Six years ago, when my marriage fell apart, I decided to do something special for myself. It had always been a dream of mine to go on a sabbatical. I had previously been waiting for my husband to take the leap with me; and when I realized that this was never going to happen, I decided to sign up for the deferred salary leave program through my work, and do it for myself. This program allows for an employee to save a portion of their salary, over a period of time, and take a temporary leave from their position at the end (between six to twelve months).
When I first joined the program, I did not really believe that I would make it to the finish line. It seemed like such a long way off and I had a hard time imagining that I could sustain the savings over such a long period of time; but it felt good to join the program and dream big for myself. I began telling people about my plan to travel with my daughter. I figured that the more I talked about it, the more likely I would follow through; and although it is hard to believe, six years flew by, and here I am about to embark on my grand adventure.
I am taking eight months off from work, with three of them spent in Europe. My thirteen year old daughter is accompanying me. Our travel itinerary includes a month travelling around the United Kingdom and Ireland and two months in France. We fly into England, continue up to Scotland, move onto Ireland, and finish up in France.
I have always been a heavy packer, so I made a concerted effort to pack light for this trip. As we are moving around so much for the first month, it makes sense to try to limit our luggage to carry on items; and I set myself a personal goal to keep things simple. It was a bit of a challenge as we needed to pack for all kinds of weather, including hiking boots and rain gear for the West Highland Way, and warm weather clothes for the south of France. Miraculously, we managed to squeeze all of our belongings into two small roll-on suitcases and backpacks.
After two years of living through a pandemic, I am finding it hard to believe that we can travel safely again. I feel nervous and excited about stepping out into the big, wide world. We begin our trip by flying from Vancouver to London, England. I am really happy to be returning there after almost twenty years, as it holds a special place in my heart. This whole experience so far feels very surreal but I am ready to be brave and take the leap. One. Two. Three. Here we go!
“Status quo is not very helpful for spiritual growth, for using this short interval between birth and death. On the other hand, expanding our ability to feel comfortable in our own skin and in the world, so that we can be there as much as possible for other people, is a very worthy way to spend a human life.”
Excerpted from:
Welcoming the Unwelcome: Wholehearted Living in a Brokenhearted World by Pema Chödrön
“If you make happiness your primary goal, you might miss out on the challenges that give life meaning. ..Bringing good things into your life, whether love, career success, or something else, usually involves risk. Risk doesn’t necessarily make us happy, and a risky life is going to bring disappointment. But it can also bring bigger rewards than a life played safe, as the study of happiness, academic achievement, and income suggests. Those with the highest performance at work and school made decisions that were probably unpleasant at times, and even scary…
As with everything in life, happiness has its trade-offs. Pursuing happiness to the exclusion of other goals–known as psychological hedonism–is not only an exercise in futility. It may also give you a life that you find you don’t want, one in which you don’t reach your full potential, you’re reluctant to take risks, and you choose fleeting pleasures over challenging experiences that give life meaning.”
“How to Build a Life” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.
For the last twenty years, my garage has been overflowing with other people’s possessions: boxes, paintings and frames, dishes and china, photo albums, clothing, furniture, art work, paper work. You name it. I have stored it. Most of these items never get picked back up again. People move or they forget that they have put them there. People pass away. It has become the land of forgotten things.
This week, I spent four full days cleaning out my garage and getting rid of everything that is not mine or in active use. The junk guys had to do three pick ups from my house. It was epic and exhausting but I feel a great sense of accomplishment, ease and joy now that it is done. I have reclaimed this space. It is no longer cluttered, clogged and impossible to walk in. It is spacious and open.
It is interesting how physical spaces are often a reflection of our internal lives. I have only recently learned how to set boundaries and to say no. I was never taught this skill as a child, and if anything, I was actively taught that I should always say yes to others. No matter my own needs, the needs of others always came first.
I have since learned that this is neither healthy or sustainable. As Brené Brown says, “the most compassionate people have the most well-defined and well-respected boundaries.” This is because when they say yes, they mean it, and when they say no, they mean it. There is no hidden anger or resentment. A yes is an authentic yes. So moving forward, I am going to say no when anyone asks to store something in my garage: it is not theirs to fill up. This will leave me with the space to say yes to the things that I truly want to.
“People often say, ‘Meditation is all very well, but what does it have to do with my life?’ What it has to do with your life is that perhaps through this simple practice of paying attention—giving loving-kindness to your speech and your actions and the movements of your mind—you begin to realize that you’re always standing in the middle of a sacred circle, and that’s your whole life. This room is not the sacred circle. Gampo Abbey is not the sacred circle. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’re always in the middle of the universe and the circle is always around you. Everyone who walks up to you has entered that sacred space, and it’s not an accident. Whatever comes into the space is there to teach you.”
Excerpted from:
Awakening Loving-Kindness by Pema Chödrön, page 54
I really enjoyed the Netflix series, The Good Place. It follows the story of four characters who enter the afterlife and undergo a series of adventures together: Eleanor, Chidi, Tahani and Jason. It is funny, silly and smart, providing the perfect combination for a great comedy. Although full of laughs, it also has a deeply reflective undertone, commenting on how hard it is to truly be a “good” human being in our current world, even with the best of intentions.
“Life now is so complicated, it’s impossible for anyone to be good enough for the Good Place,” Michael explains to the Judge (Maya Rudolph), the overseer of the afterlife. “These days, just buying a tomato at a grocery store means that you are unwittingly supporting toxic pesticides, exploiting labor, contributing to global warming. Humans think that they’re making one choice, but they’re actually making dozens of choices they don’t even know they’re making!”
According to Roger Gottlieb, a philosophy professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, these dilemmas are unavoidable in contemporary society: “Morally, we are caught in a system we did not design, faced with unpleasant choices we would rather skip over, torn between wanting a little more ease and a nagging conscience that suggests that such ease is not worth the moral cost, and sometimes compelled to choose what we would think is the least bad of two distressing alternatives.”
Although this is a hard reality to face, the truth is that we just have to keep doing our best: moment by moment, day by day. As Glennon Doyle advises in her book, Love Warrior: “Just do the next right thing, one thing at a time. That’ll take you all the way home.” I cannot tell you much more about this tv series without giving it away. All I can say is that it is definitely worth watching. It will make you laugh, cry and reflect upon the meaning of life; and the ending is one of the best that I have ever seen. Make sure to watch it right to the final episode. You will be happy that you did. Check it out and let me know what you think!
Have you found yourself staying up late, joylessly bingeing TV shows and scrolling through the news, or simply navigating your day uninspired and aimless? Chances are you are languishing, says organizational psychologist Adam Grant. He breaks down the key indicators of languishing and presents three ways to escape that “meh” feeling and start finding your flow.
“Someone once said, ‘Anxiety is excitement without the breath.’ What this means to me is that if I can breathe through the anxiety, I can recognize that it is a friend trying to warn me when it thinks I am in danger.
Unfortunately, it is sometimes the very traumatized friend—lingering anxiety in me, launched by something awful someone said or did—that is emerging at times when there is no immediate threat.
I learned if I could see free-floating anxiety as my traumatized friend who is always with me, I can learn to breathe through the terror I experience so viscerally and transform trepidation into curiosity. We can offer our traumatized friends within both consolation and encouragement using this affirmation:
Thank you, anxiety, for helping me stay alert to the multiple emotional, physical, and spiritual threats in the world. You can relax, as I am breathing through the worry.“
~ Excerpted from: “On Being Lailah’s Daughter” by Kamilah Majied in Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us about Race, Resilience, Transformation, and Freedom.
September 30th, 2021 marks the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. The creation of this day is in response to the 94 calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is a new federal statutory holiday in Canada, marking the genocide that took place in our country, as well as the irreparable, intergenerational harm that residential schools continue to afflict upon Indigenous families and communities. It honours the survivors. Residential schools were government-sponsored religious schools specifically established to “kill the Indian in the child” and assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. They ran for over over a hundred years, from the late 1800s until 1996: impacting over 150,000 children.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report estimates that more than 4,000 indigenous children died in residential schools from either neglect or abuse. It is believed that this number is actually five to ten times higher, but the final total is unknown, due to poor record keeping by the churches, and unmarked mass graves.
Throughout the spring and summer of 2021, many new discoveries of children’s bodies were made due to the ground penetrating radar technology. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in British Columbia discovered 215 unmarked graves on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. The Penelakut First Nation located 160 undocumented and unmarked graves in the province’s Southern Gulf Islands, once home to the Kuper Island Residential School; and 750 unmarked graves were discovered on the grounds of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.
September 30 is also Orange Shirt Day. This is an Indigenous-led grassroots commemorative day that honours the children who survived Indian Residential Schools and remembers those who did not. This day originates from the experience of Phyllis Webstad, a Northern Secwpemc (Shuswap) from the Stswecem’c Xgat’tem First Nation, on her first day of school, where she arrived dressed in a new orange shirt, and it was taken away from her. It has come to symbolize the stripping away of culture, freedom and self-esteem experienced by Indigenous children over generations. Orange Shirt Day invites Canadians to wear orange shirts on September 30th each year to honour survivors of residential schools, their families, and their communities.
Many Canadians view the residential school system as part of a distant past, disassociated from the current day. This is incorrect. The last residential school did not close its doors until 1996, and many of the leaders, teachers, parents, and grandparents of our Indigenous communities are residential school survivors. Although residential schools are closed, their effects remain ongoing for both survivors and their descendants who now share in the intergenerational effects of trauma and loss of language, culture, traditional teachings, and mental/spiritual wellbeing.
In Canada, 52.2% of children in foster care are Indigenous, but account for only 7.7% of the child population. This means 14,970 out of 28,665 foster children in private homes under the age of 15 are Indigenous: many of them permanently removed from Indigenous communities. Results from the 2011 National Household Survey also show that 38% of Indigenous children in Canada live in poverty, compared to 7% for non-Indigenous children. This stark reality illustrates the ongoing ripple effects of racists government policies, such as the Indian Residential School System, and the Indian Act.
On this first National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, every Canadians must take small, incremental steps on the path towards reconciliation. This can be done in many different ways, through learning, attending events, or donating to your community. It is a personal journey but one that we all need to commit to if we are to successfully move this country towards meaningful reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
Here are some links that provide ideas for how you can take action today:
Breath by Breath 