It’s summer holidays and my two nephews are old enough to stay home on their own. Each has a cell phone for times when parental advice is needed. 

Last week on the first day of summer break both called their mom to convey that they hated each other. I may be talking to a small crowd here, but the boys decided to start training their calves for showing and this is hot, miserable, infuriating work; calves, in my opinion, were meant to be unencumbered by a lead and run free. I don’t know the details but tempers ran high, and each of my nephews made venting calls to my sister-in-law about their complete frustration with each other. 

The younger ended his call with a request – could he have an ice cream sandwich? My genius sister-in-law answered that he could on one condition – he needed to take out two, give one to his brother and sit together with him to eat them.   

A few moments later the barn cam proved in fact that the instructions were followed, and the two teenage boys were having an ice cream sandwich and talking.  I am sure that the boys were absolutely angry with one another for a difference of opinion or practice. Then add the heat, the pressure of knowing that the calves needed to be trained and top it off with the completely uncooperative 200 pounds of Angus – the perfect recipe for a summer melt down. 

We have all faced this, the team approach that doesn’t feel like a team at all; the pressure of the project that has no idea that it is supposed to go where you want it to go and then the added environmental factors.  Doors slam, tempers rise and inevitably the parties retreat to separate corners to keep on being mad at all that is wrong.

How to break through the swirling one direction funnel cloud of anger and resentment? In this case food, but the solution could be anything to change the direction, find common ground again or even get in the same room. If we are on a team we have common ground, we just need to get back to some semblance of calm to remember it, to find it, to be with one another and work it through.  

Next time I am tempted to retreat to my own space to be right while uncomplicated by any opposing facts, I will remember that an ice cream sandwich-like moment of sharing and a chat could be what’s needed. Now this was day one; this could be a very long summer for my nephews. Best to stock up on ice cream sandwiches just in case, methinks.  

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I went to an annual general meeting this week for an organization that I have supported, and been a member of, for seven years. I was thinking about my own AGMs and how we love our members to attend, and I had the time so I thought I would offer my support.

It was a well-organized meeting, and I was certainly welcomed by the general manager as a member and given a package and voting card. But then not a single soul spoke to me.  

I smiled at people at the coffee line, I took my seat; a person sat on either side of me, but immediately became engrossed in the package and their phones. The meeting began and I even asked a question, which was answered. But upon the conclusion of the meeting the very tight knit board and few members who were clearly former board members began to close ranks and chat about upcoming events.  So, I left.  

And now I can write about the experience of being welcomed but not included, being present but without a valued role, being invited but not being. I think it is important to reflect on the experience – no one at the meeting set out to make me feel less, but they were preoccupied in their own endeavours and probably assumed it was someone else’s role to include me. They had their own thoughts and motivations to deal with, no one is a villain in my story. 

However, this experience can remind all of us how to be hero. Presence is not enough, when looking to include we need to step out of our comfort zone and make some personal connections. I think sometimes we abandon groups and clubs quickly if we first feel as I did, like I was not really wanted. I think it serves both us and others well if we just make a commitment to start a conversation, make a connection, take that moment to welcome the stranger, even if we are the stranger.  Many would offer that as humans we all just want to be seen and be valued.  I am sure that if we commit to this over and over the doors of true inclusion will open for all.  And yes, if I have time I will attend next year, I still love the organization – and there was coffee.  🙂

Photo source: Openverse

I had a great time last Saturday in Prince Edward County. Where else can you just move about and every kilometre or so have a taste of some county brewed beverage? 

Garage Time Brewing Company is one such place. Literally in the garage of a rather normal looking bungalow, the specialty here is making beers taste like other drinks. So, I sampled beers that tasted like a Caesar, a margarita and a berry sour. 

This jaunt was a delightful adventure in taste and shared with friends – a great memory – but I’m not sure about the beverages themselves. I was confused as to why the beer needed to taste like something else. Why not just taste like some kind of craft beer with a more beer-like twist and leave the Caesar delight to, well, a Caesar? 

And then I took a break from contemplating alcohol and thought about how we all do this from time to time – we admire someone else or feel that some other quality is superior, and we hide our own strengths and stories in a layer of actions, behaviours and roles that we think will put us in better stead with those around us.

We all do this from time to time, read the room and decide plain beer is not going to do. So we better talk about our busy work lives and workplace; just talking about what we are interested in or how we fit in our community is too plain or risky.  Brene Brown says it well, we “hustle for our worthiness” when we do not just lean into what our story, skills, life experiences and core beliefs that create in their magical mix who we are. 

I was at a meeting at a church and tucked under the table at which I was sitting was an old bulletin from a Sunday long past. Clearly the bulletin had been in the possession of a child who liked to doodle. I was struck by the doodles, the kind of universal themes that one finds in almost all doodles – faces, crowns, fangs, little cars. Some drawings were clearly begun and then scratched out.

It made me smile, picturing a long church service where the person may have been a bit bored, remembering all the boring events of my own childhood that doodles and peppermints got me through.  I guess too it was the universality of the practice of doodling when bored. 

As a human race we really do have so much in common when you pay attention to the little things. Noise at a playground, cheers at a hockey game, that ooh ahh response at large gatherings for fireworks – these are responses that seem almost hard-wired.

I love that when I slow down, I can see the connective tissue, the links and few degrees of separation between people all around me.  When we are bored, we doodle, when we see something beautiful or frightening, we gasp and when we take time to notice we learn more and more about what it is to be part of the human race. 

How different does it make the world around us look when we are seeking our commonalities and not focusing on the divides? When we are looking for connections and not dividing factors? When we see what is strong not what is wrong? While we honour our differences and our unique gifts, there is also a beauty in where we overlap.  Doodles in our boredom and beauty in our shared experience.

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I went to the Walmart in Port Perry to grab a few things and when I walked in there was a gaping nothingness where the carts should have been. “The world is short staffed,” was really my only thought as I marched out to the overflowing parking lot corral. I took my cart in and did the shopping; coming out the problem remained, and I was witness to two senior ladies beginning their march out for carts when a teenage boy leapt into action and declared to them both to wait there and he would get them the carts they needed. They both seemed so shocked that they did not in fact stop walking at first, until he repeated his intention and then they gushed with gratitude.

I love this, a small gesture, some help, saving the two from the extra walking and giving me something to smile about for the ride home.

I heard an awesome presentation today that reminded me about seeing the great, acknowledging the great in others and embracing gratitude – and how all of this builds resiliency. I know that this young man was not even aware of me and just wanted to be helpful. He is not aware that I was able to glean a little slice of joy from the interaction and that I would now pass that on to my readers. That is just how it works, lob some kindness into the pool and you never know how far the ripples reach out.

At another store on the weekend, I found a cart with the quarter still in it; someone had left it there to save a stranger, who was me, the challenge of finding one. Who knew the shopping buggies could honesty offer this much magic in one weekend. My challenge to you – spread your own cart full of joy.

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This past weekend I spent a beautiful afternoon at my brother Steve’s farm. Many of my siblings were camped out there and we enjoyed a potluck dinner, campfire and some fireworks together. Of special note, Steve has about half an acre of lilacs, and they were all in full bloom for the affair; the fragrance was huge and the colourful flowers just took my breath away. 

Here’s the thing, when my brother looks at the lilacs, he sees a weed.  When I asked if I could dig a couple of the shrubs up to move to my house, he said he would rent a backhoe; he hates the lilacs. 

I am always amazed at how people see the same things so differently. I see a lovely field flanked on all sides by beauty and my brother sees yet more farm work, the clearing out of rows of the shrubs that keep on spreading and encroaching on his fields. 

We have different roles in the space – I am relaxing and he is relying on the farmland for growing crops.  There are so many layers to our experiences and our roles, and our opinions based on where we are. Yet this is yet another reminder that we all need to have a little patience, to take a moment for a little reflection on how things might look different and a little perspective on the other person’s vantage point.  I love lilacs, but I do not think that I want an acre of them either.

Three years ago, I bought a dishwasher over the phone.  We were desperate as we had house guests and no dishwasher, so I bought the one on sale, sight unseen. I knew that I was taking a chance but as the appliance was described it sounded pretty much like the one we had, and I believed in the brand name. 

The dishwasher arrived and we found it to be a passable model, with one huge flaw for us.  The silverware compartment was in the door. Now I’m not suggesting that this is a substandard design, but for our household we had always had a basket that could be removed and carried over to the drawer. We had always loaded the dishwasher in a certain way and now we had to innovate and retrain our habits to do that differently. 

Today we had to replace this dishwasher. (Did I mention it may have also been the cheapest, so it has already broken down?) Shopping for the new one, we had one definite wish-list item – the cutlery basket in the bottom drawer, just the way we like it. 

This is the way, isn’t it? We know what we like, what we have always had, what we gravitate toward. These could be called biases, and they are not necessarily good or bad.  What’s key is to acknowledge them, look over them to see another side. 

I am sure countless households prefer the door basket. And I am also sure that recognizing that we are diverse and have different biases is a great first step to get us all closer to the wish list item of making welcome all differences, all gifts and all people.  

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I went for a hike on my brother’s farm this past weekend. Right next to the rolling hills of his place is a gravel pit that you can take in from the high point of one of his top fields.  My seven-year-old nephew urged me to make my way over to see the gravel pit because, in his words, it was “beautiful”. 

I was intrigued, and wondered what I would behold when I crested the final knoll to see the gravel pit. After all, it was a gravel pit – piles of gravel and sand, deep holes in the ground, a bit of water collecting in low spots, rock piles and an earth mover parked in the centre. What’s beautiful about that? 

I guess if you are a seven-year-old boy, a gravel pit is a tremendous spectacle of machines working and huge piles of the very same stuff that passes time by the hour in backyard sand boxes. He saw something wonderful where I saw something sort of tragic, realizing that the pit was once a rolling field of wildflowers like I was standing now. 

The trek to view the pit reminded me that we all see things differently and what is beautiful to me I cannot just expect will stir the same emotions in others. As an agency we are taking a deep look at our diversity and how to honour our differences, and it all begins with acknowledging that we are different. And that we all have biases based on our different world views, experiences and culture; in acknowledging that, we can take that further step beyond the hurdles to begin to look at things just a little differently, to appreciate what we may not have noticed and to take a different point of view.  Further, it is in the exploring that we learn, challenge ourselves to try to see what others do, better understand that fresh perspective and appreciate what that other person’s journey. 

All this is not to say that I must now see a sprawling gravel pit in the same way as a young boy fascinated by mighty machines; however I do need to realize that there are different ways to look at almost anything.  With fresh eyes I can appreciate the differences and the perspective my nephew has. Through fresh eyes we can start to see the differing journeys that we are all on, the potential blind spots and the glimmers of unique perspective that can keep on adding richness to the experience for all of us. 

Like millions of others, I am getting a little frustrated that the treasure on Oak Island remains a mystery 567 bore holes later, but like a lot of guilty pleasures, I still watch the show. A few weeks ago, after yet another drill that arose from the ground not crusted in gold, one of the brothers declared, “We may not have found the treasure, but we found information.” Of course, in this case, the information was that the treasure was not in that spot and that the show will need to continue for another 12 seasons before it is found. Got me thinking, though, about the timeless wisdom of looking for the lesson, the learning and the information that abounds in challenge, strife and failure.

Recently someone sent me a photo of myself at 17 and for a few moments I just looked at that face, I remember her. She had some clear ideas about how her adult life would turn out, and it bears little resemblance to the current reality. There have been twists and turns that I did not plan for, but overall, I have learned and changed and renewed my strength in challenges and joys.

Just like those bore holes I have tried to find things where they were not hidden and made different decisions on the information and learning that came with each flat on my face teachable moment. What will the next opportunity reveal, what lies ahead, what can I drill for next?

We have this one fabulous life, we make goals, change them, try something else, sometimes miss the gold, but then sometimes we find the boundless treasure of doing something that was exactly right for us at the time. Not sure what to do next, try something. Take it from the Oak Island team , punch another exploratory hole in the ground, and if you miss the mark, you will have the new information – the next right thing was not there, and you need to keep seeking. Or as I am expectantly waiting for each week with the show, you will find the treasure and it will be at the exactly right time for you.

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I love the joke about the construction workers who have lunch together each day. Comparing what they have, one seems to have a bologna sandwich day after day and complains bitterly. After a while some of the others offer advice, suggesting he ask his wife to pack something different. And his response is? Oh, I pack my own lunches. 

Lots of times I use movie quotes or other sound bites that may only make sense to me, and I often to reflect when people are lamenting with me about their current situation that they may in fact be making their own bologna sandwiches and are not yet ready to make a change.  So I share this little mantra that I have made for myself: “Am I making this bologna sandwich?”  

Bologna is comfortable, it’s what we have always made, it takes a great deal of courage to embark into the unknown, and sometimes there are so many intertwined responsibilities, roles, people and self- image tied to the perfect sandwich.  I so admire people who are able to take a hard look and make a humongous change. A change to find a job better suited, a relationship change, a business partner change, a change in lifestyle to promote better health or even a tiny change – like a different brand of coffee. 

It is important from time to time that we all take stock of what is hard, what it is draining our energy, what is it that we often grumble about – and can we address our own role in it?  Bologna is comfortable, was an important part of our lives, its offering a bit of stability, but if it is now making us bored, miserable, overworked, dissatisfied and complaining, it could be time for a change, even a small one could change the direction the spin and be the start of something delicious. 

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