Author Archives: David Truss

Breakfast is the most important…

Growing up I always heard, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!” …And with that I would force myself to eat, even when I wasn’t hungry.

I’ve come to realize that this statement is true, however how I, and many others, interpret(ed) it is all wrong.

Breakfast literally means to break your fast – to end the fast you are on from a night’s sleep. The meal decision of what to eat for breakfast is important, but when we do this is also important. There is no need to wake up and shove food down your throat to break your fast. This can wait, especially if you aren’t hungry.

However, when you do finally eat, the meal should be healthy. Over the school year I was trying to do 14 hour fasts, Sunday to Thursday nights (not happening in the summer, but I’ll get back to it). I would have dinner and not eat again until later in the morning. So, if I finished dinner at 7pm, I wouldn’t eat again until 9.

I love this pattern, it feels good, and besides unhealthy late night snacks, and forcing myself to eat earlier that I normally felt like eating, I’m not missing anything. I also tend to exercise early in the morning and I think it is really healthy to do this after the night’s fast.

So, if you aren’t someone that enjoys your early morning breakfast, just delay it. But when you break your fast, try to feed your body with something healthy.

Outrageous and Unbelievable – click me now!

I’m getting really tired of headlines that read, “Outrageous joke is making everyone laugh” or “Unbelievable photo is shocking the Internet“. What adjective will make people click our link, see our advertising, get us shared on ‘the socials’?

These click-bait titles are like sale signs in shopping mall windows, they are pervasive and ubiquitous. And frankly, I’m tired of them. I refuse to click them. And I am pretty sure I’m better off without them.

Pretty soon they will be personalized, “Hey Dave, we searched the Internet and found this photo that you’ll love!” – I know this is coming, and I’ll probably click them for a while, but for now I’m out. This fish isn’t going for the bait.

Sfumato in education

“The word “sfumato” comes from the Italian language and is derived from “fumo” (smoke, fume). “Sfumato” translated into English means soft, vague or blurred.”

Sfumato “…is a painting technique for softening the transition between colours, mimicking an area beyond what the human eye is focusing on, or the out-of-focus plane.  Leonardo da Vinci … used it in many works, including the Virgin of the Rocks and in his famous painting of the Mona Lisa. He described sfumato as “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane“. (Wikipedia)

I think we need to soften some of our edges in education:

• School isn’t its own entity. We need to soften the edges between living and learning; Parents as teachers, sharing expertise, and; learning happening in our community... as part of a student’s school day.

• Assessment isn’t formative or summarize, it’s both, it’s continuous, it’s self-reflective, and it can be conceptually/curricular based as well as competency based.

• Subject lines need to be blurred. How can we learn about the biology of crisper without talking about philosophy and geopolitics? (Should scientists be altering the human gene code? If we don’t think so, who in the world should decide? And do we have the ability to stop research in other countries? Will we create a different class of humans?)

Here are some others to think about:

• Bell schedules

• Universtiy entrance exams

• promotion by age

• Does every kid need to learn to code? Or to do Calculus? Or… (insert skill here)

• Write the same test

• Do the same art project

• Be assessed on the same scale

I think there are many ‘hard lines’ in education that should be blurred, softer, and less definitive.

Where would you add a little sfumato in education?

Pride parade

Today is the Vancouver Pride Parade. 🏳️‍🌈

The theme this year is “50 Years and Still Fighting”.

It amazes and saddens me that in this day and age we are still talking about the struggle for equity for all. We live in a pluralistic society, and yet race and gender identity are things we need to explicitly recognize, with thought and intention, rather than pretend we don’t see it, or that it doesn’t matter (anymore).

But today is a celebration, a chance to put differences on display, surrounded by colour, music, and wonderful people in a beautiful city.

Wear your pride ‘out loud’ today!

Sleep vs the demons

I usually meditate before I write my Daily Ink. I’m trying to create and build a consistent habit, so that this becomes second nature. But last night the demons got to me, and I need to write before I waste 10 minutes pretending to be mindful.

I don’t get insomnia often, but when I do it strikes hard. Last night wasn’t fun. I tried focusing on my breathing. I tried thinking happy thoughts. I heard noises downstairs and went to check, knowing full well that there was nothing to check.

I dosed off and the stress of my dreams woke me. My mind focused on the negative and wouldn’t let go. I tossed, I turned, I lay awake and unsettled.

Last night I battled my demons, and they stole my sleep. Now it’s up to me to decide if they will still my day too. It’s time to meditate, then exercise. The demons won’t like either of those things.

My one ’ism’

My one ‘ism’ is pluralism.

It laughs in the face of fundamentalism… Of being single-minded and fanatic.

It undermines racism… inviting differences and cultural acceptance.

It destroys dogmatism… by sharing alternative opinions.

We want to live, thrive, and love in a pluralistic society. We just need to recognize that in such a society we must be tolerant and accepting of opposing views, unaccepting of hateful and hurtful acts, and smart enough to understand the difference.

Here comes the rain again…

Do you remember the song by Annie Lennox?

“Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion.”

I’m camping and the forecast for later tonight is for heavy rains. (I’m actually writing this the night before publishing it, so technically I’m talking about last night.) Usually I’ve got tarps perfectly set up to ensure we stay dry, but this site had limited options for tying up the tarps and I’m uncertain how well my set up will hold up to heavy rains. The morning will be damp, but how damp we will have to wait and see!

That said, we live on the wet, west coast of BC, and being on the edge of a rainforest, we are no strangers to rain.

Isn’t it interesting how our perspective on something like rain can be so dependent on our situation. Think of how this can affect our thoughts and actions?

A drizzle of rain can be insignificant on most days, but not at an outdoor wedding.

A short downpour of rain is insignificant in your car, but not so much fun on your bicycle commute to work.

A 75 millimetre downpour of rain at night is insignificant at home, but a much bigger concern in a tent when you haven’t done a good job with your tarps.

However, in the grand scheme of things, we are just talking about getting wet. Be it a sprinkle or drenching, we can get dry again quickly.

So, we have a choice to let the weather dictate our thoughts and actions, or we can recognize that getting wet is not that big of a deal. Either way, here comes the rain again…

Being still

Yesterday I went on a little fishing trip around Alice Lake, just north of Squamish, BC. Spoiler alert, I didn’t catch anything.

Before I began, I did my daily meditation on a log that extended into the lake, then I started my walking loop on the shoreline trail. There weren’t many places to stop and fish along the trail, but I enjoyed the quiet of each stop. It was late afternoon on a cloudy mid-week day and so the parking lot was bare, and there were few swimmers in the lake or hikers on the trails.

Nearly 3/4 the way around the lake I saw a log several feet from the shore and parallel to it. The log served as a harbour from the wind that rippled the water beyond it. The contrast on the surface was stark. On the far side, the lake was rippled and murky. On the shoreline side the water was smooth as glass, a mirror for trees and the sky above. The log served as the dividing line, separating the two distinct surfaces as if the log were a rift between two different realities.

It didn’t seem real. One lake, two very different surfaces, a single log creating the separation. I began to think of how we can do this in our minds. We are surrounded by chaos, or distractions, or by the stresses of work, and yet we can tuck these distractions away, for a moment with loved ones, or for a favourite hobby, or for a quiet moment alone. We can compartmentalize moments of stillness in times that are not remotely still.

We are capable of this, but do we do it enough? Do we create the time and space for our minds, or parts of our minds, to be still?

Campfire time

Think of the changes in our world over the past 150 years. Compare that to the changes that would have happened over 150 years, if we were thinking about 1,500 years ago. In other words, think of how insignificant the changes would be then, compared to recent history, if we compared 1500 to 1650AD. Although Galileo’s Science expanded the universe beyond an earth-centric view, his views were hardly ‘universal’, and technological advancements in all the 1500’s would be shadowed in comparison to any decade of the 1900’s.

But when I look at a campfire, time and technology fade away. The flames dance around the wood exactly as it would have danced 1,500, 15,000, and even 150,000 years ago. Ancient man was as mesmerized by the flames as I am today. The desire to stare, to feed the flames, and to stand close enough to feel the heat are likely similar for millions of humans that came before me.

Campfire time is timeless; a bond of humankind through the ages… a chance to connect with our primitive ancestors and see a world that they shared with us.

Free advice

I just read some advice for CEO’s, and this is what the 3 tips boiled down to:

1. Don’t risk bankrupting the company.

2. Don’t do something you’ll regret.

3. Make choices that will better society.

I usually site my sources, but there is absolutely nothing here to give credit for.

Let me give the same advice to anyone, making any decision, in any situation, but I’ll do so in two bullets:

1. Don’t be an idiot.

2. Make good choices.

Feel free to not give me credit for this ‘profound’ advice.

We are constantly exposed to tips and tricks given in list formats:

• 3 things to remember when…

• 5 ways to get…

• 6 reasons not to have a list with 6 points. (Ever notice lists never seem to total 6, 8 or 11?)

• 7 tips to help you…

• 10 videos that will change the way you think about…

• 12 lists that help you make better lists. 😜

To see some of these lists, shared online, you need to click ‘next’ to get to the next tip, so that the website can maximize the advertising revenue after the list’s click-bait title draws you in.

So, let me give you some free advice on taking advice. But first, I encourage you to ask yourself what you are hoping to gain when you click on advice lists. (Yes, the irony of that statement is not lost on me.)

1. If advice is worth taking… take it. (Channeling Yogi Berra)

2. If advice is worth taking, read it out loud. Hearing yourself say the advice is better than being told the advice by others.

3. If advice is worth taking, ask yourself how to make it actionable? Thinking, ‘That’s good advice’ is not as effective as asking yourself, ‘How can I implement that into my life?’ – or asking yourself a similar question.

4. If advice isn’t perfect, change it. Tailoring advice to fit you is a possible way to make it easier advice to follow. (Note the addendum below.)

5. When taking advice, be brutally honest with yourself. For example, watch out for tip 4 above. Are you changing the advice to make it easier to avoid taking good advice, or are you changing it to make the advice more meaningfully relevant or actionable? It’s easy to disregard good advice if it is good, but isn’t easy to do.

6. If advice is stupid, make fun of it. Being critical gives you perspective, and you might be able to learn something from inserting humour.

There you have it, free advice from me. Take it, leave it, add to it, make fun of it. I don’t take my-advice-giving-self too seriously, you probably shouldn’t either. 😃