Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
Strum a guitar near another guitar and the second guitar’s strings start to vibrate.
Jim Rohn says that ‘you are the average of the five friends you hang around with’. This resonates with me. This resonates like the guitar.
Even these words combine to resonate as you read them, some with understanding, some with agreement, some with doubt, some with disagreement… Once read, the words resonate.
What do you do when you come across someone that doesn’t resonate? Do you pluck your own strings harder, louder, so that you drown out the sound the other is creating? Do you try to hear what they resonate with? Do you try to find a way to mutually resonate? Do you leave them be?
We can strive to resonate, or we can choose dissonance. Consensus or conflict. We can create music or noise.
I know that I want to positively resonate with others, but I also find myself seeking dissonance and distance, from those that do not resonate with me. Dissonance when others resonate with hate, and harm others. Distance to showboating, antagonists, and stupidity.
Resonance, dissonance, and distance. There is a time and place for all three… but what I seek, what fills my heart is finding ways to resonate with family, friends, and those that I can assist and support. Seeking resonance fills me with harmony and gratitude, and I’m grateful for all the wonderful people that want to resonate with me.
I saw this TikTok last night and it really warmed my heart. A dad kept a childhood secret from his kid until she was 32 and had her own kids. Her dad would take her and her siblings to the beach to go shell fishing, but would go to a souvenir shop first and buy pretty shells. Then he’d throw them in the ripples of waves to be found.
How did she finally find out all these years later? Because he started doing it for her kids, his grandkids. Here is the video.
I grew up on a tropical beach. I still remember the joy of finding a beautiful, unbroken shell. I wish I did this for my kids… and one day I hope to do this for my grandkids.
One really interesting thing about getting together with my sisters is hearing their versions of past events. Sometimes they’d share something that I did, and I have no memory of the event. Sometimes I’d remember it but there would be differences in both circumstances and significance. For me, this is fascinating.
Most of the events we shared were minor. Small instances where we said or did something silly, or times when things didn’t necessarily go as planned. We shared a lot of laughs at who we used to be. Old photos helped us recall some of these memories.
We are shaped by the memories we have. Some of these memories are monumental in building our character, our relationships, and our identity. Some memories hold power over us and hold us back… but they are not what happened, they are what we remembered, and how we add meaning to them.
I believe that we can change our past, we can alter our thoughts on how much a memory means to us and what it means to us. We can find silver linings in memories that are dark clouds. We can allow angry moments to fade to black and white. We can tuck memories away where they feel more distant and have less of a hold on us.
The fact that every person remembers things differently tells us that memories are pliable… and so why not use that to make memories work for us? After spending time with my sisters, I like a few of their versions of shared memories more than my own… and I think I’ll keep their versions.
“What’s between our ears is the last frontier.” ~ Abraham Truss
Isn’t it amazing how much we know about the complexities of life, the universe and everything, but we don’t know where consciousness comes from? We still debate whether or not we have free will.
There is so much we still don’t know about the last frontier.
I have been back with my parents for just over 24 hours and I’ve already over-eaten. I blame it mostly on my sister who barely weighs 100lbs and eats 6-7 meals a day, each one bigger than a normal sized meal for me. She’s always thinking about food and she’s an incredible cook. I just finished a pickled cabbage salad she made that I could eat every day for a month without getting bored of the taste.
For me, getting together with my family has two wonderful benefits. First, I spend time with them and laugh, and enjoy their company. And second, and equally as important, I get to enjoy the fusion flavours of home. With Chinese and Jewish heritage, both with roots from South America (Guyana) and the Caribbean (Barbados & Trinidad), my family meals are three things: eclectic, spicy, and delicious!
I’m glad that I’m maintaining some level of fitness while here, because in the coming days I’m going to over-eat. I can’t help myself… and I don’t want to!
It’s 7:14am in Toronto and our red eye flight from Vancouver just landed. I’m visiting my parents and I’ve still got a long day ahead. First one of my sisters is going to pick us up, she arrived last night and is renting a van to get us to my parents. Then we drive onto downtown Toronto to pick up another sister before driving 2.5 hours north to my parents.
After about 45 minutes sleep the whole night, I’m not really looking forward to more travel right now, but I’m with family and that’s the whole point of the trip. In about an hour and a half I’ll be in a van with one of my daughters, one of my nieces, and two of my sisters. The trip up north will go by quickly… and there might be a nap for part of it.
It’s wonderful to connect with my family. In no time at all I’ll feel rejuvenated, even if I didn’t sleep much on the overnight flight.
I’m heading to visit my parents during the March break. I’m looking forward to it. It will be wonderful to see them, my sisters, and other family.
But hopping on a plane in less than a week got me thinking of a planned holiday that was cancelled almost 2 years ago. We were going on a Mediterranean cruise with stops in Spain and Italy, and holiday stops in Spain and Portugal. Covid stopped that and all other holiday travel.
I thought about this trip and how much I love going to new places I’ve never been before. I love the newness of the environment, I love exploring different foods and flavours. I love the touristy sights, but also the side trips off the beaten track. I love the adventure.
There is a saying, ‘No matter where you go, there you are.’ But I want to see more of the world. I want to visit new places and see new things. And I also want to do trips where I connect with family and friends.
Travel is a luxury. It is also a gift. It’s a way to expand your horizons and have relationships grow richer. I’m looking forward to the world opening up more. Thoughts of travel help me escape the pandemic, and news about war. No big trips planned yet, but the planning is part of the fun. I have no idea where the next big holiday destination will be, but I’m hoping Spain or Portugal might be back on the radar in the next year or two… it’s probably not something we could do this summer, but it really is good to be thinking about travel again.
When we moved into our house we did a renovation upstairs, converting from 4 bedrooms to 3. The front bedrooms were 9’x9′, 8’x9′, and 10’x9′. The smallest, middle room had a tiny closet and wasn’t really functional as a bedroom, and so we created 2 larger rooms out of the three. We were also able to add more room to the master bedroom, creating a second closet and an alcove for a large chest of drawers.
In the process, we tore up the ugly carpet in the hallway. We cut the carpet at the top of the stairs, and just had the plywood floor between bedrooms. When the rooms were done, we painted upstairs, and while doing so I painted a message to my wife. Her nickname is Bean, shortened from Ann-E-Bean, and so I wrote ‘Hi Bean’ halfway out of the hall closet, knowing that we were going to carpet over it in a few days.
The only thing is, we didn’t put carpet back in for about 5 years. We had a carpet runner down the hallway, and my little message was there long enough for my oldest daughter, who Ann was pregnant with when we moved in, to be able to read on her own. There was always something we were spending our money on that kept us from spending some on this final part of the upstairs renovation.
When we moved in, we knew we couldn’t afford to renovate the kitchen as well as upstairs, but after moving into a house with purple countertops and pink tiles with a pink motif behind the stove, and pink wallpaper… we realized that the house would never feel like ours if we didn’t change this. Then we updated the back yard, replaced the hot water tank, and replaced the furnace.
Instead of replacing the carpet upstairs, we’d buy new living room furniture, bedroom furniture to replace the Ikea pieces we moved in with, replace all of our windows. There was always something we were working on, and since it’s only our family that lived upstairs, we just tolerated the plywood underfloor and runner down the hallway until finally a close friend of ours essentially told us, “Either you buy carpet for upstairs or I’ll do int for you… it’s ridiculous that you’ve been living ‘under construction’ for your kids’ entire lives.”
She was right and we finally put carpet in.
Now, as we are remodelling our main floor, another 17 years later, and we decided to extend the main floor flooring up the stairs and into the upstairs hallway. Last night we came home from work and the hallway carpet was pulled up. For me it was a complete blast from the past to see my little message to my wife painted on the plywood. It brought back some fond memories. It was something that was part of our lives for years, and it was fun to see it uncovered again. It will probably be covered up today, never to be seen by us again, but I did take a photo and it really was a treat to see it again.
I also added this to our first’s bedroom, but it was covered so we didn’t see it often.
Tomorrow is my youngest daughter’s birthday. As of tomorrow my daughters will be 20 and 22, and I will no longer be the parent of a teenager. It has been incredible to watch these young girls transform into young women. They are still two wonderful kids in my eyes, but they are so mature, and grown up too.
I still remember holding them both in my arms for the first time, watching their first steps, and reading them bedtime stories. It doesn’t seem all that long ago… not all that long ago for me, but an entire lifetime for them.
I’ve been writing a letter to them in my head ever since my first daughter went off to university. Soon I’ll have to get it written down. For now it’s just an idea about first and last experiences. Perhaps I’ll share it here, but only with their permission… I’m writing it for them, they are my audience… my two grown up girls that will forever be my babies. The teen years may be over, but they are my kids and that will never grow old.
We are having a renovation done and it’s about to move a lot faster. When electrical and plumbing are happening, the changes are incrementally slow, but this week they will start the drywall, and then things will start to move really quickly, adding walls, cabinets, and flooring. Soon we won’t remember what things look like now.
Kids are the same. Day to day you don’t notice them growing up, then suddenly they are adults. Day to day they are just your kids, but blink and suddenly they are their own people, with their own relationships, and work. The transition was slow, but looking back it seems so fast.
When you are building a home, things move both fast and slow.
