Goodness52

"There are those who give with joy, and that joy is their reward." Kahlil Gibran, who you might be surprised to learn is the 3rd best selling poet of all time (after Shakespeare and Lao-Tzu) has been a guiding light for me ever since I read The Prophet as a teenager. His words about giving are especially wise during the holiday season, with commercialism raging all around us. So, hot on the heels of a week in which I spent nothing, I decided to give a bunch of stuff away. And sure enough, it did bring me joy. A year ago, Val and I moved from our large Calgary bungalow to a small two-bedroom condo in Victoria. Along the way, we parted with about a third of everything we owned. That included an unforgettable "garage sale" day when everything was marked either $1 or FREE. It was amazing to see how many people went straight for the things marked FREE, even though the much nicer wares were sitting a few feet away at only a buck a piece. Lesson learned: people li...

"Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination." As colorful as you might find that rascal Oscar Wilde, the simple fact of his spendy lifestyle was that he ended up declaring bankruptcy, and selling off the rights to The Importance of Being Earnest . Even when he was at his poorest, Oscar found ways to keep us his collection of china and purchase an angora suit. Imaginative, yes, but the brilliant writer ended up having to part with it all. With that grim reminder, I decided to make the second week in December all about spending nothing. Okay, almost nothing. We still need to eat, so just to keep my bank statement at $0.00 for the week, I asked Val to do the grocery shopping. Other than that, I chopped my spending like a newly elected politician and became a financial monk for seven straight days. With Christmas shopping fever in full tilt, I discovered the joy of parking my credit card in its wallet sleeve while the madness raged all around ...

"If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy." Red Green, that iconic TV handyman who could fix just about anything with a roll of duct tape, offers what is perhaps the best reason ever for Doing It Yourself. It's the ladies! As I placed an order for a garden shed and bravely said nyet to the $175 assembly charge, I was already picturing Val swooning into my arms having admired my manly handiwork. Beyond just engaging my inner cheapskate, venturing into Handyland also fires up my "little grey cells" and ignites my problem-solving abilities. So I started the week poring over a manual and then watching a YouTube video on how to level a space for a garden shed. I even read a great article on why DIY is good for you , beyond the obvious of saving money. Then off I went to Canadian Tire, walking out with a shovel, a level, a square and something I've always coveted in my toolbox - a rubber mallet. During the week, I cha...

"The world would be a better place if everyone was a birdwatcher." I wonder if the artist Robert Bateman knows just how popular birdwatching is these days. It may not be "everyone" but in one in five Canadians are now self-proclaimed birders. It's even soared past gardening in popularity. Naturally, I had to discover the joys of birdwatching for myself! Val and I are truly lucky in where we live. Just a few blocks from our front door in Esquimalt, we ambled down to a quiet marina, and immediately spotted a pair of mute swans drifting along as darkness approached. Maybe not as rare a spotting as the trumpeter swan with its all-black beak, but stirring just the same. It was enough to want to get out with the binoculars and get more serious. Next up was Esquimalt Lagoon, home of a migratory bird sanctuary that's been described as a birdwatcher's paradise. We went on a chilly but sunny day and were simply stunned at the variety and sheer numbers...

"For we were spinning out our lines walking on the wire. Hand in hand went music and the rhyme." When Bernie Taupin wrote those lines for Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy , he and Elton John were already looking back on a music-and-lyrics partnership that had launched them to stardom. They had caught lightning in a bottle, and it was magical. With that as inspiration, I decided to spend a week trying to make a song, with my son Nic as the music and me as the rhyme. So...what to write about? The idea came during a text exchange with Nic. I mentioned that Barrow, Alaska had just seen its last sunset of the decade (on November 19!) and he replied that apparently, the sun does set on the American Empire. I asked if there was such a thing as the "American Empire" and we were on our way. After a few disappointing stabs at it, I had something that I thought was workable verse. Here it is: Wishing Hole We heard voices calling in the n...

"We produced a bundle of pens, a copious supply of ink, and a goodly show of writing and blotting paper. For there was something very comfortable in having plenty of stationery." Putting pen to paper, as Charles Dickens explained so well in Great Expectations , is a comfortable activity. The second you make contact with the paper, you feel a soulful journey beginning. And so, for a week, I did just that, but in a fancy way. Since I already know how to write, I decided to try my hand at something a little more elevated and challenging. Hello, calligraphy! The first thing I learned while exploring the countless YouTube videos available on the subject, is that calligraphy is not handwriting. It is lettering. Rather than attempt to connect all your letters with a continuous line, the goal is to give each letter its own character, and that means frequently lifting your pen off the paper and moving to your next starting point. The next thing I learned was about upstroke...

"Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning." Oh sure, I could send a text. Do it all the time. But what about heeding the wise words of Maya Angelou and using my voice to reach out? That's what I did for a week after putting together a list of seven friends I hadn't spoken to in a long time. It was magical. I have been a bad friend for most of my life. Some of the greatest people I have ever shared time with have just melted away. For me, and I suspect for a lot of people, it takes a Herculean effort to pick up a phone after years apart and launch into a conversation. But as Thomas Fuller once wrote, all things are difficult before they are easy. There are many  times when calling beats texting.  and there's a lot of cool science behind the power of the human voice . I was surprised to learn that hearing our own voice during a conversation creates an important feedback loop that affects our...

"You get something out of it in the end. You get a nice present. For someone who wants an oddly shaped, off-putting scarf." Box office hunk Ryan Gosling learned how to knit while filming a scene with a roomful of old ladies in Lars and the Real Girl . He described it as one of the most relaxing days of his life. With that in mind, I set off on a week of knitting with the intention of making my own oddly shaped, off-putting scarf. Spoiler alert: I never finished the scarf. The learning curve turned out to be a little steep for yours truly and his clumsy man hands, and it wasn't until Day 5 that I started to feel comfortable with knitting. I pulled apart countless attempts and only had a 6-inch section done by the time it was pencils-up at the end of the week. Oh well. But why knitting in the first place? For one thing, I had always admired Montreal Canadiens goaltender Jacques Plante who, besides being perhaps the greatest goalie in hockey history, was nutty about...

"All water has a perfect memory and is trying to get back to where it was." I was thinking about the beautiful words of Toni Morrison as I glugged litre after litre of good ol' H 2 O for a solid week. All that water swirling around in my belly was just trying to find its way home. You can pretty much guess where that is. Fluuuuush... According to Healthline , we should all be drinking about 2 litres of water every day. That seemed pretty excessive to me, a guy who's been known to go for a 2-hour run and forget to take a water bottle. But I was willing to give this a try, because I basically get that it's a good thing. So I set a minimum of two one-litre bottles every day, in addition to whatever else I was getting from tea, coffee and of course, beer. I was hoping to see instant results. Would I get boosted energy levels, or "increased brain function?" Nothing that was noticeable. Still kinda lazy and stoopid. Would I lose weight, because my bo...

"Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth." It was impossible not to listen when Muhammad Ali spoke. So I heeded his wise words about volunteering during a week spent in service to others. I'm going to start by telling you about a company called Benevity . Besides being my employer for the past 4 years, it's also my constant source of inspiration. We're in the business of developing "goodness software," which allows people to make donations to the charities of their choice through their employer. They can also volunteer their time and get rewarded. In our case, we earn donation currency valued at $20 per hour for our volunteer work, which we can then use to donate to any charity we want. It's pretty much the ultimate win-win. Putting in the occasional volunteer shift is fairly easy. A lot of people do. In fact, more than 4 in 10 Canadians volunteer for a charity at least once a year. I'm guessing there aren'...

"I've got one word for you, Benjamin: plastics." Even way back in 1967, when Mr. Maguire pulled Benjamin Braddock aside and shared his famous wisdom in The Graduate, plastics already had a bad rap. It was codespeak for easy, lazy access to wealth - and also to the kind of people Dustin Hoffman's character was trying desperately to avoid. Fast forward 52 years, and plastic is now Public Enemy #1. We shoulda seen it coming. We shoulda known it would overwhelm our landfills, clog our oceans and strangle baby dolphins. Scientists now say that, within 5 years, there could be 1 ton of plastic for every 3 tons of fish in the ocean. We all share the collective guilt of that, and I am no better than the next guy. So here we are, in a world filled to bursting with this lousy stuff. But just trying doing without it. Try going a full week with not a scrap of it. I did! Here in Victoria, we tried to ban single-use plastic shopping bags, but that attempt failed in court...

"If God had meant us to do yoga, he would have put our heads behind our knees." I can see why Rod Stewart is down on yoga. In his rock 'n' roll autobiography, he talks about trying it once and falling into the fireplace. So I took that as a fair warning during my week of karmic exercise and stayed well away from Rod Stewart. Despite what you may have heard or imagined, I am not flexible. I am almost anti-flexible, if that's possible. The few times I've tried yoga, my body shouted out with pain as I tried to hold one pose after another. This from a guy who regularly tortures himself with endurance running and considers himself a bit of a fitness nut. So I knew this would not be easy, and it wasn't. Still, I soldiered on day after day, using a handy website to walk me through the various poses for beginners. I began by learning that yoga is not stretching . That was an insight all on its own. I tried to focus on the weird stuff I'd heard yoga i...