This thought has been slowly forming over many years.  It became particularly clear to me one spring day in Venice, and that stayed with me for a few years before it submerged again under the murky confusion of an unravelling relationship.  The clarity returned this year due in large part to the Cirque Du Soleil/Beatles Love show in Vegas, and to my own startling revelation that I am still capable of falling in love and learning a great deal about it.

It occurred to me that, contrary to much of what we think, read, sing, and say about love, the best kind of love is actually a very selfish thing: it is all about you (or, from my perspective, me).   When we talk about a relationship or a marriage we often talk about it as if it is a third entity, as if it were a child born from love, but requiring each of the two people involved to somehow sacrifice themselves for the betterment of this other, imagined entity of the relationship itself.  If we experience frustration or disappointment with aspects of the relationship our focus usually turns from the entity of two to the one, and that one is hardly ever ourselves, it is our partner: the other.  This occurs even when we are consumed by happiness.  Whether it be an overwhelming obsession of positive thoughts, or an equally obsessive string of the negative, they usually center on the other.  Either we are cataloging the reasons why we love this person (as if rationality had anything to do with it), or we are making lists of changes our partner needs to make in order for this relationship to “work.”  While this is all very natural, and probably unavoidable to some extent, it really does not have anything to do with love.

You see, love isn’t about two, and it isn’t about your partner.  Love is about you.  When you truly love someone you do things for them, sacrifice for them, not because you are trying to prove your love through some ridiculous display of martyrdom, nor because you want to earn brownie points to cash in later for something you want, but because doing things for them makes you feel good.  When you love someone you share the deepest darkest parts of yourself with them, not to set an example of the honest authenticity you expect them to provide for you in return, not because it gives you the upper hand (higher ground) in some twisted zero-sum marriage game, but because you want to be known, fully and completely, and by this person whom you love.

It is this truth of love that, I believe, makes it divine.  It is not about self-sacrifice, but rather purely selfish sacrifice.  It is similar to charity I believe.  If you give of yourself to others in order to receive some kind of payback, whether it be to impress others, to mitigate guilt, or to get an express ticket to heaven… whatever… then what you are doing is not really charity, and more than likely will not earn you any of these things that you may be seeking by doing it.  If, however, you do it because it makes you feel good then you’ve got it, and rewards you are not seeking will follow.  Love works like this.  Love requires you to give yourself over to it, but it only works if you are giving yourself for yourself.

Love is all about you.  “Can you love?” is the most crucial question life will ask of you.  It will ask every day if you are listening.  So if your answer is “No” don’t worry, you will get another chance, if you listen.  And if you are lucky and wise and your answer is “Yes” then don’t forget to keep listening… because you will be asked again tomorrow.

Now don’t get me wrong… I’m not saying “Love the one you’re with no matter what” or that anyone can just love anyone else if they do enough listening… heck the best some of us can hope with certain others of us is willful tolerance and perhaps moderate compassion.  Obviously, the quality of your relationship still has a lot to do with whom your partner is and how well you are suited for one another.  We are talking about love here though and love is not “the quality of your relationship”.  It is the most important determining factor in that equation, and yet also so much more…

Love is raw healing power and a natural energy source.  Love can make your life whole, and give you meaning.  Love can put you in touch with your authentic self.  Love is eternal hope and can banish all fear from your life.  Love is the ultimate leap of faith.

And all of that is about you.  All love needs is you.

It never ceases to amaze me how suddenly and completely life can change.  This is the explanation for my absence from this blog.  With the experience of new places and new faces, my new life now feels fully underway.  I don’t have a clear picture of it yet, but that does not worry me in the slightest, as the clearer the picture is, the more likely it is to be an illusion anyway.  Too much has changed to relate it all in one post… so I’ll start with the beginning.

A little over a month ago I embarked on a journey to the southwest of America.  On this journey I experienced a plethora of spectacle (Vegas) and Mother Nature at her most majestic (Arizona).  Among these many experiences three stood out that I feel deserve sharing.

The first was the Love show in Las Vegas.  Now, I am no aficionado of the theatre, having been to far more concerts than shows, and certainly not an expert in circus by any means… but I simply cannot imagine any show that could capture the transformative magic of art any better than this one.  It is billed as a tribute to the Beatles performed by the Cirque Du Soleil, but it is far more than that.  This is truly a Beatles production, and I couldn’t help but think that this was exactly what they were aiming for with Sgt. Pepper and the magical mystery tour… if only the Cirque had existed then.  If you can possibly find a way to make it to Vegas to see this, I guarantee you will not regret whatever it cost to get you there.  I spent nearly the entire show in a state of utter glee and wonder, magically transformed into a child once again… my crusty old heart was cracked wide open… and that, my friends, is priceless.

The second experience I want to share was actually a series of majestic and spiritual places I passed through in southern Utah and northern Arizona.  This is truly some very special geography and I think I understand now why so many founders of religion did their finding in the desert.  While all the deserts and canyons were tremendous each in their own way, one place in particular did stand out: Monument Valley.  This is a place, deep into Navajo Country, where you can literally hear the spirits of our ancients whispering.  Words fail me… so here is a photo:

Finally, the last experience was a week spent hanging out with an old and dear friend in Texas.  The trouble with being a philosopher sometimes is you forget what its like to just be, and to do that being in the company of a kindred spirit.  The reminding of that did me more good than even I know.

So!  I am back, changed, and filled with good spirit…  more to come.

So I find myself at yet another crossroads… or perhaps more accurately, standing in the desert with countless roads stretching out in all directions.  I feel that I have already lived many lives, and experienced a few deaths to boot.  In the beginning there was this bizarre childhood, something I have been incapable of approximating a description of, whether it be to others or to myself.  It is difficult to describe something to others when you have no frame of common reference, and since that part of my life has born no resemblance whatsoever to anything else I have encountered, the whole thing seems somewhat like a dream that somebody else dreamt.  I do not even recall the details of how that life ended… I know I was visiting relatives out of town and some kind of hair broke the camel’s back of my family so that when I returned everything- and I do mean everything -was different, unfamiliar, and strange.

Then there was the school / independence movement life.  Another weird twilight zone of a life, marked by an unrelenting forward motion driven by the panic of being on my own too early with absolutely no clues about the world beyond the closeted existence of my alternative childhood.  That life, too, ended in a murky mess that my memory has graciously clouded.

There was the corporate / entrepreneur life…  wherein I dazzled people, started businesses,  and ultimately learned that people suck and I should stay as far away from business as I can (which unfortunately turns out to be not very far at all).  That life resulted in a series of deaths in what has to have been one of the most bizarre years a human being has experienced.

And finally, this last life- the attempt to build a family of my own -now pronounced dead with an exchange of vows between a stranger I have never met, and another stranger I’ve known for 11 years and loved deeply despite the hazards to my health of doing so.

So here I am.  I have been told by student advisors (people who should never ever be taken at their word) that I have accumulated enough credits to graduate university at long last.  The catch: I have to wait for 11 weeks or more for the people in the admissions office to do something that cannot take longer than an hour.  There is no point in taking anymore courses until they have finished their evaluation, and little point in moving on to the next stage until I find out whether this one is really completed or not.  Is the universe conspiring to ensure that I take a breather between lives this time around?  It certainly seems that way…

So that is what I am doing right now.  Taking a breather.  I refuse to make plans.  I refuse to even think too deeply about practically anything at this point.  I will wait at least until I have my degree in hand to start the thinking and planning cycle again… in the meantime, I am re-acquainting myself with childhood dreams.  I am reading fiction again, and thinking about writing some.  And with a little sweat and a lotta luck, maybe I can turn this breather into another life… and maybe, just maybe, this new life will stick.

Nope, still here… just utterly swamped with school work that I still don’t feel like doing. Final exam tomorrow followed by a few days of essay-mode. I should resurface next week. Lots to say, no time to say it.

I think I’ll go for a walk now…

So tomorrow is the day that Battlestar Galactica draws to a close and I must say farewell to a cast of characters that I have grown alarmingly attached to. Don’t get me wrong, I love media, especially television, but no show has ever impacted on me the way Battlestar has. If you haven’t been watching it, I am sorry, you have missed a masterpiece. Go and pick up some DVD copies as soon as you can. It won’t quite be the same though, as this was the most topical and responsive show we had to carry us through the twilight of the Bush years. While virtually everything else in the world of television drama was trying hard to provide distraction from reality, Battlestar was making good use of its alternate reality to draw attention to underlying questions of the important issues of what was going on around us. And all this with a wonderful cast of characters, some exceptional acting and writing, and the perfect science fiction aesthetic. It will be hard to say goodbye.

The other goodbye tomorrow (for me) is personal. Tomorrow the woman I thought for many years was the love of my life will marry another. I don’t have anything to say about this… or maybe I have too much to say… either way… it will happen without me saying anything. It does bring up a question that has been tumbling around my head since I heard this news last week though: if you put ten years of hard effort into earning yourself a kick in the nuts, are you obligated to savour the pain?

As the Republican party goes through its very public convulsions trying to find out what they will sell going forward I am struck by a very simple distinction between the two philosophies:

Republicans think that government should NOT help you live your life but should tell you how you can or cannot live it.

Democrats think that government should help you live your life but should NOT tell you how you can or cannot live it.

Ask yourself: do you think government should be telling you how to live your life? If the answer is yes, you are a Republican. If you think the government should tell you what you can believe then you are a Republican.

Yes, it can be said that Democrats have some agendas in regards to life choices, but these are all expressed economically. For example: when the Democrats decide that people should be living their lives in a way that does not kill the planet they do not make it illegal for you to pollute, they make it the more expensive choice through taxation.

Republicans, on the other hand, actually want to take away your liberties, not just tax behaviour that they don’t like, but actually put people in jail for it.

What I am getting at here is that Republicans, essentially, are anti-American. They do not believe in liberty, they believe in the tyranny of one group over another (so long as the group in charge is theirs). They don’t want you to be free, they want you to take marching orders from them. Fall in line. Do as I say (not as I do). Sound familiar?

Let’s take two of their main issues: the sanctity of marriage and abortion. Two issues which, by the way, I generally agree are important social issues.

When Republicans work to “protect” traditional marriage where do they put all their energy? They put it all into the courts, trying to make laws that say that gay people cannot be married. They don’t try to do anything about reducing the number of divorces. They don’t do anything about reducing the number of teen pregnancies. They don’t fight for raising the minimum wage, or better yet, for a family wage. The main thing destroying the traditional family right now is economic, both parents have to work and nobody is staying home raising the kids. But none of these things involve actually taking away rights, so they focus all their energy on same-sex marriage.

Abortion is a similar issue. While they claim to abhor abortion, they do absolutely nothing to reduce the number of abortions. In fact, I would argue that they are responsible for many of them through their irresponsible and ineffective abstinence-only sex education policies. They are against condoms, against teaching kids about sex and pregnancy. But making laws that allow the government to have more say over what a woman does with her body than the woman does? They love that idea.

Both of these issues raised above are socio-cultural issues and they should be fought in that arena. Instead, these people have ceded that ground completely and instead focus all their energy into an assault on fundamental civil liberties… turning what should be issues that we can all generally agree on into the most serious threat to America that exists today.

The problem with this approach is that history has proven to us over and over again that it is a slippery slope that goes straight to hell. America is the proof that civil liberties that are above and beyond the reach of any individual leader or majority group are the strongest and most enduring foundation that any nation can be built upon. These people put all their energy into eroding that foundation and then turn around and call themselves patriots. Stunning.

There is a reason why the Republicans put all the focus into legislation: it allows them to take highly charged social issues and turn them into political power. They don’t want people to spend their dollars funding real social programs to reduce divorce and abortion, they want them to spend that money getting Republican politicians elected on the false promise that Republican politicians will do something about these issues (and the false assertion that the thing to be done about them involves legislation). The truth is they don’t want either of these issues to be “solved” or even mitigated to any degree because that would take away their primary levers to power. Republicans have been in power for 20 of the past 30 years, and in that time all the measures have risen: divorce rates, teen pregnancy rates, abortion rates. Ask yourself: why?

I write this post mainly as an appeal to anyone out there who may be on the verge of breaking up with his or her significant other. My request is simple: take it seriously. While you are all wrapped up in your rationalizations over why this is the right thing to do etc etc, take a moment to recognize that getting your rationalizations lined up properly is not really important to anyone (even to you), your gut more than likely made the decision already and your brain is just trying to make you feel better about it. Well, let me tell you, there is only one thing you can do to make yourself feel better and that is to initiate and handle the upcoming destructive event with some class and compassion.

You see, if you don’t, if you take the cowards way out and think only of your own convenience, you really have no idea of the potential damage you will more than likely cause. I’ve been dumped twice and neither was handled well at all. The first time it took six years before I really began to heal and could trust again. The second, much more recent, time was far worse. She exhibited behaviour beyond normal human cowardice and frankly never actually broke it off at all, she just vanished and sent word through proxies that she was with another. The result for me is that I wake up every single morning replaying an event in my head that never happened. Because it never actually happened, my mind gets free reign to re-imagine the event each time. There is no beginning or end, there is only constant shouting in my head. If I was replaying a real event, the event would be roughly the same on each play through, and eventually my mind would get bored of it, having picked over the bones and examined every angle I would eventually emerge with a single account of what happened and be able to integrate that into the story of my life. Instead I am stuck in an endless loop of “what ifs” and “maybe whys.” Rather than doing the work of accepting this radical change, I am cast adrift in a constant twilight of vertigo and rage.

I assume that some day I will emerge from this state and be able to get along with my life, but I also know deep down that that is really just a crapshoot. The reality is that I may never emerge, and that even if I do, I will do so as someone else, perhaps even as someone that I don’t like very much. So far I have managed to keep the shouting enclosed neatly within my skull, but I know I can’t keep that up forever and with time it will begin to spill out into the world, thereby changing who I am and further spreading this damage around. By giving in to her cowardice my ex planted a seed of negativity with boundless potential for growth.

Which returns me to my original point: Every breakup causes some wounds, but if you take care when inflicting those wounds you can contribute a great deal to ensuring that they can eventually heal. This is not a complicated exercise really; it just takes exhibiting a little backbone and actually being there for the breakup. It may be one of the most important things you ever do. Yes you will have to endure some tears and even some shouting, but let me tell you it is nothing compared to all this shouting in my head.

If you won’t do it for them (or for me), do it for yourself… cuz Karma’s a bitch man and she will get you in the end.

As Obama leaves Canada (damn I wish I lived in Ottawa right now) I have a few thoughts on Afghanistan to share.

First, I should make clear that while I abhor war in general, I am a realist and I do not think all wars are the same. I do not agree that countries should be engaging in regime change adventures of any kind. The only time this sort of a war is justified in my view is when the offensive regime actually becomes offensive (invades/attacks another sovereign nation). As such, I am and have been highly critical of the Iraq war. That said, I view the conflict in Afghanistan from a wholly different angle. The problem with Afghanistan is not an offensive regime, but the lack of any substantive regime whatsoever. Afghanistan is a failed state (if it can even be called a state). I strongly believe that this world we inhabit today cannot tolerate any failed states. If there is to be any hope for global cooperation moving forward there simply cannot be any regions on the planet that are not involved in the conversation. I won’t go into the full argument here for that, as that would make this post too long for anyone to bother reading it. Suffice it to say: Iraq war = stupid mistake, Afghanistan war = sadly necessary.

It may be a difficult sell up here in Canada to say that the war in Afghanistan starts now. We have, after all, been there for nearly eight years now. To say that the war begins now may be taken as an affront to all that our soldiers have already sacrificed and accomplished there - it is not intended as such. I believe that for the most part, what we have been doing in Afghanistan up until now has been to maintain a holding pattern, to keep our foot wedged in the door, but we simply have not had the resources to make any significant lasting gains in the territory overall. We need more boots on the ground, more intelligence, more alliances, and a much more serious approach overall.

As Harper tries to gin up some voter support by posing as a reasonable man who wants to bring Canadian troops home, let us not forget that if this man had been in power at the time we would be in Iraq. Let me say that again: Harper would have gotten us entangled in the Iraq fiasco. Don’t forget it. If Harper had had his way we would not even have a foot in the door in Afghanistan, we would be wondering what happened to our severed foot while the Taliban wondered what to do with their newly won Pakistani nukes. Harper does not have a leg to stand on here.

I hope that as the Afghanistan war moves forward the powers that be will make three very critical changes to the strategy.

For one: Afghanistan requires justice, not freedom. I will write another post on this distinction later.

Two: Afghans need jobs. We need to stop shipping our own people in to do the construction work. We don’t understand construction in that area of the world anyways. We ship in our own people, then we have to build hugely expensive security complexes to house these people, and then they go about building things out of concrete (also shipped in) that simply does not do well in that environment. Let the Afghans do the building, they have developed region-specific techniques that have served them well for thousands of years, and we simply do not know better. Besides, it will make our aid dollars go way further.

Three: Buy the poppies! I don’t care what we do with them, but we need to become the customer the farmers are beholden to if we are to have any hope of winning over the population. So long as the Taliban is the entity providing the paycheque, we have no hope of making any permanent gains.

Obama should also be reminding our NATO allies (and I suspect that is exactly what Joe Biden was doing in Europe last week) that they have a responsibility in Afghanistan as well. This is a NATO conflict, and all of NATO’s partners should be involved.

After 7+ long years of fighting in Afghanistan it is time for us to take it seriously. We either get the hell out (bad idea) or we seriously ramp up our efforts there to get the job done. 17,000 more troops is nowhere near enough. While it may make my skin crawl to assume the role of hawk here, I am prepared to do it on this one. Are you?

I have a number of thoughts with regards to the American stimulus plan and just one thought when it comes to the Canadian version of said plan. First, the American plan:

Most of what the Republican critics have to say about Obama’s plan is true. It is a total grab-bag of social policy wrapped up as a stimulus package. The democrats are pushing through a whole host of issues that were part of Obama’s platform in this plan and calling it “stimulus” so that they don’t have to have a fight over each individual issue in the days to come. Basically a stroke of political genius. The Republicans just don’t have enough air-time to hash out all these issues because all of them are coming at them at once in one big whopper of a package. And if they oppose said package (as they did) they come out looking petty and uncaring… oblivious to the pain of out-of-work Americans.

There is one part they aren’t being honest about though: they keep saying that this does not amount to economic stimulus. True, it is not just a straight cash give-away, but every dollar that the government spends is stimulus, regardless of how it spends it. The government could spend $100 billion on chocolate bars and that $100 billion would get into the economy just as effectively as it would if they gave the money away in tax breaks. The people who make the bars, package the bars, ship the bars, and sell the bars would all get money and they would all turn around and spend that money in some way etc. The only people you can give money to with no guarantee that it will stimulate anything are bankers and the obscenely rich. Everyone else will spend it.

And here’s the funny thing about money: when you have it, it isn’t stimulus, it is only potential. Sure, having it makes you feel warm and fuzzy, but it doesn’t do anything. To turn money from potential into something you have to spend it. That something is almost always a combo platter of human activity and material property. We’ll come back to this idea…

So if you give money to the banks, you increase their base potential (they look better on the books which makes the people on Wall Street who spend all day staring at those books feel better)… but as we have seen, if the banks don’t turn around and spend that money then it doesn’t actually stimulate a damn thing. If you put the money into government programs you are spending it… which always ignites a chain reaction of activity. Take the $75 million for smoking cessation programs for example. How does helping people quit smoking help the economy? Well let’s see, it gives people who develop and design educational and marketing materials a job (along with the attendant managers, planners, etc)… it gives people who actually administer the program a job (doctors, students, counsellors, etc)… and all those people then turn around and support other people having jobs by spending the money they make…and on and on… and (at least in theory) it gives you the bonus of helping bring down future health care costs. $50 million for the arts? Well, damn, artists need to eat too, and I’d say we need art more than ever right now to help us navigate these uncharted waters ahead. And when artists eat… cooks, waiters, farmers, grocers, and possibly even Burger King all get an economic shot in the arm… and all those people employ other people… who spend money… someone should tell Harper this.

You see the Republicans are lying when they say this isn’t economic stimulus. They are lying when they say they know better (I mean come on… who the hell put us here?). They are right to whine about being steamrolled here as they most certainly are… but since I happen to agree with just about everything Obama wants to do I’m happy, and I know that it will serve the purpose of stimulus.

As far as all the whinging and moaning about the debt to our children goes… well I don’t know about that. You see, China is the one providing the cash here for the most part. China could be holding on to that cash and increasing its potential, or it could be spending it elsewhere and increasing activity somewhere else… or we could suck as much of that cash outta China as possible, spend it as fast as possible upgrading our infrastructure/economy/industry/technology and then when it comes time to pay the bill… well, we’ll probably have to go to war with China some day anyways. We are taking their money (potential) and turning it into our activity and property. Maybe this isn’t so bad if you look at it as an early offensive strategy the way Hitler looked at his dealings with Stalin. Or is that too Machiavellian? Hmmm… if the Chinese are going to kill the whole planet with their coal plants maybe Machiavelli is the order of the day? Maybe it doesn’t even have to go as far as war… maybe we are just tricking the Chinese into giving us the money we need to develop (and patent) all the green tech of the future… so we can turn around and charge em up the wazoo for it once the writing is clearly on the wall for them… you know… to pay for our debt. It’s not like the USA has much to worry about anyway, they own the IMF and the World Bank.

When it comes to the Canadian stimulus package I have just one thought: I do not trust Mr. Harper to spend a single penny in a responsible, transparent, or even legal way. Period.

Wow. What a difference a week makes.!!

Last week… it was the old “You are either with us, or against us.” Which, of course, was a little weird for us Canadians (we’re with ya on Afghanistan but not Iraq so…?) and pretty F’n clear to a great many others: you are the enemy. Now, Obama has hit a button that maybe was hiding behind the big scary red one?… the reset button! (who knew?!)

He issues orders to close Guantanamo prison, ban torture, suspend and review all secret detention policies and individual prosecution cases. He appoints George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East. He gives his first interview to Arabic news and Bam! Reset. Clean slate. Let’s go.

“The Americans are not your enemy.”

So now the listening begins. God speed Mr. Mitchell.