Comic books, I love you.

I was having a conversation with a coworker about the new live action pinocchio movie that was coming out. As I recalled some dark themes, I said that I would hesitate to let my kids see that movie. A third co worker chimed in. Now, before I tell you what he said, I must tell you a little about this person. This co worker is male, childless and approximately 21 years old. While listening to our conversation he says, "I would let my kids watch it. I watched it and everything I watched made the person I am today." His opinion contains a gap of knowledge. On the most basic level one of the most striking things of being a parent is finding out how unique your children are compared to you. They are a unique selection of personalities and experiences and react differently and sometimes your best intentions do little to help you avoid pitfalls as a parent. He doesn't know this and that's okay. It just simply means that I will either need to educate him on that fact or simply hold my tongue. Either scenario is perfectly fine with me. This leads me to my main point- group think. 

I dont view racism, sexism, and other isms as much of an issue as group think. To be clear, if you google racism and sexism you get the following defintions. 

racism-prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. 

sexism-prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

So these are the definitions I am running on. I live and grew up in a mainly white community, but I never really understood the concept of skin colour based identity. I probably would have understood stronger differences between french people and non-french people than any sort of "race" identity. I had some Aboriginal friends. They were nice for the most part. My aunt was Spanish Mexican and is/was always very sweet and cordial to me. Racial superiority just never entered my mind until I was exposed to american history/tv and culture. This isnt to say that I dont think its a thing, but I think many peoples experiences can be classified as issues of group think rather than racism. 

Sexism is a bit more complicated an issue, at least from my perspective, but I feel many issues that people relate to gender are actually issues of group think. 

Group think is the desire for uniformity and conformity of beliefs, opinions and identity within a group. As an example, before I was married people would often tell me, "you'll understand when you get married," Then when I was married people would say, "you'll understand when you have kids."  Now people have various milestones they feel represent "real" maturity. I have found this to be a universal human condition. We like things that feel familiar. We like people who look like us, talk like us, think like us. We expect other people to conform to our unspoken norms and not to deviate. This is one reason I have always enjoyed humour because I can calmly poke the norms and it makes everyone happy when your doing it for laughs. Yet one thing I have always felt strongly,on that to create a peaceful, happy world sometimes you need to put your own notions of conformity and group think on the table and allow for the consideration that people who don't match your ideas perfectly might still have something to say. 

Getting back to my coworker. I dont think that because of his failure to understand that he is no longer worthy of my friendship or has nothing to contribute to me. It just simply tells me that I will have to work harder to reach him because he forms opinions without fully understanding the facts. I have always aspired to try to be good at relating to people. There is such a huge variety of experiences and personalities that can enhance your world. Group think often just puts stumbling blocks in the way. 

One way I have felt the oppressive bent of group think is in my love for comic books. I grew up before the big marvel, disney, superhero pushes in the 00's. I grew up when liking comic books wasnt main stream. People smiled condescendingly when I would talk about it and I often shared my passion with groups of social rejects. It wasnt considered cool. 

Fast forward to today. My sons LOVE all things superhero, as most young boys do. I showed them a clip from the movie Thor. This was brilliant film directed by Kenneth Branagh for whom I share a deep admiration and the scene was played by Anthony Hopkins (also love) as Odin and Chris Hemsworth (kind of indifferent). as Thor. In this scene Odin has just saved Thor and his friends from the world of the frost giants and has brought them back to the safety of their home and they talk. Odin chides Thor's lack of impulse control and when Thor responds with petulance Odin strip him of his power and banishes him from their home. I found this an excellent opportunity to teach.my son that Thor was punished because he wasnt taking care of his family and that a person must always look after the safety of their family. I told my sons, "you will always be powerful, but you must use that power to protect." I explained that they will always be bigger and stronger than their sister and that it is important that they look after their little sister. 

As I went away and thought about it, I genuinely believe my Christian faith has a correlation with my love for super heros. Super heros live in a world where they sacrifice for the greater good. Where they believe in something that drives them to use their gifts for a greater purpose. Prestige, pride and vanity are not ideas that make a great superhero, they are his/her villains. I am surprised when people reject notions of responsibility and honour under the guise of individuality. The world needs more superheros and I hope to raise a few.

Sorry reader. Not my most cohesive blog posts. It all kind of runs together. Hopefully made sense. Please find bellow a link to the clip from the movie I described. Watch it. It is dramatic and beautiful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IfYZZDTays

The roller coaster of serotonin

Hello again my dear friend. Thanks for coming back. I appreciate you being willing to listen to me.

I was thinking about this watching Jerry Seinfeld talking to famous comedians. Its interesting when you see objectively famous people who have "success" by objective standards and they still find things to worry about. I think perhaps that that is just how people are wired. People are looking for the next high of serotonin. Serotonin is a chemical in your body that helps regulate mood. Lots of it means you feel good. Obviously no one process can be boiled down to one chemical, but its our search for "good feelings" that keeps driving us.

I observe that in my children. My youngest son knows that if papa is drinking something its probably something he would like to try. If I let him try it, he will stay there and ask for more till its gone. The next time he sees that he knows to ask for it because he knows what the results will be. I often look at some of the choices I have made in the past when it comes to money and it strikes me that I made these choices for pure pleasure. I didnt care. I didnt ask questions. I did it because a positive outcome would make me feel good and I didnt value the consequences. Perhaps this is a western view, but I find self-denial odd. I find it alien. I admire it, but in the same way I admire most skills I dont possess. I see the use of it, but don't automatically want to emulate it.

Growing up people always ask the question, "what would you do if you'd win the lottery?" I think if we're honest it boils down to-we'd go on a serotonin bender until we found something new to worry about and go back to being the people we were before the lottery. Kind of disappointing if you think about because the reality is, if you were faced with the solution to all your problems...you'd just have to work harder to find new problems. Its not the destination, but the journey....I'll be honest this does not make any sense to me on an emotional level. I am a caniver. I am schemer. That is my nature. What do I do when I cant canive and scheme? What to do when you cant struggle any more.

I guess then at that point we graduate into more of a metaphysical conversation. What is the meaning of life-that kind of thing. I have never really had a problem with the metaphysical questions. I have always found religion can really articulate these difficult problems very well and this is a well explored area for me so it isnt a place I go too readily because it rarely adds. What I mean is, when I ask the question "how do i pay the hydro bill" the answer is almost never "Jesus." Its not to say that faith cannot inform your day to day, but the day to day offers a dispassionate set of questions and answers. Like playing a game of endless clicks. If you have enough tenacity you can get to the end with a good score.

This is a blog about my family. How does this all relate to my family you might ask. We'll my dear reader I see these questions asked every day. When I make my oldest son memorize the reference for his verse from Sunday school because being thorough in life counts for a lot. Where I explain the reality of hunting to my youngest son, even though he gets emotional thinking of an animal being killed, because knowledge is power. Where I discipline my daughter for not showing respect at meal time about the food because people will reject a person who does not know how to show respect. As a parent I micromanage their development and try as hard as I can to sand off as many of their rough edges so that people wont be cut on their personalities and they can engage in the world with ease.

I often hear people describe their children as "jerks." I get that sentiment. I think if you take the most unvarnished version of yourself and put it in a room with a bunch people who are usually not your favorite-the word "jerk" might be the best word for the actions that follow. Yet the experience of parenting is sweet. Even in the moments of challenge, I still find it sweet. I'm not doing it right, but the experience of knowing my children and being able to see them experience life with fresh perspective is so beautiful. To see my wife relive a joyful childhood through her daughter. To open opportunities of mischief to my sons. Its just all so exquisite. If I cant afford to send them to college, maybe thats okay. Maybe being happy is more about putting yourself to building something bigger than yourself. Its odd sometimes to be really grateful and really disatisfied. Maybe I can be both and maybe thats okay. The gratitude leaves me happy and the disatisfaction will make me head to work on monday. 

Moving moving moving

Preamble. So it seems like I only post once a year. I struggle sometimes to keep up my motivation for this blog. It used to be a unique method of posting pictures and funny stories about my kids, but Ive realized now what its purpose is. It is a love letter to my children and to my wife. It represents my thoughts of the single greatest investment I have poured myself into (ie my children with my wife) and to be honest anything thats posted online will live forever. Think of all the other things we do for our families. Take pictures. We store those pictures on our computers and on back ups. What happens if our houses burn down. What happens if our stuff breaks. Huge industries and systems are in place to keep every little bit of information that goes online continually moving. So here I set adrift another message in a bottle to Autumn, Azarian and Kerean that they may one day hear me and know me and know themselves also. It is also a promise to you, my dearly neglected reader, that i will try to make this a pit stop in my contemplations more often.

Moving. I have wanted to move for a long time. I live in Steinbach. Nothing wrong with it. Its a fantastic community. Really great people, safe, kind. A great place to raise children. Yet Ill tell you, my wife and I (in our hearts) are adventurers. We fell in love with that spirit in each other and we found a kinship in our willingness to explore. We traveled alot in our twenties, but our thirties has been mostly family themed, which I wouldn't change for anything. Yet, I have and continue to seek out opportunities that would take us far from here. I have struggled with the idea of moving and how it would affect my kids. I have always found the transition part of life so especially hard. I love and treasure people to the very heart. My soul is so interlinked that I often feel like my relationships are a part of me and to remove them would be like removing an arm. Yet when you lose an arm, you learn how to make other parts of you work better. Human beings thrive an adverse circumstance. Our bodies and minds are literally waiting for bad stuff to happen so we have to put ourselves out of our comfort zone to be healthy. As an adult I can say this, but I feel bad imparting the challenge on my children. Child hood is so terribly fraught with drama and its difficult to know how to steer the ship effectively simply because sometimes hardship causes people to come out of there shell and sometimes it stuffs them back into one and you don't always know, which one is going to happen. I think ultimately I want for my kids to have a season of their life being away from the familiar so perhaps they will appreciate it more. 

Now for the lighter side. AZARIAH HAS TEETH!! He lost his two front teeth at the end of school last year and has finally two discernable grown teeth sliding in. I am so excited. I have a phobia of teeth. Seeing his gap tooth mouth like he was a hockey player disturbed me. I dont know why, its not rational, but it causes me anxiety. At any rate, he has regrown teeth and I need not restrain waves of anxiety when he opens his mouth. 

Autumn is learning social cues. Kerean still refers to times in the past as "last morning." The kids are firmly obsessed with watching youtube, their favourite thing being these videos where other kids play with toys. To think of all those times I let my kids waste playing with toys when I could have been filming them and cashing in on their childhood. 

Well thats all for now, Ill try and come up with something soon-It usually doesnt take long.