Life Lessons from Little Things

Have you ever found that things aren’t always what you expect?  That person you think will be outgoing is quiet and shy.  The dog that looks fierce is a real snuggle-buddy.  That situation you’re walking into that seems smooth and simple is actually a hotbed of gossip and strife. What we see isn’t always what’s really there.  Let’s go back to the cats for some examples.  We’ll start with Reese.  If you’ve read It’s N or mal For Me , you’ll know a little bit about him already.  Reese arrived by way a gleaming single eye at the end of our laneway.  He’d spent about six of his twelve months of life in the wild – a young kitten, in the winter, alone, with sutures still in his eye.  Fur was missing from parts of his body and you could see that he’d developed some pretty major claws.  And yet … he came up on the porch, sat with my grown children, inhaled a full piece of pizza, and looked around for more.  He rubbed on them and tried to snuggle.  A scrawny black cat with one eye and huge nail

The Barenaked Ladies sang “we never really knew each other anyways” (in Enid ). I guess it’s true in a lot of cases.   We all deal with other people.   Some close, some at a distance.   Some of us deal with many strangers, others with only a few close connections. Other people all have one thing in common, though.   We never know everything about them.   Your kids, your partner, your parents, your best friend? There are still things you don’t know.   Maybe not much.   Maybe little things.   Maybe just something they’re not entirely sure is true, but have always wondered about.   But it’s there. Instinctively, as humans, we protect ourselves.   We share the bits that feel safe.   Or in some cases, the bits that pop out without control. We keep those secrets. So why does knowing another person matter so much? Trust is the key, for sure.   When you know someone – really know them – you can understand and predict them. Actions, reactions, opinions, or a lack of any of t

Last week was a rough one.  In fact, it was so rough that I did something I almost never do – I cancelled one of my students on just a half-hour’s notice. It’s not that life doesn’t happen.   It does.   But I try hard to avoid letting it affect lessons – partly because I find that children (and I) function well with a schedule, and partly because it’s currently a key part of my income.   On this occasion, though, I just wasn’t in a healthy place to connect with a child, and decided he was better to miss the lesson than to respond to emotional negativity I was feeling.   So I texted the parent to cancel, and they were very understanding.   I didn’t really provide any explanation, just that I’d had bad news, and wasn’t in a good place to teach that day. I’ve taught this child for over six months now, so we’ve built a relationship.   This student knows a little bit about me – conversational English is a key part of these lessons – as I do about him.   What really caught my

Have you ever noticed how often we portray our own feelings onto others?  This disturbs me, so it must disturb you?  Or conversely, this brings me joy, so you must feel likewise? As they so often do, my cats remind me that our perception isn’t always that of those around us.   Reese came to us in the summer of 2012, a young scrawny black cat who simply appeared at the end of the driveway one day.   (To this day, I still believe he saw how our cats live and chose us).   He kept hanging around and one day, my kids fed him a piece of pizza.   I’ve never seen a cat inhale pizza crust before, but he did.   As we got a better look at him, we noticed what looked like purple thread on one of his eyes – the eye that didn’t seem to open.   You can probably follow the next bit without effort – Reese came into our home, had the sutures removed from his eye, and spent his next years with us proving that he was a good boy and we could keep him.   He was definitely missing his left eye, but i

Have you ever found yourself in a place where you just felt defeated?  Exhausted, overwhelmed, and ready to give up entirely?  I know I have – one of these times just this week. Just recently, I was working on something for which I couldn’t find a solution to a problem which should have been easy.   Everything I tried seemed designed to create new frustrations.   I was angry.   I was annoyed.   I felt stupid.   I started to doubt myself.   I started to beat myself up.   I started to feel like giving up. Except that I couldn’t.   This was something to which I’d committed.   Something I believed I could do.   Something I considered important for me to do. It took a while, but once I got past the self-recrimination, I started to look for other solutions.   Was there another way to do this?   Was there someone who could help me?   I’d frustrated myself out of all the ways I could think of to help myself. I thought about people I knew who might be knowledgeable about this

We live in strange times.   It’s ok to take some time out and rest, rather than doing the things you thought you’d be doing.   You should be using this time productively.   All of these messages are true and valid.   They’re also contradictory, because different things are right for different people at different times.   That’s certainly true for me! Over the last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time simply “filling time”.   Not because I didn’t have things to do.   I have lots of things to do.   There are things I should do, things I could do, and things I want to do.   However, instead of doing most of these, I was spending time watching Netflix, playing a stupid game on my iPad, or sleeping in.    Understand, none of those things are bad.   It’s ok for me (and you!) to stop and chill as needed, and sometimes what’s most needed is what I consider a “brainless day”.   But of late, I’ve felt like I had too many of those.   I got the most critical things done.   My c

You’ve probably heard this expression:  “one bad apple ruins the whole barrel”.  It’s one of those old adages we share with our children as a warning about “those bad apples” in their group of friends. For apples (and many other fruits), this is because an over-ripe or rotten fruit produces more ethylene, which causes the surrounding fruits to ripen at an extremely rapid rate.   Apparently mold works similarly, and moves from one moldy piece of food to a good one, looking for new food sources.   ( more on this ) When it comes to people, though, is this really true?   Are “bad apples”, or troubled people really infections in their own way?   Well, maybe.   Jim Rohn said “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”.   This sounds like another of those trite ‘parent’ things, but perhaps there’s some truth to this. Consider the people around you.   Are they busy?   Depressed?   Good listeners?   Encouraging?   How look at yourself.   How are you whe

Families are an interesting thing, aren’t they?  Some people are really close to theirs.  Some are distant and don’t communicate at all.  Some even live with their families (note: I’m very glad I don’t live with either my parents or my children!)  For many people, family can be an on and off thing. That’s certainly been the case for me.   There have been times in my life where I was very connected with my family.   There have been times where I wasn’t.   That’s where “the family you choose” comes in. I’ve dealt with a variety of difficult times in my life over the last 50+ years.   And one of these was most definitely a time when I wasn’t close to my family.   On any level.   But on another level, I was incredibly fortunate. As I entered one of the lowest times in my life, I started a boring job with lousy hours.   Many things about this job were less than optimal.   One of the pluses, though, came in my initial training class.   It wasn’t immediate, but over the two-week

You know how there are those memories that just stick in your brain for years and years?   This is one of mine.   It was an unexpected small but powerful event whose impact was felt then, and whose lessons remain even now. Let me tell you. It was nearly 25 years ago that our blended family visited a local restaurant in Pickering for my young daughter’s 5 th birthday.   As with many of these venues, they sang her a song when bringing out dessert.   In her case, it was to the tune of Camptown Races , and the lyrics went like this:   Who’s the prettiest girl in town? You are, you are! Who’s the prettiest girl in town?   We all think it’s you! We all think it’s you, we all think it’s you! Who’s the prettiest girl in town? We all think it’s you. It’s not hard to imagine how a tiny pretty 5-year old girl would respond to this song.   She just sat there and GLOWED.   At last, this was HER song.   For months afterwards, she walked around the house singing: Who’s the