Tag Archives: insight

Read Fiction

It was probably the January semester, 1989 that I took a Rural Extension course on Leadership, at the University of Guelph, when I met Professor Al Laozon. He was my first prof to have us call him by his first name. The first prof to have us sit in a circle, despite there being about 24-26 of us in the class. He listened as much as he talked. And he quickly became a friend.

Al had us read The Tao of Leadership, which to this day is still one of my favourite books, and one that I call my ‘Leadership Bible’.

And while his class was one of my more memorable courses at university, it was his office hours chats that I most enjoy and remember. They were filled with insights and wisdom, but also with the things friends talk about, like our childhoods and stories of family members.

Yesterday I wrote a post about my struggles with going through the motions of my healthy living routines with low energy and effort. It helps me to share these things ‘out loud’ and I was able to push my workout harder than I have in weeks as a result. But another benefit of sharing is getting insights from readers, and Al was kind enough to share a comment. With respect to mediation I said,

“I’ve missed more meditations in the last 6 weeks than I’ve missed for the rest of the year. When I do meditate, it’s more like I am am having a quiet moment to think about random things. I can’t seem to focus on my breath any more than I could when I started my daily meditation routine almost 3 years ago.”

And to this Al said,

“Our routines, like life in general, ebbs and flows of its own accord. Be patient. I have had a meditation practise since 1991 and some days are good and other days, well the monkeys are running amok in the “store” despite my desire for them to quiet themselves. Somedays you just go with it.“

I also said, about listening to audiobooks,

“I’m an avid audio book listener, and I usually get through almost a book a week unless I am reading something that’s really long, then it could be two weeks. But I just took three weeks to listen to a 5-hour long book, and didn’t feel I got as much out of it as I had hoped.” And later added, “I’ll start a fictional novel even though I usually wait for the holidays to choose a book that I’m not learning from.”

To which Al commented,

“As for reading fiction, there is much to be learned from fiction. As I have often said, novelists often have more insight into humans and their behaviour than do the best of social scientists. Do not deprive yourself of that which can offer insight, nor dismiss it as simple entertainment or distraction. The arts offer much in terms of insights into our collective journey. After all, there is no greater means of learning than a good story, be it true or fabrication. I recently wrote elsewhere that science offers us knowledge, but the arts offer us truth. I will take truth any day over knowledge.”

All these years later, and miles apart, but Al is still my teacher, advisor, and wise friend, sharing insights I need to hear.

Usually I only ‘let myself’ read fiction on holiday breaks. But I’ve been drawn a lot more to fiction in the last couple years. It started a couple Christmas breaks ago when I received some free ebooks from Audible and I listened to a science fiction novel and got hooked into an epic series. Then I listened to a couple books that I never would have selected for myself, just because they were free… and I loved them. But reading fiction outside the holidays always came with a little self-imposed guilt.

Not anymore. Al’s words have given me permission to indulge guilt free. I will choose more fiction. Let me know if you have a favourite you’d like to share.

“Science offers us knowledge, but the arts offer us truth. I will take truth any day over knowledge.” ~ Al Lauzon

The surprise discovery

We were 16 or 17 years old and avid fisherman. Living in North York, a suburb north of Toronto, we didn’t get out fishing too often, but we tried to go as often as we could. I remember skipping school one day and taking the bus to a river to fish. I caught a beautiful brown trout, and wanted to take it home, but had to release it because I couldn’t come home from school with a fish.

We loved to catch bass and we were good at it. My friend Dino had a cottage on a lake called Bass Lake in Orillia, and when we would go there we’d catch 20-30 bass in a weekend, and we knew that was more than any of the other fishermen on the lake.

Either Dino or my other fishing friend, Gus, discovered Mussleman Lake just a 30-35 drive from our houses, and we had a new favourite spot to go to, close to home. We would bass fish in the shallows of this small, but deep lake every weekend that we could get there. Sometimes we’d just wade through the water for hours, waist deep with our shoes on. Other time’s we’d rent an aluminum row boat to paddle around the lake. And we caught a lot of bass!

I remember once, Gus had a big one on his line and just before he could get it, it snapped his line. A while later I caught a nice 4-pounder and we kept that one for dinner. Back home, I was cleaning the fish in my back yard and we found 2 crawfish and Gus’s lure in the belly of my fish.

We went back to Mussleman Lake a lot. And we caught a lot of bass. There was one day when we were in a rented aluminum boat and we had paddled to the upwind-side of the lake, to look for calmer water, since the wind was making the shallows choppy and the conditions were not favourable for bass. After unsuccessfully fishing the calmer, but still choppy, side for a while we thought maybe the fish had gone deeper to avoid the rougher water. We decided to use the wind to our advantage and troll across the middle of the lake. We each cast our lures behind the boat and Dino rowed slowly, with the wind helping to speed us up, keeping our lines taught, as they followed behind the boat.

Then Dino’s line snagged something. He stopped rowing and started pulling his line in. But it was really stuck. As he reeled in, our boat slowly went backwards, pulling us towards the snag. “I think it’s a log.” Dino said, before saying, “Actually, I think it’s a fish.” Then, “No, it’s a log.”

Then the log dislodged and started coming to the surface. “It’s coming up, careful not to snap you line,” I said. At this point Gus and I had reeled our lines in and were standing near the middle of this little boat. Dino was in the back, rod curved from the tension of dragging this big log from the depths of the lake. It was almost at the surface when it moved sideways. Then a fat, approximately 4-foot long pike surfaced with a huge splash of its tail.

This scared Gus, and he stepped back flailing his arms. He knocked me over and a box of cookies saved me from getting stitches. I fell backwards and my head landed on the cookies, crushing them against the hard aluminum bench. The fish splashed and flailed a couple more times and broke Dino’s line. We were shocked. We had no idea there were pike in this small lake, and certainly no idea that there were any fish that big to be caught.

The game had changed. No longer did we head to this lake to fish for bass in the shallows. We went to Canadian Tire and bought ourselves higher poundage fishing line, longer metal leaders to prevent the pike’s sharp teeth from cutting our line, and lures that sank deeper that the ones we used for bass in the shallows.

And then, after many trips of only ever catching bass at this lake, we started catching pike. A lot of pike. There were some unsuccessful days, but they usually ended with us in the shallows catching a bass or two. I find it so interesting that it took this little trip across the windy lake for us to learn what to look for. But once we knew what to look for, well that’s all we needed to find them… seek and ye shall find.

I understand, but I don’t

I understand that atoms are made up mostly of empty space, but I don’t understand how solids can feel solid when they are made up of atoms that are mostly just empty space?

I understand that we are all made of stardust, but I don’t understand how every atom that I’m made of has come from different parts of the universe?

I understand that our cells don’t live longer than 10 years, and that every cell that I was born with has been replaced at least 5 times, but I don’t understand how that’s possible and I’m still me?

I understand that the more I learn, the more there is to marvel at, and the more that I don’t really understand.