Gratitude, Resentment, Grief and Aging

I am thankful for my fingers, Lord.  The knife cut I did to my index finger did not severe a nerve.  The joint capsule may have been penetrated but there is no more infection.  Daily iodine  with hydrogen peroxides and bandaid changes has saved the finger.  How come I was not so careful initially when I was washing the knives.  But thank you Lord if there was any lesson I was to learn from my injured  ‘pointing finger’.  I have not had to at least have it removed. I’m grateful for that.  Help me always to see more my own faults than the faults of others, or the faults of the world.
Thank you Lord for the health of my dog.  I was so devastated when he was paralyzed that day. I was in fear all day as we drove back early from the north. Thank you for X-rays and Oak Animal Hospital and the lovely Indo Canadian veterinarian who did a thorough examination of him and found his nerves had not been injured, that he would walk again with medication. Thank you for his slow recovery. Thank you for science and medication.
Thank you for the end of elections. Help me to recover from all the hatred and shame I experienced again for standing up for what I believe in.  For years I have taught people ‘love the person’, don’t accept the behaviour.  I have taught that guilt was what we felt when we did something wrong but shame was what we felt when we felt we were wrong fundamentally as a person.  I have experienced so much shaming.  Throughout the election and even now I am told by so many that I am not a Canadian because I do not believe as the victors do.   Always shaming. Always ‘ad hominem’. I have never been ‘good enough’.  I have always been ridiculed and condemned.  Meanwhile I serve like an untouchable, treating unclean bodies and unclean minds.  Men and women get rich off the sales of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, heroin, cocaine, poor lifestyle, unsafe practices, yet I am there serving, healing and helping and I am told I am not worthy to live here.  I am unwanted.
I treat many old men like me.  Some old ladies too.  There is sadness in aging. There is sadness in a whole variety of poverties yet some poverty takes precedence.  The single mothers go to the front of the line while us men whose children were aborted are shunned.  We stand in lonely groups sometimes touched by the men and women whose children were killed in crime.  I huddle next to them.  Their sons and daughters murdered or killed in war or by accident Somehow we face dying together in the greatest of loneliness. I have no tie to this world, no illusion of immortality.
And so much I gave in taxes, taken from me, voluntarily though, I had no choice, to pay for education and children and I supported the children of others knowing my own were killed.  I am a laughing stock.  Worse than a cuckold.  The women jeer at us men whose lovers killed our being and say ‘you deserved it’. Man. I’d rather be a hammer than a nail.
I am shamed for being a man. And I’m not even a very good one.  The heterosexuals hate me because I’ve had sex with a man and the homosexuals hate me because I’ve had sex with a woman. I’m divorced and divorced men are the scourge of the earth.  Divorced women were obviously done wrong by men but divorced men get what they deserve.  They’re contemptible.  I was punished and condemned in the courts, laughed at by the judge whose eyes did not look at me but instead focused on the loosely covered breasts of the one who had once said she loved me.  As I once said I loved her.  In the end I paid her all I had financially. She was smug in profit.  The courts made their money too. The judge looked like he wanted to have a tryst with her.  He ogled her. She looked coy.   I was thrust aside. Loser. Fool.  Shame and humiliation.
50 shades of grey.  The billionaires are worshiped.  The women read with lust what girls are willing to do for the monetary winner. Eva Braun ruled all of Germany.  Only her man is condemned.


My mother is dead.  She didn’t do drugs or drink.  She insisted we go to school. She loved education.  She insisted we go to Sunday school and church. She loved the Lord.  She insisted we play hockey. She and my father loved hockey.  So I fished with Dad and hunted and fixed cars with my brother and my father. I learned cooking from mom and mixing cement from Dad and I helped him build buildings and boats.  My parents had lost so many friends in WWII.  Dad had served in the RCAF. A spitfire mechanic and a bombardier.  My parents met in the war.  Dad and Mom weren’t racists. I didn’t know racists till the government began dividing and conquering the people by calling everyone racists.  My black doctor didn’t even know he was black in those days like I didn’t know I was white.
Dad didn’t know that being a man and being white was wrong.  He didn’t think of himself as coloured.  My mother and her sister had black friends.  They were Baptist.  She didn’t have Catholic friends.  Dad had Catholic friends and Jewish friends and Buddhist friends and Hindu friends and secular friends.  Our family were as coloured as everyone. Mom joked about us having freckles.  My brother and her had red hair.  
Dad liked smart people, people who did things, ‘made something of themselves’.  Always growing up I heard my parents say, “It doesn’t matter where a person has been it’s where they’re going and are they building things up.”  Mom and dad most admired people who were working and taking care of their children.  They didn’t like people who were ‘living off of the government because they were too good to do a honest day’s labour’.  They didn’t like people who weren’t willing to ‘get their hands dirty’.  They especially didn’t like people who stole and criminals.
 “I didn’t fight for this country so I had to put a lock on my own doors,” my father told me.  The judge who lived a couple of houses over was a rip roaring falling down drunk and my parents didn’t have any time for drunks. They especially didn’t like drugs.  “Wasting their lives.  Caring for their own pleasures when they should be caring for others.  Not caring how much their behaviour hurt others. That’s their problem."
They both said, “You always were too smart for your britches.”  “I don’t care if the teacher is wrong, you’ve got to learn to not tell them that because they’re hurt you for it. The more wrong they are the more they hurt people who are right.” My aunt was Indian. My Baptist aunt was the executive assistant (we called her his ’secretary’ back then) to Canada’s ambassador in Washington DC during WWII. My grandfather arrived as a poor immigrant from Scotland and homesteaded northern Canada to become a great rancher and lumber man.  My other grandfather arrived from Ireland. Both poor, the “made something of themselves.’  They “didn’t take handouts’.
My aunts and mother told me the history of things.  The teachers told me lies. I was strapped by the principal for correcting them. The same occurred in chemistry when the teacher had the equations wrong.  But he didn’t have me strapped. He corrected his equation and thanked me.  That’s probably why I liked science.   We were caned in gym class, our buttocks bared.  I got my first ruler in kindergarten.  The female teacher undressed me in front of the class and held me across her knees smacking me hard over and over again on my naked bottom.
Much later I was punished for stopping men and women killing people. The people whose job it was to ensure the safety of the children hated and shamed me for stopping the killing. The provincial enquiry years later vindicated me but a half dozen babies more were killed before that occurred.  I never received an apology. I was never returned the money and time I lost for doing the right thing. I was suspect then. I didn’t keep quiet and mind my own business when I saw people being killed and raped.  I wasn’t a ‘team player’ they said in the government.  There is no “truth and reconciliation” for ‘whistleblowers’.
I’m surprised I don’t like S and M.  So many boys have come out of school spanked so many times like me that they at least got some pleasure sexually later from their twisted education.  I just got this twisted idea I’d stop people being abused. I try mostly to stop people from ‘turning anger inward’.  They continue to hurt themselves after being hurt so much by others.
Now the government tells me I can’t touch people.  Standing helpless in my office men and women cling to me and their tears run down my suit.  I cannot hug them.  All over the province men and women physicians are being publicly threatened fines and loss of license if they touch a patient, especially if they hug a patient.   I eventually push them away and tell them the government says that doctors can’t touch their patients even when they are grieving. There are so many laws today.  I am afraid of everyone and everything.

Thank you Lord for these moments of peace. Thank you Lord for bringing me safety this far. Thank you for the light. Thank you for the coffee and the cream and the porridge. Thank you for this computer. Thank you for letters and language. Thank you for the opportunity to learn. Thank you for the chances I’ve been given to make something of myself.  I am still walking upright. I’m still able to help others.  I am so thankful that my finger still works. I am always in pain, Lord.  I am just so thankful that it’s not as bad as it has been. I am so thankful that I can get out of bed and get to work and have some work.  I look back and remember the abject poverty of those years of being a student, giving blood for books, not having food because I paid the rent, eating at family and friends because I had no money. We were in love then. We lived so simply.  Years and years of hand me down clothing, hand me down furniture.  We pooled our resources for a party. I studied from 6 am to 12 pm and saw formulas in my sleep.  I lived in hospitals.  I went for years without sleep.  Plane crash. Polar bear chasing me.  Deadly diseases.  Old people dying in my arms alone in the night giving me their last words as gifts.  I thought I’d never get clean. The lice, the bacteria, the virus, the sickness. I was sick for so many many years.  Tuberculosis. I was treated for a year.  She condemned me for going where no one else would go. “You’re not a Christian, you’re a fool.” she told me when I wanted her nakedness and she was angry that I flew away to serve the aboriginals because, “no one else would’.  Now no one cares.  The government regulator sneered at me and said, “It’s just a job.”  I’ve never got my back pay. There never was a bonus.  Everyone said I had status but ever shopkeeper raised the price and stole from me.  All the while the government took in taxes and paid themselves fat salaries and froze my income.  Among ourselves we laugh if we make minimum wage.  7 days a week for how many years is it I worked and was on call. No overtime. No on call. No danger pay.  I fell asleep in an operation.  I wet myself too.  An adult man peeing dribbling unable to hold it. all night with an unforgettable bowel after a shot gun wound.  I wake with nightmares screaming lost in guts that are perforated seeing faces of suicides. It’s a good week when I don’t remember, when I get a full nights sleep.  This morning I woke at 5 am.  Now I know it’s just the rain.  It’s the darkness and the rain. It’s that season. I remember the rains coming and the palm trees flying over my car, my windows knocked out.  The rains and the darkness. I’ll get used to it again.

Thank you Lord for the memories. When I smoked pot and drank wine I forgot.  I don’t remember my holidays. Those brief weeks when we’d get away from the ‘front’ and escape to beaches.  I drank wine and smoked weed and now don’t much remember those days while the horrors of guns in offices and knives and the angry faces fresh from jail in withdrawal demanding valium and more valium or narcotics and more narcotics threatening shouting.
She said I ’sexually harassed her’ when I asked her to leave because she was stealing and smoking crack. She ‘d been raging and shouting at the Indo canadians in wheelchairs.  She hated Indo Canadians.  I didn’t know when I hired her. I didn’t even know she was a drug addict. I didn’t know she prostituted. I took others words. She lied. I didn’t know her johns had been her references. I didn’t know that her minister was her bisexual lover. I’ve never known anything when the shit hits the fan. I’ve been so focussed on saving a life that I didn’t know that I was being stolen from. Only when the bank balance didn’t match did I know something was wrong.  Only when I saw the receipts from the store did I realize that she was a thief.    Everything she said and wrote didn’t match. Lawyers showed that.  A hundred lies but it was never about truth.  I told the truth and was condemned for it.  Government’s don’t want the truth.
The government woman said, “Women don’t lie about sex.”
I learned there was no ‘justice’ and went to work pro bono with my friend who was killed when he said that only the rich could afford justice in Canada.  I still think it was a hit.
Thank you Lord for the lifting me up. These moments come and go. The set backs. Reflecting on people saying I’m not a Canadian.  People telling me to leave Canada and that I’m not wanted here.  It took me back to the time when I was getting death threats, when my windows were shot out by 22’s, when my cars was keyed over and over.  I had been diagnosing alcoholism and addiction and saying that people were unfit for work. The management thanked me for halving the accidents on the job. Men and women thanked me for making their workplaces safe but the cost was high. Drug addiction changes a person.  The pot heads were just as violent as the alcoholics and cokeheads when it came to wanting revenge.  Here there were having this good thing, the doctor before me saying they were depressed and giving them a week or two in hospital to dry out before they went back to work to wreck havoc on management and their fellow workers.  He was the loved doctor.
"The other psychiatrist  never asked about alcohol and drugs but this knew little shit doctor did and he fucked me up. The fuck cost me my job writing down what I told him I smoked and drank. It was supposed to be confidential. When the insurance company saw it they said that I had to go to treatment. I didn’t want to quit.  I just wanted the other psychiatrist to keep writing a note saying I was sick because of my bipolar disorder.  I didn’t want this fucking asshole to fuck me up.  I talked to everyone about him.  I didn’t think it was relevant to tell anyone how much weed I was smoking when I was working.  It’s medicine. It’s a herb.  It’s not like the pharmaceutical’s that little shit puts people on.  The boss is just like him. A fuckking shit. Keeps telling me I’m forgetting and not concentrating on the work.  Claimed I caused their multi million dollar machine to break down.  All the stress he was giving me made me do coke. I needed it to concentrate at work after I started the day with a few shots and a doozie or two.  Then I go to the hospital for my normal break, like we all did with the old doctor and this shit blows the whistle.  Of course I hate him.  Fucking boy scout.  Little do goober.  Of course my friends and I made his life miserable. After what he did to us he’s lucky he didn’t have an accident."

Now I’m just sad, now , alone.  Thinking how many lives I must have ruined drug testing.  If I’d just backed off, turned a blind eye like my colleague, these guys might have gone on to be Prime Minister or at very least headed the company. Instead they probably left regular work and went into growing dope full time and becoming part of the multi billion dollar BC industry that now has essentially been pardoned as well as getting to take the money and run.
I’ve never been “pardoned" in my work.  I’m just scrutinized, regulated, criticized,  shamed and threatened. They call the punishment different names like ‘re-education.’  It’s still punishment.  The hitters get paid and the victims get framed.  When I was doing so much pro bono work, about 20% of that years income, because the parents didn’t pay their premium they and their  kids couldn’t see private doctor and they were told to go to government clinics where they didn’t want to go because everyone their judged them and put them down, I saw them.  I didn’t get paid.  May e $20,000 loss of income a year. I thought like any business I should be able to declare it as a loss so I did.  Revenue Canada sent out three people to audit me. It wasn’t an audit. It was harassment. They went through all my books.  At the end of a week, this thug said, “No doctor sees patients for free. We haven’t caught you yet, but we’re watching you and we will.”  Every private doctor I know works for free but we’re not allowed to declare our ‘losses’.  Even today people miss appointments and I  don’t pay but I can’t declare my losses against my earnings like all other businesses can.  The reason is that psychopaths think others think like they do.  Lizards think other think like lizards.  So our government doesn’t do anything for free.  And they can’t understand a physician any more than an insect can understand a bird.
It’s not good to stew. It’s better to help someone. I am so thankful. When my mind wasn’t working I used my body to carry folk. When I couldn’t lead I followed. Today I know the people I’ll see are hurting more.  I have so many people with cancer and surgeries and all I do is provide relief.  The heroin addicts are far gone but here and there one awakes and wants to live.  I’m happy to provide solace. I love to see people cured. But now we’re all getting older and the only cure for life is death.
I think of that too much these days.  Kierkegaard, “Life is suffering unto death’. I think a lot about my buddhist days.  I’m praying and meditating.  I miss rejoicing.  I miss dancing.  I have to have a shower and get to work. Everyone is always angry that I’m late. Some days I’m afraid to leave my office. A day of my life has not gone by that someone hasn’t been angry with me. A year in my life has not gone by that some official hasn’t hated me and tried with all their power to destroy me.
 For so many years the friends of the man I stopped killing people haunted my life. They were in so many high places and their loyalty to their drunken dangerous friend was admirable.  They were more afraid than me.  I saw that but now a couple of them have died and the others are retired.  They’re rich and have young wives and their children visit them.  They tell war stories like we all do.  They’re victors.
I don’t think I ever wanted to be a victor. Maybe if I’d set my eyes higher. As long as I can remember I've just wanted to survive and help others survive.  .  Thank you God for letting me survive. Thank you for the easing up of my back pain and the healing of my finger and my dog. Thank you that I can type.  Please banish my anger, my self pity, my negativity, my comparison, my jealousy and envy and my resentments. Help me rid myself of these character flaws so I can better celebrate this new day and be grateful for all that you have given me.

Post Election Feelings

It’s post election.  Justin Trudeau is the new Canadian Prime Minister.  Everyone is excited that he’s young and that the cabinet he will be picking is young.  There’s that Rock Star equation that’s reminiscent of his father.  I voted for Pierre. Met him even.  Admired the intellectualism.  But looking back, can’t say in the long run I was right.  The red flag with eastern Canada’s maple leaf and the extortion of Quebec Separatism, the colonialism of western Canada raped for it’s resources, the legal theocracy of Charter of Freedom and Rights: they’re just a few of things that seemed so right at the time but now looking back seem so wrong.  Communist Canada.
I was hopeful for a while.  We have three parties and each takes about a third of the vote.  Each also wants the whole of Canada to agree with it.  It’s a trinity and it’s an earthly one.  Father Son and Holy Spirit.  Conservative, Liberal and NDP.  But in heaven they live in love. In Canada they war and belittle and main each other.
That said, we muddle along.  I’ll put up a picture of Justin Trudeau in my office.  I don’t think it’s right to have a picture of another country’s monarch.  Justin is more my leader than the Queen though I do love the monarchy. It’s the blue taint in my red blood.  They called me a red tory and when I was a whig I was centre of left.
But this election has pained me.  I just said I chose one team. It was all like sports for intellectuals and I voted for my home team. But the anger and the malicious attacks on my character and sanity were rife.  I have seen the same in the ‘climate change’ debate.  To listen to the climate change catastrophizers they are the only ones that can be right. There’s this royal arrogance among the most vulgar and common.  It’s fueled by declining ethics and morality and loss of direction in a consumer society.  The seller is a predator and the buyer is a consumer.  The seller is the bourgeoisie and the buyer is the proletariat.  Everyone meanwhile is relatively poor in these immensely rich times.  All the third world wants parity with the first world while the billionaires and above are spread through the world loving most the places of greatest security. If you want a billionaire make that place safe. Meanwhile the tyrants of the old world are toppling.
I have been distracted.  None of these political platforms have benefited me.  Politics is about money.  All around me I see people on the gravy train.  I’ve gone to work for more than 30 years doing 120 hours of work or more a week.  I play hard.  My time off is a ‘change’ rather than a rest.  I do what I do to gather the state of mind to face the negativity that it is my life to face.  I am hopeful in face of disease.  But now with aging and dying I am burnt out and worn thin.  Even now I must explain a death to superiors who ask why a man who is multiply addicted with a myriad of diseases dies.  The demand for perfection from these back benchers who have long ago failed to face the front is painful to say the least.  I have thoughts of my own death, think of suicide whenever I am faced by these people because they seem so impossible incompetent and stupid as to be a certainty that the world does not deserve to exist.  I must learn to forgive them for they know not what they do.  Kafka and Camus painted their pictures better than I can.  But my grief is ruined by their arrogance and superiority. They are the cancerous waste on human creation. I laughed to watch Tomorrowland and realize that even a movie has been made to address the smegma of their existence.
Yet I’m merely afraid.  I have seen first hand the abuse of power of these diaper wearing tyrants who come in single coloured committees.  I have shown them the killers personally and watched them cover up and cover up. I know they can not have passion or know depth for their shallowness is deep.
And the election has like that interfered with my peace.  It’s phony. It’s a facade. The distance from the front to the back  lines is ever greater. The leadership is no longer in ivory towers but on space stations.  The money that goes to corruption is no longer millions but trillions.
And I wait for death.  I meditate to come back from the abyss.  I have wallowed in the human struggle. My team lost.  And even now they belittle and shame and blame and kick the man that is down.  And it’s all just Scapegoats and 4 years until we get to turn around and piss on our enemies and shame and blame and kill in effigy like the Golden Bow.
I long for the buddhist end to life cycles now. I pray for Christian salvation. I wonder if I should suicide myself now that the supreme court has warmed to thanatos and introduced ‘physician assisted suicide’ for the poor and difficult.  I feel the look these days.  I’ve only been tolerated but now I can be removed.  I have been too honest. Too outspoken. I’ve stood in the way of ‘progress’, they once called it. “Change” they call it now. I’m a dinosaur. I’m a dying breed.  I’m a has been.  I’m an old man in a youth culture.
All around me I see the men and women I most admired attacked by committees like hyaenas.  I read Psalms and nothing is new.  Politics is just another soccer game.  It’s war in symbolism.  The silliness of power.  It’s King Lear and the Glass Bead Game.
I’m tired.  I don’t know why I have spent a life time joining the losing cause.  I have served the billionaire and the poorest of poor and sickest of sick.  But there is no hope for the centre.  It’s in the dichotomy that riches are made.  I am afraid to ask my richest of neighbours how many people they killed indirectly to afford their house. They increasingly come from poor countries with obscene wealth.  I am a boy scout and there is no place for boy scouts in this world.
Self pity is always there like a great demon waiting to devour the joy of my life.  Defeat is irrelevant. Death is certain.  I believe in after life as only those who have done their duty and service can.  I resist hedonism and murder equally.  I know tears and think it’s just the beginning of the rainy season.  The season is depressing with rare moments of photographic beauty.  The world is crying with us.  A huge cleansing time. It is only in soul wracking tears that we can release the demons to the atmosphere and shed the sadness of the ages.  In our despair and laughter we are freed from the lifetime of mutual restraint. We hold ourselves in check.
But who am I to speak for other than myself. I hold myself in check. I don’t say what I think. I moderate myself to the nth degree yet try to find the source of sickness in the other. With emotion I probe the heart of sadness and laugh.  Halloween has gone. The chance to jump worlds has passed. We now move towards Remembrance days.  Red poppies like our red flag.  Dead leaves and dead flowers.  The Remembrance of the stupidity of government.  Large groups of people have stupidly killed each other with greater brutality and efficiency.

Today I’m not laughing. Praise and thanksgiving are hard for me today.  There is sickness close to home. My dog limps. His back is injured. I’m in constant pain myself from similar injuries. He’s young and I’m relatively so but we’re a couple of old warriors who have come back from the weekend in the mountains and woods worn out.  I feel terribly old. I was hardly able to climb the ravine let alone the mountain. I couldn’t lift a deer and it was short years ago I butchered and cleaned moose and elk alone pulling them from the woods by myself .  I feel frail.  Fat out of shape.  Chained to a desk fighting to my last breath.  I was cold in the north.  I was shivering. The rain was horrid. I wanted silk and incense and soft beds and movies where I could transport myself to another world without the harsh feelings of actually being there.  Everything was tough and rough.  Lifting gas and diesel cans onto the truck. Driving the ATV.  Constant vigilance. Shooting the cannon to sight. Everything dangerous.  Realizing one is hours from hospitals.  I’m back from the wilderness.  Humbled.  It’s always humbling to leave the inner hive of the city and get out there where all is dangerous.  Each trip is tougher.
This time we returned wounded. Even the dog was injured.  Equipment broken.  Cuts and bruise to body.  Ego deflated.
I pray a lot.  All day.  I meditate.  I want some peace. It was silly to engage in the debate. Nothing that was being promised affected me. I just didn’t want more government and more taxes.  I am a walking meritocracy and I have a life time of caring for the mediocrity, giving it blood and sweat.  I carry the world on my shoulders.
The self pity is an insect that creeps under the skin. The comparison is a boil.
I am blessed. I am alive. I have air and water. I have warmth right now. I have over coats and clean underwear. I have a shower. I am thankful for all these blessings. Praise and thanksgiving.  Forget about how high the peaks seem where you are going and look back at where you have been.  You were imprisoned.  You paid the ultimate price for truth.  You sacrificed your freedom for love.
So much of what you feel is loneliness.  Godlessness. Anxiety is a measure of our distance from God.
Self Pity masquerades as depression.  Sloth and gluttony and greed don’t bring joy.  Joy is a choice.  It’s an attitude. It’s a search for the good and avoidance of the bad.  Now it’s time to Thank God the elections are over.  Thank God you are focusing again on the spiritual and character development.  You did your time in the asylum. You came out of the place of hiding and joined the fray.  Arjuna said to Krishna that his family was on either side in the war.  And Krishna replied that is always so. The only question was whether you would participate or not.  And I participated.  Jesus said there would always be war.
It was Facebook that made this election so personal.  All the attacks and mean spirited ‘ad hominem’, the rage couched in caring. The people who had something actually to win and their rejoicing.  They won the lottery.  I lost.  Win or lose - does it matter when the game is played in back rooms and the table is rigged.  It’s better here than elsewhere.  But I’d say it was rigged if I won.  It’s a casino. A crapshoot.  I”m not negative about the game. The game is the game.  This world is a gambler’s paradise. I’ve played on all three teams.  I know the game.  It’s not the game that bothered me as much as the rage and threats.  I took it personally.  I must have loved. I must have been less aloof than I claimed because I didn’t like that when I said I was voting for the other guy I was maligned and threatened and hated and portrayed as un Canadian.
Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings. I really thought I was Canadian but it appears a third of Canadians, the majority, see me as a scoundrel.  I understand why there is so much apathy here. I understand why people are afraid to vote or share their ideas.  There’s a viciousness that is Canadian.  We don’t discuss anymore. On the global stage we call each other names.  You’re a denier.  It’s not that we disagree but you are psychotic.  It’s not that we vote different but you are a fiend to vote that way.
I saw the 46 year wall in Belfast.  When the Berlin wall fell I rejoiced. But there are more walls today.  I actually live in a sort of gated community myself.  Trailer trash that I am.  Membranes not boundaries divide us.

Thank you God for this day. Thank you for all of life. Thank you for this election. I pray for Justin Trudeau and the Liberals that they may lead our country to greater prosperity and protect us from the uncivil civil wars that consume the world.

Plane flights, Canadians, Envy and Ingratitude

There are some 8 billion people on the planet today.  7 billion are doing pretty well.  Apparently only a few hundred million are faced with daily uncertainty about food and life. The majority of us should be very thankful.  Never before have so many people lived in such security and well being for so long.  Only a hundred or two years ago there were relatively few people and most lived rather short lives in far worse conditions.
I loved learning that people thought at the time of Columbus, 1492, that Europe was overpopulated.  The scientific revolution,  advances in agriculture, scale and even politics have lead to quite miraculous possibilities. The potential  today for people as a whole and the planet in particular were unimaginable a generation or two ago.
Ownership of a bicycle alone can be critical to success in the Third World.  Such a simple piece of technology transforms the impoverished to relative wealth by extending their household ‘import/export’ radius.  In 1987 I  learned of the revolution in transport and what it meant to civilization when I watched the Checkoslovakian Pavillion panoramic movie exhibit at the World Exhibition in Vancouver Canada.  Recently this has been reviewed.   Ownership of a car alone moves a person from the lower classes to the middle classes.  The intermediary ‘stage’ between bicycle and car ownership was the ability to ‘rent’ a seat on a bus or car.  Indeed those who had even travelled by motorized vehicles were superior in wealth and education to others.  Some 7 billion had had access to bicycle and half that to cars and car ownership.  A billion or more had flown while only millions or less had relative ownership of plane transport.
Amazing! I’m like so many in the first world.  Ungrateful.  Here I am flying yet again, for the countless time, irritated that tele transportation hasn’t arrived to reduce my frustration with the minimal lineups and security checks.
My parents were wealthy by world standards. They owned a car and a truck.  We travelled back and forth across Canada as a family by train. My father who had been in the Royal Canadian Air Force made sure his sons had their first flight in the back seat of a Cub before they were even teens.  I remember complaining in the back seat of that Piper Cub that my brother sitting next to me had a ‘better’ seat.   Envy is a close second to Ingratitude among the rich and civilized.  I’ve met many who I went to school with and they actually complain that they were ‘poor’.  Some were definitely richer.  But the whole neighbourhood I grew up in was rich in peace and stability and education. Parents had autos and kids had bicycles.
By my twenties I was taking jet trips across Canada to visit family. In my early 20’s I’d even fly from Canada across the Atlantic.  I bought a  bicycle there and bicycled Europe and  bused  in Morocco, Northern Africa.  
Buckminister Fuller, the American genius,  invented of the Geodesic Dome.  I had seen this in 1967 at America's World Fair exhibit in Montreal.  The Russian Sputnik was there.  I grew up watching Star Trek on television. I witnessed the NASA space flights, the moon landing and the Soviet Space Station missions.  Now I take my iPhone GPS app essentially for granted..
I was a fly - in doctor in Northern Canada using De Havilland Beaver Bush Planes and Cessnas as my weekly taxi service.  Often I’d fly in a DC3 the great workhorse plane of WWII as well.  Naturally I just did these things. Didn’t everyone? I’m still a little surprised when I meet someone who hasn’t flown in a plane, especially if I’m in Canada.
We take so much for granted.  I so commonly live in pursuit of my next dream.  I’m fixated on the future with memories more often of failures and resentments than the honest recollection of the amazing successes I’ve known,  the extraordinary life so many Canadians have available to them..
I loved that Bill Gates, the American billionaire philanthropist, stated that his greatest fortune was being born in the Pacific Northwest.
Naturally I was equally blessed to be born in Canada to the parents I had with the incredibly brilliant older brother.  I grew up in a suburb by the university.  It was normal for my classmates to mostly want to go to university.  We were middle class by Canadian standards but by world standards privileged upper class in deed. I’m often amused that Canadian ’standards of poverty’ would be considered luxury in some of the countries and regions I’ve visited and worked.  My ‘homeless’ patients complain about the ’shelters’ they live in and the amazing meals that charity provides. When I’ve volunteered at church kitchens I’ve been glad to later eat the meals I was dishing out. Better than I often eat.  The ’shelters’ are lacking by Canadian standards but I’ve been where 20 people shared a room smaller than the bachelor I had for myself in medical school.  
Canadians as a class are the worst complainers.  It’s the consumer society for sure.  Television.  Greed. Envy.  The search for something outside to fullfil the inner lacking. The loss of community. The spiritual bankruptcy.  There’s never enough.
I’m driving a glorious Mazda Miata M5 sportscar. I love this car. It’s utterly perfect for me and the fulfillment of a lifetime of longing.  It’s the MG I couldn’t afford as a young medical student bought by the old man in his 60’s.  The television and internet ever shows me  more expensive sports cars. There’s a Corvette, a Porche, and a Aston Martin in the parking lot where I work.  There are Honda Civics there too but who looks at those.   By education, I’m in the top 1% of the world. The woman owning one of the faster more expensive cars I know is academically stupid by comparison.  She was ’smart’ in marriage.  I don’t compare myself to her by any more than her car . I am more likely to compare myself educationally with the fellow who is higher on the rung than me.  Indeed I feel stupid compared to my younger colleague, a behavioural neurologist. I don’t even know what car he drives.  I doubt he cares. Yet I know the other man who owns the richest fastest car in the parking lot is much older than me. He envies me my youth.
We all fly. We all talk about our trips across the country or overseas. Lots of friends fly to Vegas or Mexico without thinking it’s anything to write home about. They skip the air fliight and focus their sharing on the beach, museums or exotic restaurants.   I share in passing which countries I’ve been too. We compare the long lists we’ve ‘collected’ . Country comparing is a bit like  we compared the ’sports cards’ we collected as boys.
We haven’t a clue really about the Impoverished lives of others who grew up in crowded hungry homes not even fortunate enough to share a bicycle.
I just believe it’s hard for people who have flown to another country for vacation to realize that by world standards that makes them at very least upper middle class, especially if they’ve also ever owned a car.  Most all of the Canadians I know are ‘upper class’ by world standards. They don’t know it.  They’re too busy complaining.
Perhaps it’s this election year with it’s constant hyperbole and hypocrisy.  I can’t help but hear the song, “You don’t have to dress like a refugee!” going round in my head whenever I listen to the professional ‘victims’ .  CBC news is always there to help them hawk their wares. . They’re like the Canadian “beggars" who stand beside the street with dogs and Starbucks coffees ($5) and signs ‘begging’ for food.  I work in the the Downtown East Side of Vancouver.  The amount of food available for the poor at times appears like it would feed a small country.  The food waste in the cities of Canada could feed a nation.   Daily we disparage our lot and complain of our declining wages and increases costs.  It’s true. Inflation is a bitch. I once wrote a lament for the billionaire who had to come home and tell his wife they were millionaires because he’d lost their fortune in the recent deflation.
I don’t drive a Corvette.  My friend drives a BMW. She doesn’t eat out in restaurants. Everyone in Canada makes choices.  We have a potpourri of choices.  Even the immigrants who complain of not finding work in Vancouver or Toronto refuse to consider working in the north where Canadians such as myself did long  and cold harsh service.  When we moved south we  found there was no affordable housing.  Foreign speculators had stolen our heritage.   But owning a house is a ‘luxury’ for most in the world especially  those wanting a house in ‘prime’ locations.  I  simply can’t afford it and still have choice. My friends have become indentured servants (slaves) to their mortgages, praying their ‘investments’ hold.
When Canadians complain ad infinitum about their government, wanting to get rich quick and have Hollywood success,  I remember that most people’s success I know is tied to family. It’s especially a product of discipline and hard  long work.  Half my medical school class were the children of doctors.  So many of my friends, second and third generation immigrant, are a product of the sacrifice of the parents and  their deep sustaining family values. We only bought my first car at 25 years of age. I couldn’t afford it alone.  I didn’t buy my first ’new’ car till I was a doctor in my 30’s.
I spent altogether 24 years in education all the while having jobs to maintain my educational pursuit.  My first job at 12 was shovelling snow. My payment was 50 cents. I was doing well when I made a dollar an hour which was better than delivering papers which my friends did at the same age. Baby sitting was 50 cents an hour and poor pay for the difficulties containing the little beasts till their parents return.  Cutting lawns for an hour at 50 cents to a dollar was good child wage when minimum wage was $5/hour.
So I’m flying again across Canada. This will be bout the 10th time I’m accompanied by my Cockapoo Gilbert.  He’s a a  "Jet Cockapoo." Not a "jet setter". Even our dogs are rich by any standards.  Regardless of who has lead this country of Canada we’ve been a rich nation.  We’ll continue to be wealthy for  a good time to come thanks to our natural resources and the competence and diversity of Canadians.
I just wish I had more gratitude and less envy.  Ingratitude and envy are so intrinsically Canadian.  We take so much for granted.  People talk about Canadians as polite.  But mostly we’re envious and ungrateful.  We love to disparage Americans too.
I want to celebrate my country, celebrate this life and all the wonders and blessings I’ve known thanks in most part simply because I had the good fortune to be born in Canada.  It takes another plane flight to remind me that those who have been blessed to be able to have flown are the annointed, the blessed, the privileged, the success stories.
I know it’s not the space shuttle.  I don’t even own the plane.  But I’m a Canadian.  Poor me.