpired next was as much of a surprise to me as it was to my family. I don’t know how or why the following action entered my body or my mind but I started to hop into the kitchen. The children stopped abruptly and their attention turned to their hopping father. A smile appeared on both of their faces and I saw the relief in my wife as her shoulders relaxed and her face cooled. The children ran up to me, formed a line behind me and began to hop laughing and giggling. I realized we had never hopped together.

On another occasion my son would not go to bed on a Christmas evening. Hysterical he rejected all proposals to go back to bed. He was 3+ years old. How can I love him in this moment? I held him in my arms and hugged him as I descended the stairs toward the Christmas tree and I didn’t speak a word. I didn’t try to convince him or console him or distract him. I simply held him close and sat him down beside me in the sofa in front of our lit tree. We sat for a half an hour. While the volume had diminished slightly he was still rather distraught.

My wife finally came down the stairs and gave me a disappointed look. She had expected a resolve of some kind and clearly I had done nothing and spoken nothing to alter my son’s state. She stopped in front of the two of us and asked sternly, “What are you doing?” My response? “I’m counting the green lights”. My son stopped crying and with a slight grin he said, “And I’m counting the red ones.” My wife paused and then asked, “Are you ready to go to bed now?” With tears still fresh on his cheeks my son agreed to be carried to bed.

In retrospect, the question did several things for me; it turned my attention away from my own feeling of frustration toward the needs of the people around me; it focused me on the needs of the moment without the excess baggage of past or future events; and most importantly, it became a matter of love.

A reality check

It is very simple, very self-indulgent and very revealing. It is a brief opportunity for a free association moment, as is, no need to fear and no take backs - an internal rant. Just begin every sentence with "I am suspicious of..." Here's mine:

I am suspicious of things I don’t understand. I am suspicious of people who don’t make an effort to help me understand. I am suspicious of people who form groups before the group is ‘formed’. I am suspicious of people who want me to belong to their group before I want to belong to it. I am suspicious of 'value' before I know it is truly there. I am suspicious of words that attach to all of these things. I am suspicious of the intentions behind them. I am suspicious of myself when I say ‘You should…anything’. I am suspicious of those who don’t know their power to deceive, manipulate and damage. I am suspicious of myself for this reason. I am suspicious of disease, headaches and tiredness. I am suspicious of objectivity - the arrogant, possibility of it. I am suspicious of the use of the word ‘authenticity’ out of the mouth of anyone else but me. I am suspicious of unhappiness. I am suspicious of how conveniently it can protect people from the truth. I am suspicious of the truth because I find it more elusive than a lie, which means I am a struggling honest person or an easy liar or both. And at the same time I am ambivalent to everything but this moment because at this moment I am alive typing on my computer, because I want to, because I can, because it feels good, because I am thinking of people around me, because it makes me think of my children who I am not suspicious of and I hope will never have reason to be suspicious of me.

Robin Uchida

Mutual knowing

A friend once asked me, “how do I tell her I love her?” I asked him, “Do you love her?” to which he instantly replied “Yes”. It was clear to me he spoke the truth nevertheless the words were impossible for him to speak in her presence. The words were fused to his vulnerability and to speak them threatened the thing that held his inner and his outer worlds in place. He could not risk saying them or else it would all collapse. His feelings were left unheard. “How do I tell her I love her?” We are all plagued with this truth-on-mute problem in one way or another. It prevents us from being in the world with friends, associates and family members. It prevents opportunity in many relationships and maintains dysfunctions in existing ones. We deny ourselves dynamic experiences in each instance, freedom and creativity, the joy in mutual knowing, an authentic life.

“How do I tell her I love her?” I am familiar with this tension, a generational mystery sabotages an intentional life, and it is known by every man at some point, if not in its chronic form. I offered an experiment from my arsenal of personal remedies. Try a sign of affection you can manage, your own way of saying I love you. I wanted to tell my daughter I love her and for reasons beyond my understanding this seemed an impossible thing to do. I noticed I could hold her hand and caress her finger with my thumb. I thought she may notice or she may not, but for the moment this would be my way of saying I love you - I began. In retrospect this is the most important step, to begin. In my mind the ease of this expression allowed me to say I love you without the encumbrances of generational baggage. I was finally free.

Months later, I was driving my two young children to meet their mother. My daughter was very tired and emotional and her anxiety seemed to be increasing the farther we drove. In time her emotional frustration seemed to be subsiding and I was curious as to why so I looked in my rear view mirror and I surveyed the back seat. I witnessed my 5 year-old-son calmly comforting her. He was silently facing forward in his car seat undisturbed by her behaviour. With confidence and the concern of a loving sibling, he had reached across from his car seat to hers and he was stroking her hand with his thumb. He gave both his sister and I a gift I will always be grateful for.

I graduated from one way of expressing love to another until some time later I was able to say what I needed to say, “I love you.” I developed many creative ways to challenge my barrier, never knowing precisely why it was there. I am still not as demonstrative or as effusive as others but I know my children have heard me, a message my father never made clear to me with words in all of his living years. I do have a memory of an occasion, as an independent nine-year-old, when I had to loosen his hugging arms so I could go and play with my cousins.

The Argument

I hear my own sickness in my brother’s words as he continues to press down on his open wound. I remember this feeling of torment as a tense hollow gut, a tight rope for sibling jousting. It is all too familiar, the silent voice of curses beneath a smiling calm, so insidious a smile that it grows more comfortable until it is unnoticed, automatic. This used to be ‘the game’. The object was to win at all cost, leaving behind any vestige of virtue at which point we were licensed to say and do anything to generate pain in the other. And now years later, I think of it as ‘the torture’ as we relive the ritual and chant our mantra "Are we feeling my pain yet?"

The oppressor and the oppressed, angry and angered, I am ashamed of this inescapable me. To stand victorious over the barbarian as retribution for a lifetime of unworthiness or to wallow in victim’s tears in a lifetime of fear and degradation, neither victor nor victim is free. We remain trapped in our misery.

I am inclined to share our notion of disadvantage or weakness at any opportunity by suppressing others. My subconscious speaks for me, “Do you understand me as I manipulate you with these words, until I see my pain in your eyes? Ah finally, there it is.” And the more people we infect, the less lonely we feel. It is an elite form of psycho-bacterial warfare that I participate in. And like bacteria it is most easily shared with those who are closest to us. “So you are weak” my grinning subconscious continues “So am I. Happy to meet you…really”.

‘He heard it and sank deeper than sorrow, through torn sobs and cries toward consummation of his heart’s ultimate need.’ – from Seize the Day by Saul Bellow