Day of Giving and Being Awesome

I woke up at 7 AM on a Saturday morning with about 4 hours of sleep.  A part of me really wanted to sleep-in but as the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth alarm sounded from my cell phone, another part of me increasingly grew stronger and kicked the snot out of the lazy and sleepy side.  It was the part that wanted to be awesome. 

Waking up, I felt minor symptoms of a phlegmy cough and a very tiny fever but that went away within an hour.  From personal experience, this meant I did actually catch something from somewhere but quickly acquired immunity against it.  I haven't been sick for 4 years, so I guess I could say my immune system is running strong in fighting new things off.  However, if this bug was strong enough to make me feel something, if only for an hour, it's probably strong enough to debilitate someone with not so strong immunity.

Anyway, knowing I had to get to the meeting place by 8:45AM and not knowing what to expect, I made it a couple minutes ahead of time running on only a bottle of water.  I introduced myself to a couple of strangers and was assigned to team 24, which consisted of the older Rotarian member, a girl from Fanshawe, and me.

The day consisted of going all over London in a pickup truck.  First stop was to help an elderly lady shovel snow off her stairs after an avalanche of snow fell off her awning.  The warmer than usual weather today made the snow heavier due to the increased wetness (Chem 101 - water is denser than ice).  Meh!  I jump at the opportunity to burn some calories!

Next stop was to help a retired nurse recovering from surgery with various tasks around the house.  I chose to once again clear a deck of snow.  Other members of the team installed a mailbox and vacuumed the house.  She has a dog named Duke and he makes a great companion.  I can imagine how isolating it can feel being stuck at home after knee replacement surgery.  Before we left, we spent a good while talking about flaws in the health system, how doctors were full of themselves (she is a nurse, after all ), and all sorts of life's wisdoms.

The day ended with a free (for me, anyway ) and long overdue meal at Jack Astor's, a place I have been to probably 3-4 times in my life.  Over lunch, we shared our stories of where we're from, where we've been, where we are, and where we are going.  The girl from Fanshawe was cute and it was definitely nice meeting her.  The older Rotarian has been all over the world and stories of his travel make me excited about seeing the world with my own eyes.  I'm already pumped for the coming Friday.

Now, one can argue that people are inherent self-interested and that any acts of altruism are really for one's own benefit.  I will not deny that it felt really good, that it relieved a lot of stress, and that I'm in the proper mindset for the upcoming exam on Wednesday.  But our actions and our time together allowed an elderly 81 year-old leave her house safely, give warm companionship to a retired nurse who finds it hard to move around, and allowed us to share a part of who we are among complete strangers.  The butterfly effect of our actions will run its course through time and shape all our paths for what I hope is the better.

That, to me, is life and it's awesome.

A Heartbeat that Never Comes to Rest

(Note: Began writing this on January 30th, 2009 after some bizarre happenings.  But I was thinking about this since New Years.)

Cause and effect.  Free will. Determinism.  The Butterfly Effect.

Since the recent emergence of this "big picture" and "seeing the forest for the trees" train of thought from the deep recesses of my brain, my mind has traveled through time and engaged in deep analysis.

I wrote a paper back in grade 8 about "cause and effect", and was forced to read it to the class because it was deemed awesome.  Well, I only scratched the surface in that paper and to be honest, I don't think it was as awesome as my teacher made it out to be.  Human interactions and the world are so complex that trying to make sense of it all is an attempt in futility.  And many believe omniscience is possessed only by a certain being "up there".  So, here are some examples of my attempts in futility:

In a time of weakness and vulnerability, I guess I could have been grasping for explanations and selecting (i.e. the self-selection bias) for things I wanted to see and hear.  I could realize the absurdity in basing life direction on a documentary that, by chance, happened to catch my attention during a Raptors game commercial break.  But the absurdity fades away when I see the same material appear in three different courses past and present.  It fades when I bump into people exhibiting similar symptoms (though I respectfully don't point it out).  It fades when things I have absolutely no control over blatantly shove the research area in my face.

I also look for explanations as to why I'm here.  Patients have said that I have the "look", that I'll be great, and that they feel safe around me.  How do they know?  They replied that it's their "gut feeling" - that they "just know".  Well, I certainly hope it was more than the fact I wore glasses.  However, they may have inadvertently fed to the complacency that led me here (yet their words and their smiles continue to encourage me today).

I certainly was not as strong-willed back then.  One bad malpractice lawsuit or one bad ethical violation and it's all over.  Maybe I'm here to prevent the worst from happening - to gain the ability to see beyond the individuals and understand their culture, their background, their religion - to see the big picture and make the difficult and right decisions.

And on a "smaller" scale, what made me choose the #2 instead of the #68 on August 7th, 2008.  Both numbers were in my head as I filled out the selection form.  Did someone or something interrupt my train of thought at the right (or wrong) moment?    $1000 a week for life sure is nice but would I be living a superficial and materialistic life?  Of course, some people will say that He knew that it was not the best thing for me at the time and that a more meaningful life lies ahead.

More recently, did the construction manager renovating the UCC mean to misread what the USC instructed him to do about NOT emptying the lockers?  Well, some miscommunication did occur by chance or by fate.  He emptied the lockers and relocated them.  So, my gym bag with all my gym stuff and my textbooks went missing.  After some investigating on my part, I was able to recover just my textbooks.  My gym gear is all missing still.  This occurs the week before my exams.  Now, either this is truly random bad luck or some will say "He" wants me to spend extra time studying and away from the gym.  And going as far back as September, I could have picked a locker not in that area.

After all this, like I said earlier, trying to figure out why things happen the way they do is futile because there is no way to know for sure the True reason (yes, Truth with a capital T - the absolute Truth - for the relativists, this does not exist).  It will only end in headache.  Thus, after looking back and forth for so long, I'm realizing the perils of spending too much time on the past and future.  The way to go about things, as I see it now, is to go with the flow and keep my mind grounded in the present.  It's just easier for me that way. 

---

"Mankind, probably the most mysterious species on our planet. A mystery of open questions. Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? How do we know what we believe to know? Why do we believe anything at all? Innumerable questions looking for an answer, an answer which will raise the next question and the following answer will raise a following question and so on and so forth. But in the end, isn't it always the same question and always the same answer?"

-Opening Narration, Run Lola Run

---

P.S.  If you actually read through all this, I applaud you.  My mind goes through a lot very quickly and my hands struggle to keep up with it all.  I hope I didn't give you a headache with all this philosophical blabber.    And if I did, I'm sorry for any negative consequences as a result of said headache a few hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia down your lifetime and of those you influence in the future.  Or it might lead to good things.  There's no way of knowing.  Haha.

P.P.S.  The title of this post refers to a lyric from a song in the movie Run Lola Run. This is a German film I saw back in maybe 1999 or 2000.  Back then, I thought it was a cool action movie with awesome music.  Now, having developed more abstract thought, it is a prime artistic example of showing how connected we all really are and how seemingly minor interactions can have huge consequences.  If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.  If you're in a film studies program, you'd probably have to study it.  It's some of the best directing I've ever seen in terms of camera placement, attention to detail, and editing.

(Written February 1st, 2009) - A podcast I subscribed to two weeks ago showed me the exact same concept of "living in the now".  A story of a German man who was depressed his whole live and "awoke" at the age of 29, Eckhart Tolle appeared on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos to talk about keeping present-minded and dissociating yourself from your mind - for the mind is a construct that often thinks of things that cause us pain.  I came to similar conclusions about myself over this year.  Cue cliche: "Coincidence?  I think not!"