Goodness52

"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...

"The car has become an article of dress without which we feel uncertain, unclad and incomplete in the urban compound." Not only is Marshall McLuhan probably the smartest person ever to come out of Edmonton (maybe a low bar since I'm also in that group) he also had a lot to say about our modern way of life and what it's doing to us. Enter the not-so-humble automobile, which we ooh and ahh over like a newborn baby. We simply can't imagine a life without our four-wheeled friend. So, how about a week then? What would it be like to go seven days without getting in our adorable little VW hatch? This experiment would have been a lot easier when I was on vacation, cycling down the California coast . So I intentionally waited for a week when I thought I might "need" the car. It also turned out to be a week of fairly constant rain here in Victoria, which made it that much more challenging. Besides our buddy McLuhan, much has been written about how perso...

"I went to the bank and asked to borrow a cup of money. They asked what for and I said I wanted to buy some sugar." Doesn't Steven Wright just crack you up? In his super-dry jokes, there's always a hint of some truth lying underneath. Like the thing about sugar. I think there's a subtle comment in there about our maniacal addiction to the sweet stuff. This week, I decided to forego all processed sugar. Every time I was offered something sugary and lovely, I politely declined. Turns out that was a LOT of saying no. You may have heard the news that sugar is as addictive as cocaine. While the debate rages on about that one, there's enough to suggest that sugar is plenty bad even if you're not a complete junkie for that sweet white powder. Besides the fact that sugar is empty calories, we know all too well about the potential of weight gain and even Type 2 diabetes, which is now at an all-time high in our world. Throw in a little tooth decay and hea...