Tag Archives: memories

Tiny little boxes

The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the over examined life isn’t worth living either. 

Isn’t it interesting how two people can look at the same experience and see it completely differently? How is it that 2 prisoners of war with similar experiences can come out of the ordeal and one has PTSD while the other emerges strong and resilient?

I think some people let past experiences spill into their everyday life, while others compartmentalize their past into tiny little boxes. Some people tie their identity to things that make them feel like they are not in control, that things happen to them, that they must continue to endure what has already happened. The past is as in front of them as it is behind them.

Other people see past events in a metaphorical rear view window… there when you are looking at it, but the memories in the reflection seem distant. And the mirror is somewhere in your peripheral vision when you aren’t looking, and easy to forget to pay attention to, unless there is a reason to look back.

A loss of someone you love can haunt you, or it can provoke feelings of love and fond memories. A loss of limb can leave one person devastated with respect to what they can no longer do, and another person is left thankful for what they still can do. Both of these are painful things to endure. But the frame around the experiences can be very different. Two people and one experience. One frames the experiences into tiny little boxes, the other lets the past experience spill into new experiences.

Do we get to decide? Or are we wired a certain way? Maybe a bit of both.

Does our upbringing influence our ability to cope? Certainly! Trauma transcends generations, and growing up in a psychologically unhealthy environment will impact one’s ability to cope. Tiny boxes aren’t built in stressful environments, and it’s hard to ignore the rear view mirror when you are constantly reminded that objects there are much closer than they appear.

But there is always an opportunity to wrap things up in tiny little boxes… still there, still available, just not spilled out into the present when the memories don’t enrich the current moment. Because when we spend too much time looking in the rear view mirror, it’s hard to see the road ahead.

Language barrier

When we lived in China we lived in ‘a small city of 6 million’, Dalian, on a peninsula on the east coast. It was not unusual for my family to hear no English spoken by anyone except us from the time we left our Canadian curriculum foreign national school on Friday until we went back to school on Monday. We couldn’t go to a restaurant unless the menu had pictures. And if you were in a store and didn’t see what you were looking for, a game of charades ensued with hand gestures and singular Chinese words coming from us rather than sentences.

Google Translate was fairly new and most Asian languages were not well translated, especially Chinese. I remember going to a grocery store to buy baking soda for my wife. I put the 2 words into Google Translate and got two Chinese characters. But on the shelf were 6 or 7 different items with some having the first character and some having something very similar to the second character, and none having both.

I asked for help and the employee couldn’t help me. She asked a coworker, and she couldn’t help me either. I was stuck. I finally bought a plastic back with a white powder that looked like baking soda and on my way home I realized that the cost of this item was less than 50 cents Canadian, and had I bought all 5 of the most likely items, it would have cost me under $3. That would have saved me 30 minutes and a lot of frustration.

Now things have changed significantly. Language translation is so much easier. People can have full-on conversations with Google or an app translating voice to text and/or voice almost instantaneously. These tools will even correct themselves when the context of the sentence is recognized. For instance, I think ‘baking’ and ‘soda’ were two words that were translated for me independently, and so the words were loosely translated to ‘cooking in the oven’ and ‘bubbly drink’. Now translators know that these words next to each other mean something different than when the words are used in a different context.

All this to say that the days of language being a major barrier to basic communication are over. I can think of a lot of frustrating conversations and miscommunications I had in my 2 years of living in China that would not have happened if we went now rather than over a decade ago. I think of the conversations I wanted to have but couldn’t. I think of the questions I had that were just left unanswered.

Sure there were a few magical moments where we overcame the language barrier and made special connections, but these moments pale in comparison to what we could have said and done with the tools available today. While I hold some nostalgia about the way things were for us back then, I think I’d still prefer it if we had the language conversion tools of today back then.

Childhood memories

As I get older I find that childhood memories become one-dimensional. I remember a specific memory for a specific reason, and no other memories around that moment. In the retelling of these memories, I further solidify what the memory means to me and build a specific narrative around it.

One such memory is of telling my parents there was no way that I’d live in Toronto the rest of my life. I had walked home from Junior High, 14 years old, and it was late January or early February. The weather was bitter cold and I couldn’t feel my fingers, ears, or toes. I called out to my parents, “Family Meeting”. This was not a typical thing in our household.

A little background, we moved from Barbados to Toronto when I was 9, and this was my 4th winter. I sat my parents down at the kitchen table and told them I wasn’t going to live in this ice-cold country the rest of my life. I promised them I’d get my university degree, but then I was out! I remember saying, “When I leave, don’t ask ‘where did this come from?’ It came from right now!”

I’ve shared that story many times since, including recently. It’s part of a narrative that ended with me moving to Vancouver, the warmest part of Canada that I could find. I still say my parents ‘moved me’ to Toronto as part of that narrative, and although I stayed one extra year after graduating, I knew I was not going to live in Toronto from that day I held our first and only family meeting.

What’s interesting about this is I really have no other significant memories from that year. I have vague memories of Junior High but none closely associated with that day. None.

Most my childhood memories are like that now. Specific events, with a purpose for remembering them, and not much more. I wonder if that’s just me or do other people feel the same way? Do you have specific memories with a narrative attached that keeps the memory relevant, or do you recollect more than those snippets of time from your childhood?

First cough in years

Well, I’m testing negative for covid but staying home today with a cold and pretty bad cough. If I have to say one thing about masking up for coronavirus it’s that the last 2-and-a-half years have been the healthiest years I’ve had with respect to getting colds/flu/sinus infections.

But masks are off now and I’m stuck at home coughing and sniffling and remembering what a grouch I am when I’m sick. I spent yesterday staying in our guest bedroom, coughing, watching Netflix, and sleeping. Today I’ll get some work done even though I’m home.

I remember being sick at home and my mom saying to me, “Ill give you money for a hotel, go be sick somewhere else.’ And no, she wasn’t being mean, she was making a point about what a pain in the rear end I am when I’m sick. But I’m trying to be more adult and less whiny now. Yesterday I just kept to myself, and loaded up on Tylenol Flu medicine and cough drops. Today I’ll do the same and hopefully feel a lot better tomorrow.

My first year teaching

The school changed designations from a junior high to a middle school and that change allowed all the teachers at that school to have priority moves… and move they did. 17 teachers left out of about 30, mostly choosing to get a high school job. That departure of teachers opened the door for me and about 12 or 13 other brand new teachers (as well as a few with less than a year’s experience) to join the school.

Imagine working in a school where more than half the teachers were new… it was amazing. I was arriving at school before 7:30 every morning to get my day ready, and I was seldom the only teacher there that early. I’d still be in my room between 4:30 and 5pm and so would other teachers. I’d visit a teacher around that time, see what they were planning, and they’d share their plans and resources with me. I’d do the same for them… often even if we were teaching different grades. Teachers with experience were even more helpful providing leadership, resources, and time to help anyone who asked.

We’d meet each other at after school professional development presentations. We’d socialize together, we’d organize amazing opportunities for students at the school. We all coached, we ran spirit assemblies, we dressed up in costumes for any reason at all to get students excited about school. It was absolutely exhausting, and absolutely wonderful.

I couldn’t imagine starting my career at a better place… and the teachers that were there are still some of my closest friends today. I got together with a few ‘originals’ that were at our school that year, and I was reminded of all the good times. I was also reminded of how challenging the kids were that year, the most challenging in our careers. And yet the memories that linger are so positive. It was such an amazing place to be.

School 2.0 Participant’s Manifesto

I wrote this on February 5th, 2007. It was one of my early blog posts as I immersed myself in blogging and using Twitter to connect with educators around the world. It was an exciting time to be an educator. New online Web 2.0 tools were coming out all the time: Photo sharing, wikis, live chat boxes on blogs, live video streaming, and many other tools that gave you access to be a creator on the web in ways that were unimaginable just a couple years earlier.

I saw the potential of getting students not just to participate, but to be creators of content on the Brave New World Wide Web.

And I saw the walls of the classroom disappearing:

But it wasn’t just about the web and using these tools. It was about looking at the classroom differently. It was about creating a space where everyone in the community was an active participant. So, without further ado, here is my (15 year old)

School 2.0 Participant’s Manifesto

When I enter our learning space I will be prepared to learn, to participate, to engage, to discover, to play, to inquire, to create.

We are all different. Our opinions are different. We all learn differently. Our learning will be differentiated.

Respect makes all the difference.

We are not all equal, but we must all be ethical, just and fair.

Classes are not rooms; they are learning communities.

Our community will use technology effectively, affectively and appropriately.

Curriculum describes and directs; it is not to be prescribed or directed.

Knowledge is static. Synthesis is dynamic. We create meaning.

Collaboration is a series of learned skills.

Grades are measurements; Rubrics offer feedback.

Self-reflection is mandatory.

When I leave I will be more literate, more resourceful, more involved, more collaborative, more connected, more thoughtful and less willing to accept injustice of any kind.

I will make a positive difference in my world.

How important is…

I met an old friend yesterday. He helped me out a lot when I moved to BC. That was back in 1993, and we spent a fair bit of time together for about a month after my move. I remember him asking me a bunch of questions one day about relationships. I don’t remember what came first, but they were a series of questions regarding how important parts of relationships were: How important is money? How important is intimacy/sex? How important is good communication?

I don’t remember my initial answer, but when he got to his third or fourth question I came up with a general answer for all of them.

When you are in a bad relationship, these things can be insurmountable problems that break the relationship up. When you are in a good relationship none of these things matter unless they are very deficient… in a good relationship, you can weather a financial storm but if money is always a problem then it becomes very important. You can struggle with intimacy, but if it’s long term, then it becomes important. You can communicate poorly sometimes, but if it’s more frequent, then it becomes important.

Basically, when things are going well, none of these concerns are overly important, it’s only when there is a long term mismatch or struggle that any of these relationship challenges becomes important. I think his line of questioning was to help him figure out what was the most important part of a relationship and my response was the part that isn’t working becomes the most important, and then needs to be dealt with.

I’m pleased to report that my friend is still happily married. I’m not saying it was thanks to my advice, I’m just stating this because it could be easy to assume he was asking those questions because his relationship was on the rocks. It wasn’t. Rather it was just two guys in their mid 20’s trying to figure out relationships.

My grandfather used to say, “Kill a snake when it’s small.” It wasn’t intended as such but I think that’s good relationship advice. When concerns arise, deal with them quick, because if they grow too large, they become important problems that are bigger and harder to deal with… and they could potentially become the most important part of the relationship.

Daily coffee routine

Almost 40 years ago, when I got hired as an assistant manager at Starbucks, I spent the first few weeks taste testing coffees and espresso drinks on every break. I’d end up having 5-7 coffees in a shift. Then I’d go home on weekends and by noon on Saturday I’d have a pounding headache… basically my body would be craving caffeine. It took me a while to realize what the problem was. I started taking regular breaks from coffee, and I’d sometimes go a week with no coffee. Then I’d keep to two or less cups when I did drink it.

Now I basically drink one cup a day. Occasionally I have two, but it’s quite seldom, and if I forget a day it’s not usually a big deal. Well yesterday I slept in and didn’t have coffee right away, and sure enough a headache started. It has been a long time since I’ve felt it, but I knew it was a withdrawal headache. It’s amazing how the lack of regular caffeine can have so much power over me.

This makes me think about the many small ‘addictions’ we have. The craving for sugar, for salt, for adrenaline, for exercise, for love, for belonging. When we get these things regularly, we take them for granted, but when we are missing then… in some way we develop a headache.

Our routines, both healthy and unhealthy, help us meet the needs we create.

Wait for it

Anticipation is a funny thing. When you look forward to something that you are excited about, the anticipation can work in your favour or against you. It can be a big part of the event, the buildup actually becomes part of the experience. It can be more fun than the actual event, like planning a surprise party for someone else where the organizing and conspiring brings great joy. It could also ruin the event when expectations exceed outcomes.

I have never been someone that gets overly excited in anticipation, and so it always fascinates me to see others build up anticipation. When my kids were young, I used to fake anticipation to play along with theirs. I didn’t want my lack of anticipation to be something that took away their joy in looking forward to an event.

I remember when we lived in China, my wife and her sister planned to surprise our kids on a visit to Thailand. My sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and their two kids were going to meet us in Chang Mai, and our kids didn’t know. The day came after a lot of excited planning and we went to a night market knowing they would be there too. The surprise was amazing. It was a wonderful reunion!

After the holiday we were flying home and one of my daughters said, “I wish that I knew they were coming so that I could have been excited longer.” I wasn’t expecting to hear this. Upon reflection of the surprise, she thought it would have been more fun to know in advance and be thrilled in the knowing. It wasn’t like she was sad, she really loved the time together, she just wished the knowing and anticipatory waiting was part of the event rather than the surprise.

That little conversation helped me appreciate the value of anticipation more. It helped me see that if you don’t build it up too much anticipation could be part of the fun. They say good things come to those who wait, but maybe sometimes the wait itself is a good thing.

24 years ago

On the 26th of August 1997 I proposed to my wife. Today we celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary. If I were to pick something as my best life decision my proposal to Ann would be it. I remember when we started dating, I was talking to my mom on the phone and told her, “I think I met the girl I’m going to mary, she just doesn’t know it yet.” And while I try to be the best husband I can be, my wife is giving and caring in a way I always aspire to be.

I am blessed, and I hope the next 24 years bring as much or more joy to me, to us, that we have had in the last quarter century. We live in an amazing country with fantastic opportunities for us and our kids. We have two amazing kids that are delightful to watch grow up, and who have grown into fantastic young women. We have great jobs that we love, and a beautiful home. And we have great friends that we both enjoy being around.

Today I don’t just celebrate my anniversary, I celebrate the wonderful lives my wife and I have built together.