It's beginning to feel a lot more like home

     Well, it took us more than a year but Victoria is starting to feel more like home.  Home is one of those multilayered words that can be true at any level or many levels simultaneously, and for us it is once again beginning to mean more than simply the place we sleep and a mailing address.  Though we've called Victoria home since day one, so much has happened these past two weeks a sense of becoming part of a community has finally started to settle in.

     There were a number of things getting in the way of deeply and truly feeling “at home” before.  So many forces were involved with our coming here – personal, cultural, political – and they were so mixed up with the stress of trying to make everything work it was difficult to find our bearings.  Fear of failure created a kind of fog that seemed to persist almost everywhere we went last year, making it hard to figure out how to begin integrating into the community.  For our first few months it felt as though we were in a dream. In spite of the fact we had brought our black lab Zeus and our cat Isis along, in many ways it was as though we had come here on vacation and decided to stay but could never quite shake the feeling we were still just tourists.  Having to return to the States over the summer only reinforced the notion that feeling had been justified all along. 
     It didn't help that we had isolated ourselves in the country during our first year here.  No doubt the fact we are now in the city where we are better able to meet people and become active in the community is a large part of what we are feeling today.  We've met more neighbours in two or three weeks here than we did all year in the country, isolated as we were on two acres atop a hill with forest hiding the local residents on two sides and distance separating us from them in every direction.  Even our landlord last year, who had lived there for more than five years, knew virtually none of his neighbours.  Becoming more active in Victoria's political and non-profit community and our greater ability to meet people in general is helping us stay more focused on our goal without leaving us much time to dwell on the fear of failure. 

     We’re still in transition, but it feels as though the beginning of the end of the transition has finally arrived.  There is still more uncertainty than we would prefer, but even that isn’t as stressful this time around.  Either we’re slowly getting better at dealing with it or becoming active in the community is making it easier to keep our minds off it.  Regardless, it sure feels good to be home.

On the 10th Anniversary of September 11, Zeus suggests a little forgetfulness can be a virtue

     "You humans do like to live in the past, don't you?" Zeus said out of the blue from his place on the futon next to me.  We were watching the evening news as one of the networks competed to be the first to show footage of the Twin Towers falling for the millionth time prior to midnight on September 11, 2011.

     "Well I guess."  I paused to think about that for a moment.  "But it's important we never forget."  Normally I would feel foolish replying with such a cliche, but since this was a conversation with a dog, I wasn't about to allow myself to become too bothered and immediately resumed mindlessly watching the news. They had begun playing footage of the collapse of the second tower now.

    "Never forget what exactly?" Zeus' tone indicated the fact he was a canine didn't inhibit his ability to be annoyed by glib responses to his questions.  "I mean remembering the dead is one thing, but it's not as though they're flashing the names of the victims on the screen or interviewing the families of the fallen here."  He gave a slight nod toward the television screen.  "It's just the same video of the buildings crashing to the ground over and over again and they've been running it since before I was born."

     I squirmed a bit in my seat.  I really didn't know how to answer him.  Though I was loath to admit it, the truth was the constant drumbeat of 9/11 video and references for the past ten years, together with all the war footage and commentary from the two conflicts that followed, had frankly left me numb.  I had long ago lost the ability to find any politician or reporter who gave a speech or did a story on the subject sincere.  It was like never being allowed to simply mourn and move on.  A person could almost come to resent the dead if all the guilt associated with doing so didn't keep getting in the way.

     "So tell me, does your species enjoy post traumatic stress disorder or something?"

     My god, he treats his questions the same way he does a rope.  Talk about someone who could do with learning to let go.  "I just don't think people want to ever see it happen again" I finally answered.

     "Seems to me it's more likely to happen again with you all constantly dwelling on it so much.  If you just put up a memorial or something and went on with your lives..." Zeus glanced back up at the television mid sentence.  "Oh good, they're replaying the scene at the Pentagon now."  He waved a paw mindlessly toward the screen.

     "One of our philosophers once said those who forget history are doomed to repeat it."  I replied.

   "Yea, well those that keep reliving it are doomed to repeat it a lot more often."  He raised his back leg and scratched an ear.  "Look, the terrorists couldn't forget American meddling in the Middle East, now America can't forget the terrorist's attacking them on 9/11 because the terrorist couldn't forget America's meddling, so America does some more meddling...Seems to me the answer here is someone doing some forgetting, or at least some forgiving."

     I opened my mouth to say something, but Zeus wasn't quite finished yet.  "Or more to the point, stop remembering only what the other guy did to you and start recalling a few of the things you've done to him."

      "Like what?" I asked.

     "Oh, I don't know - propping up dictators, overthrowing democratically elected governments in places like Iran.  That turned out well, didn't it?  You know, little things like that that really win over lots of hearts and minds."  He stuck his snout in the air.  He was obviously feeling he had once again demonstrated his species' superiority.  "Or you can just keep watching 9/11 reruns and spending trillions on wars until someone decides they've had enough and attacks you again providing you with a convenient justification for all those trillions you spent bombing the hell out of their country. Then you can do it all over again, except with a different attack to replay over and over for a decade or so.  If you can keep it going on long enough, maybe you'll at least be able to forget who started it."

     With that Zeus hopped down off the couch and headed down the hall, looking from side to side as he went.  "Anyone seen my bone?" He shouted.

      "Next time I want a pet I think I'm buying an ant farm" I mumbled to myself as I picked up the remote to begin channel surfing.  I'd heard somewhere they were rebroadcasting 'Apocalypse Now' this evening. 







    

I'm expecting I'll have fewer expectations in the future

“I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path.” Dalai Lama

     We do like to plan. Give a species the ability to think abstractly and PRESTO!, they start planning things and promoting the illusion they can actually control everything. If we're not altering the environment with our dams and skyscrapers or attempting to break land speed records and defy gravity, we're often rubbing a rabbit's foot or praying to something in hopes of somehow altering the course of events that way. Regardless, it's all motivated by the desire to control and shape human destiny, often with dire consequences.

      Hey, I'm not throwing stones here. I'm perhaps the biggest control freak of them all. I'm not obsessive-compulsive about small stuff, but I've nearly ruined everything from relationships to my own often precarious hold on sanity because I had such a strong attachment to some of my bigger dreams. It's taken me a while to get to the point where it may have finally sunk in virtually all the truly important events in my life were unexpected, and most of the less important stuff I was focused on either never happened or turned out much differently than I was expecting.

      I never expected to meet my wife when I did. I expected to get married eventually, but the timing and circumstances were entirely unplanned. Virtually every close friendship I have - probably virtually every close friendship any of us have - was unplanned. You can't expect to meet someone you didn't know existed or force a friendship even assuming you knew of them in advance and successfully arranged a meeting.  If there is a friendship out there that wasn't the consequence of a series of happy accidents, I'd love to hear about it.

     Then, of course, there's family. Who can write about failed expectations without mentioning family? We've all heard it said we can choose who to keep as friends, but not family.  I love them all, but talk about a random collection of people with genes in common and often little else... Hopefully my family won't take that the wrong way. After all, I suspect most people can say the same thing about their family. It just comes with the territory. In my case I have Republicans, Democrats, socialists, believers, non-believers, outdoor enthusiasts and people who wouldn't be caught dead within 10 meters of a tent.

      But when it comes to slowly learning to let go of expectations I think it's this move to Canada that has really been the straw that broke the camel's back. We're still here and doing reasonably well at the moment, but that's not because things have gone according to plan. In fact, almost nothing has gone according to plan. From what we thought we'd get from the sale of our home to our expectations when it came to job opportunities in Canada this summer, our expectations have been dashed time and again. It wasn't until recently when we let our expectations go on the grounds there was little to nothing left to lose that things suddenly turned around. In the course of a little over a week our financial situation improved and we found an apartment. I joked with Chris all that was needed was a blog post on dumb luck and literally within a few hours we were beginning to experience some.

      Now if I start to expect things will continue to improve I'll just be jinxing everything, so I'm not going to. One close friend recently reminded me of the Buddhist teaching to strive tirelessly, but not to expect or become attached. Doing so is the source of all suffering. In this spirit I'm expecting to have fewer expectations in the future and just keep striving. With school set to begin in a few days, there should be enough to keep me striving through at least early December. In the meantime, expect nothing from me and I'll try and return the favour.