I know folks are used to seeing these posts and hearing about the latest news in Flickline disc golf but today I want to talk about something completely different. This is not a disc golf post. In fact at the end of this sentence that will be the last time I even mention disc golf. This is a post about what it’s like to be alive right now in a world of misinformation, where everyone is an expert but where very few are mentors. It is a post about what it is like to separate from a partner you love after 15+ years of a mostly happy marriage. It is a post about what it is like to be a human drowning in a sea of misinformation all the while trying to be the best version of themselves. This is my story of failure and constant improvement.
When I was very young I was lucky that I got to spend so much significant time with my grandmother. She made a huge impact on me. Her and my grandfather separated when I was just a child. She would have been roughly the same age as I am now. One of my earliest conscious memories is of her driving in her car on the John Black road when she told me she and my grandfather were getting a divorce. I don’t remember the conversation being overly sad or traumatizing, however I do remember it, vividly. I have a vision of how we were sitting, how the sun was shining, and how she was telling me all of this while she kept her attention on the road as she drove. There was a small sadness that she carried with her until the day she died because in her heart she still had love for my grandfather.
As I got older I started to learn more about relationships. I learned that the biggest killer of a good relationship was unmet expectations. I tried my best to not have any, although it is a very hard thing to do to truly not have any expectations at all. We all have these built in assumptions that we (wrongly) believe everyone starts with. What seems normal to one person might be extreme to the next. Not having expectations is only achieved through constant communication and a willingness to consider and adapt to new points of view. There is no point in anyone's lives where you arrive at an understanding and then stay there. Acceptance is an ongoing journey that requires constant care and awareness.
Everyone of us has experiences that shape our lives. It is so fascinating to me how people choose to interpret these and what they do with that info. Some people see trauma and immediately become the helpers of the world, some see trauma and then repeat it. I don’t have a clear answer on the whole nature/nurture debate but I believe there are certain things that I am compelled to do and other things that I choose. Understanding the difference is a part of my journey to becoming my most authentic self. My parents divorced very early in my life and that obviously left a huge impact. Typical divorce at that time almost always came with a certain amount of fighting in the house. To be clear, what I went through was nothing too crazy or so bad that I needed special counseling, more like it was the normal consequence of young parents trying the best they can but still occasionally lashing out their frustrations in less-than-healthy ways. When I was present during any of those family feuds it made a lasting impression on me and I decided two things: a) I am not going to be a ‘yeller’ as it never seems any situation is made better by being yelled at, and b) I am going to do my absolute best to not talk badly about anyone else because again, I don’t see how talking poorly about a person when they are not there makes any situation better. I am certain I have broken both of these ‘rules’ at some point in my life but in my heart I am constantly trying to honour that pact I made with myself. During times of intense crisis I am almost always the calm one, or at the very least I am the one cracking jokes to try and take the intensity down a notch. When people do things that I don’t like or maybe don’t agree with, I try to remind myself that I might not know all of the things that went into their decision making. I tell myself that I simply don’t understand them. If I care deeply about that person then I will do my best to try and understand them better. (On a weird side note I have always thought that fighting in front of your kids was a lot like smoking cigarettes in the car with the window rolled up and the kids in the back. When I was young both of these practices were totally normal. Looking back on it now it feels like some kind of torture that I can’t image putting anyone through. The fact that both of these are now frowned upon makes me feel like maybe humans are becoming more self aware? Just a thought….)
Before my wife and I were married I made some less-than-ideal decisions. At the time I did what I thought was best for myself given the information I had. Over time I learned that my actions had deeper consequences than what I have previously believed and I did my best to change my behaviors. I wasn’t perfect, and I currently am not perfect still. I don’t expect to be perfect in the future either, but I do expect that I will constantly try to be better today than I was before. Despite my efforts to be a good person a lot of my married life has been marked by bad timing. Throughout my marriage it seemed like things were always just a bit off and it wasn’t necessarily anyone's fault. As I started to run bigger and bigger events while my wife’s self employment boomed too. She eventually took over a small farmers market that became a huge staple in our community. I wished she could have traveled with me more to the amazing places I was working, she wished I could have stayed home more often with her and been a part of the magic she was making. Hurricane Dorion happened when I was on PEI and she had to fend for herself and the kids while I chainsawed trees at 5am to open roads and get fairways playable. I disappointed my wife while I endeared myself to the disc golf community. It wasn’t really anyone's fault but it did happen, it made lasting impressions on both of us for a variety of reasons, and it has taken me years to understand the gravity of just this situation. I could give 20 more examples just like this where honestly we were both trying our best but things just didn’t line up. Eventually the differences and lack of being in-sync became too much. My (former) wife knew that she was not happy and needed a change. I respect that. I know how hard it is to not be happy and in the end all we have is ourselves. Finding happiness is the key to life. I am not mad at her or myself but it has obviously made me take a deep look at who and what I am. As of this moment right now I accept myself and I still believe I am a good person who wants what is best for others. As long as that doesn’t change I think I can muster the strength to keep moving forward.
It’s wild to think how much the world has changed in my lifetime alone. When I was in highschool I took typing classes. On a typewriter. Where the goal was you learned how to type. You would use a special white out to go over your mistakes and in order to pass the class you had to type so many words per minute and make a certain amount of errors or less. Now I type thousands of words per day on a device that autocorrects my mistakes, has predictive texting capabilities, links to word definitions, and can provide source materials in seconds. Gone are the days where you would have to find a physical encyclopedia to look up a topic that interests you. Now I can type a partial sentence into a variety of search engines and get a comically large amount of possible answers. All of this happened so fast that nobody told us how to navigate the new world. At first I was so disappointed in people but now I am actually deeply sympathetic. I don’t think our brains are wired in a way that we can’t fully understand what we are seeing and it is wild to me that people just take the information they want and use that to strengthen their already pre-existing world view. Let me give you two examples of what it feels like to be alive right now in this current world (at least from a North American point of view). First let’s start with an American example. We are told that these things are true: Donald Trump does not take a salary for being President of the United States. Donald Trump also bills the government for secret service staying at his hotel or in other words, ‘Trump Used His D.C. Hotel to Take Unconstitutional Domestic Emoluments’. The vast majority of people will read these two statements, take a side and then dig in as to why that bit of information makes their worldview correct. A second example comes from Canada. The leader of the official opposition party ranks among Canada's highest-paid political figures. The Prime Minister is the only one who earns more at $565,982.91 per year. The official opposition leader has a MP salary that shows a $11,843.56 increase from previous years. No one knows either of these men's net worth but it is safe to say they are both millionaires, with pensions. There is a federal election currently underway and there will be a ridiculous amount of political slander thrown at both of these people from the opposition camps about why the other is out of touch with regular Canadians but almost no one will bring up the point that these two men have more in common with each other than they do with the majority of their constituents. Somehow everyone is ok with this. Even if they are not ok with this they still lack the tools to change anything so they become disengaged and in some cases apathetic. I only bring this up because I can’t be the only person who feels such a deep sense of loss and helplessness by all these things that are seemingly out of our control. A part of being alive at this moment in time is realizing that we are worse off than our parents and that the future doesn’t seem like it will be better, in fact it seems like things are about to get a lot worse and there is nothing we can do to stop it. If you have foresight you know things are going to change and you can see that these changes, for the most part, are going to make life a lot harder for the average person.
So why even bring it up? It is a question I have been thinking about over and over again. My feeling of helplessness only seems to be abated when I am helping others. Maybe that is the key to this entire operation. We humans are at our best when we are trying to help each other. We have more in common than things that separate us so let's try to focus on what we can do for each other rather than spending time and energy on why our differences should keep us separate.
I have been struggling a lot lately with social media. I have deleted all but my facebook accounts (which is probably where you found the link to this post). I have found that being on social media does not reflect what I feel is my best self. I say this because sometimes I feel social media is just transactionary. People want you to buy what they are selling, even if it is just an idea. We were told that social media would help connect us, but in reality we had to suffer through a sea of misinformation just to have the privilege of messaging a small handful of people. Information and misinformation are both given equal weight in our current media landscape. The lives that were presented to us on-line only tell a snapshot of real life, however our brains can’t comprehend the limited information we see. Nobody taught us how to decipher online truthfulness in an endless parade of half-truths. We are using tools from the last millennium for a new world that hardly any of us can comprehend. It is all very exhausting. Overwhelmingly exhausting sometimes. On top of all of that we now have to be experts on everything from the amount of sugar, salt, and fat that is in our child's foods, to what dyes cause cancer, to the effectiveness of vaccines, all the way to navigating healthy relationships with smartphones, tablets, and all sorts of fancy new ‘time saving’ gadgets. I can’t be the only person who feels I missed something at the team meeting. I thought somebody was in charge. I thought someone would be ahead of me to lead the way. I thought we were doing this for what was best for humanity, not just selfishness. Now I am starting to feel like I am alone in the darkness and the only light I can find is coming from within my own heart. It is incredibly scary here and so I am learning to not judge people for how they react to this new world.
If I were defining my life the first thing I think about is how incredibly lucky I have been. I am healthy. I have children who love me and who I love back in a way that grows bigger each day. I have an interesting job that brings me joy and makes me feel like I am making a difference in the world. I also can’t go very far before I start to think I am a failure who has not always lived up to my own expectations of living. I rarely complete any project that I am 100% satisfied with. I feel like I can never give my kids enough of my time. I have barely ever made enough money to be comfortable. I am gone from home too much. I don’t practice enough, I don’t play enough, I don’t do enough. I can feel guilty if I sit down to listen to a baseball game when I could be painting my ceiling or fixing the trim. I also feel like I want to consume less but feel bad when I don’t have the expected number of presents under the christmas tree for my kids. I am so sensitive that when I am criticized by either people I respect or barely know my first reaction is to feel hurt. I get emotional and defensive, and usually go silent. I think, ‘how can people be so mean, don’t they know I am trying my best?’ Eventually I try to find the truth in what they are saying to me. When I am at my best I realize these people are my teachers. If they are correct in what they are saying then they have given me a pathway to being a better person. If they are making criticisms out of spite, malice, or hate, then they show me the exact way I don’t want to act. I am ok with admitting that it takes me a while to process these feelings but I do think this is what makes me human. I know I am not perfect and I try to be better.
My journey to self acceptance has not come in a straight line. It has taken me on a bumpy ride of ups and downs where I think I have figured it out, only to find that I don’t really know shit. I am currently living through something that I have heard referred to as ‘conscious uncoupling’. My former wife and I are still partners on raising two kids. We still have a tone of respect for each other so much so that we understand how important it is to not stand in the way of someone's pursuit of their own happiness. I have come to realize that I do my best work when I am completely silent. I hate self promotion that is why I have been spending less and less time online. I only want to give to things that can accept my whole heart and if I fail at these things I want the world to know it wasn’t because I didn’t try. It was because I haven’t learned everything I need to know yet but I haven’t stopped trying. I feel lost. I feel hopeful. I feel defeated. I feel optimistic. Sometimes I feel all of this in one day, sometimes I feel all of this at the same time.
Since the moment Donald Trump got reelected in the United States I have felt something in the pit of my stomach that I never experienced before. The closest word I can find to describe it is despair. That is to say I have a feeling of being without hope or of not being able to improve a situation. You might be surprised to know there are parts of Trump's politics I agree with (even though I am a raging socialist who wants to tax the rich, give money to the poor, and make all education free). I too believe fraud is a problem. I can see how corruption is hurting us. I understand the feeling of being squeezed out. However I drastically disagree with the way he conducts business and carries himself as a human. He is a narcissist. He does not negotiate in good faith. He does not make decisions that make those at the bottom of society better. My understanding of the world is that only when we take care of those who need the most help will we ever be able to call ourselves a healthy society. I can see how cuts to social services will hurt us in the long run but I am powerless to stop it. There are also plenty of examples in Canada that follow this same pathway. For a few weeks it really hit me hard but luckily I had some great kids in my life that I could help by being their coach. I spent some real quality time with my children and my brother's family on a vacation that will be imprinted in my brain for life. I read some interesting sci-fi books. I reminded myself of my three favorite sayings and would repeat over and over to myself as the situation called for it. When I didn’t have motivation because I thought the world was beating me down I would say ‘remember, a job worth doing is worth doing poorly’ and it would be my queue to just start whatever task I was putting off because doing it partially was better than not doing it at all. When I would start to feel sorry for myself for one reason or another I would whisper ‘remember, the key is to not think less of yourself, but to simply think of yourself less’ and it would remind me to focus on my task at hand and not my ego. When I would feel completely stuck and be in a rut that feared would be endless I would recall my grandmother's voice when she said, ‘in time this too shall pass’ and would take comfort in knowing that everything comes to an end eventually.
I have always secretly thought of myself as a writer. Sometimes when I am very lost I just sit down and write out my thoughts. The simple act of writing gives me the feeling of seeing my own emotions on the page and understanding them from a different point of view. I feel like I can understand the world better when it is written down. There are many people out there who think of me as a talker because I don’t mind giving a speech or being the person who gives voice to an idea. I know how to communicate but I have found that the very act of giving voice to my words takes its toll on me. Large times of vocal communication are always followed by deep periods of silence for me. I go over the words I have spoken so that I can understand the things I have said. I am not fearful for my future or that of my children because I know that to be human is to adapt and I doubt that will ever change. However I am now more aware than ever before in knowing that my actions have consequences, intended or not. I have that same bit of sadness in my heart that my grandmother carried with her in the second act of her life. I know it will require ongoing attention to prevent that sadness from becoming bitterness. I am not mad at anyone, nor am I mad at the world. On the contrary I am satisfied that if I am in this position it must be because there is something here I need to learn. But I am stubborn, and scared, and more than a little uneasy. The act of me writing this is as much about processing my own understanding of the situation as it is about telling the world. I don’t feel I owe anyone an explanation but I would like people to know that you can love somebody, with your whole heart, and have it still not work out. You play the game to the best of your abilities and it still might not be enough. However it is the act of play that is the real gift. There is about a 99% chance that if you see me I really won’t want to talk about anything I have written here. The simple act of giving this situation voice is too heavy for me just yet. There is also a 99% chance that if you see me it’s because I want to be seen and I would love to spend time in your company. We could probably play some stupid game that would bring me joy. I wish I knew how to stop this despair or how to subside this sadness but I don’t. I am aware that sunlight is the best disinfectant and that shedding light on deep truths helps shrink them to a size where they become solvable. So that’s what I am doing. The world has shrunk me lately but that is not my whole self. I feel small but I won’t feel this way forever. If reading this helps you feel less alone than it was worth it, even if it didn’t just the act of writing this helped me. Whatever it is I am going through I know that in time this too shall pass.
