I enjoyed the article ...

and it was positive to read that the author is finally coming into her own in the third period. But there was an irony I noticed when she defined the first two periods as "a good life". It was a list of assets and milestones.

I'm 57 years old. I've skated hard through the first two periods of life: youth and adulthood. I've earned a degree, married well, built a business, raised a family, own a home. I've got some money in the bank, cars in the driveway, and modest debts. A good life.

Certainly it is a typical list that brings to mind the image of a good life in our culture. I know I could construct a similar one myself if requested. But I do not think I would offer it up as evidence of 'a good life'. No doubt George W Bush, Stephen Harper and Barrack Obama could offer up one, too, and their lives have been horror shows from my vantage point.

Without passing judgment on the travels the author undertook, the list makes me recall something from the Architects of Control, where they

sell you all sorts of images to decorate your inauthentic life,

and I think that, too, is something worth reflecting upon.

I think if you'll look again

you'll find that this is a different voice at 57 - that of Patrick O'Neill. Shari isn't 57 - yet.

There are some interesting thoughts here, though, and ones to inspire people who march to a different drummer. What I regret, though, is that I work among people who are the kind of cultural slaves that Ed bemoans, always looking for the right thing to say to the boss, making sure they do their work and not a bit more, grasping for every bit of entitlement, and frowning at anything extra asked of them. I regret to say with surprise that I've seen more ethnic immigrants displaying this attitude than ever before, where it used to be the preserve of the spoiled brats that grew up with me in the 60s and 70s and even later.

Ed, your despair is beginning to show through. Only one thing left for you to do - find religion!

thanks, zalm, for picking that up

the comment I cite was indeed made by Patrick O'Neill and not 'she', but the essence of my post remains (I trust).

Touching on your 'entitlement' point, zalm, could that not be part and parcel of attaining the Canadian dream -- eight hours, responsible only for your job description, and full pull on the government tit?

So what is it you are skating toward?

Me? I remain working on being a good neighbour and an honest bloke, forever skeptical of power.

Zalm.... I grew up as a super

Zalm.... I grew up as a super religious, ultra conservative fascist and it took me years to shake the mental chains of the nonsense I was brainwashed with in my childhood.

In any case, I'm a perennial optimist and am absolutely certain that the human race will wake up one day and shake the chains of enslavement by "faith".

Immigrant societies are the worst snake pits, exactly because of the faith based garbage filled into their heads as children, then the guilt feeling for having left "home", nurtured and exploited by their "leaders".

"Racism" ? When my son was working in a mill in Williams Lake, there were separate tables for the "whites", and the Sikhs. If a Sikh dared to stop and talk to somebody at the "white" table, he was immediately called to order by his "leader" to stop and join the correct table.

Then we had the ethnic, mobile voting forces, who were put into all parties at nominating times to elect the person chosen by the "leaders" .

Anybody who gets enslaved by such rackets, mostly fed by religions, remains a puppet for life. No wonder they get depressed.

We discovered this idiocy as refugees, in our teens, and never had anything to do with any ethnic society again, constantly yammering and crying over having left "home"

Like a Vancouver born boy, of Italian origin, said it to me once: "We're not Canadians we only live here" as he was getting ready to go "home" to school in Italy.

Of course, anybody who dares to question such nonsense, is immediately called a "racist". Our kids learned and spoke only English from day one and never missed a thing.

Ed Deak.

Ed finding religion, only when pigs fly

Zalm, "finding religion" can help some people to give them direction in life, but blind faith ultimately does not satisfy the inquisitive in their search for meaning, only those who have given up the confusing and often painful search, to follow a more comfortable path, led by commercial spin meisters or the priesthoods that Ed has so long correctly identified as one of the overall sources of our past and current dilemmas.

Yet it's the evangelical individualists and other religious fundamentalist splinter groups (of various faiths) that seem to be so irratioanally causing many of our current problems.

The so called deeper meanings of life, such as relationships, religion, family and community slide off the tongue much too easily.

Too many people just don't fit all the important pieces together.

I really had to bite my tongue at a given moment, despite outrage, when a couple of very content "born agains" told me that I should forget about my environmental bent and focus on social justice, like job creation for one, but here, not in Africa.

I'll adress and work this issue through at a more appropriate time, but it only shows the foibles of supposed wisdom and narrowly focussed life satisfaction. The self examined life is missing something here.

Empathy for their clan, but not outsiders. And other living organisms are there just to subdue and "take dominion over".

I can't completely agree with Patrick's first point to "Use my time pursuing only what I am full-hearted about in my life and work."

I only wish, but dishes and cleaning take some non "full-hearted" priority.

"Remain open to new ideas, people and experiences".

That, along with true empathy, is a big piece of true wisdom, not this closed system hubris, be it spouted by priest or prime minister.

Skating, or sliding inexorably towards what?

I would like to "move forward" to a "space" where all those "many voices" start speaking English again instead of Granola.

There so many people "moving forward" it should be a stampede. There are so many "voices" they could form a choir. I am so sick of hearing the expression that this "informs" that, when the word "inform" is used to suggest that disconnected ideas that are usually wishful thinking, somehow connect with other wihful thinking ideas etc. etc.

There is an army of people in Canada who use language as a veil to hide, the sad truth that they have nothing to say.

They use words like "authentic", "validation" and "closure". Please stop talking gobbledigook; you aren't fooling anyone but yourselves.

Cabnada has Rogue Nation status in the realm of climate change. We are more right-wing than George Bush and it would not surprise me if Stephen Harper declared a war of his own. We are going nowhere unless we start talking straight and getting back to work.

The business managers may get to retire but for anyone in the environmental field will die in the harness. We were bnever in it for the money.

It is interesting that now we

It is interesting that now we don't have a Canadian, but a Harper government, but when they do something stupid, it is Canada who has done it.

In the name and empowered by a 39% "majority".

Of course, this is nothing new. When kings, dictators and government go to war, it is always the "countries" who are blamed.

If there was something that I've learned in my glorious combat and hospital time, it was that we were killing each other for the only reason that we wore different uniforms and helmets.

And what better reason could there be?

Ed Deak.

Mark Kingwell's comment that...

"...we may be headed towards an 'empathy deficit'. (Some research by my University of Toronto colleague Keith Oatley, who is a novelist as well as a psychologist, indicates that this may indeed be occurring in younger people."
is perhaps the sadest comment of the article. Empathy is perhaps the most important attribute among humans. It denotes love, understanding, faithfulness, co-operation and humanity --- something that will be most needed during the coming decades when, as predicted by many, the world is going to fall apart around us. We don't need religion to have empathy. But we do need parental guidance, from two parents, to achieve the knowledge necessary to grow to love our neighbours more than we love ourselves.

Now you tell me!

well, Okanagan Orchardist, because my Mother died during my infancy I am doomed?

Damn anyway, here I must have been faking empathy all my life --- and managing to fool everybody to believe it was genuine.

At least we agree that religion has nothing to do with it.

What inspired me in this article was the reference to the 2 wingers skating alongside: Death and Destiny.

To me that is what life is all about!

Amusement and food for thought

... from all present here.

Owl, I'm only poking fun at Ed, who tricks me every day into believing him a dour and humourless Calvinist staring at the artist with a pitchfork in hand and an equally pinch-faced wife by his side, which by all accounts is the antithesis of what you'd find at his homestead in Big Lake. However, I'd look forward to your screed on religion sometime, though whether for amusement or edification, one's not sure.

Ed, you as an immigrant ought to know best of all the dual desires pulling within you - one to honour your new homeland with your best and fullest participation, and the other to rest easy, if only for a moment, in the comfortable soft-shoe of mother tongue, cultural familiarity, and home-cooking - that the tension never goes away. You claim to have subsumed it, and I believe that may be so, but for hundreds of thousands of other Canadians...

One story from my father's reminiscences with his sister that sticks in my mind is that of growing up in "Hastings East" near the PNE, as immigrant a neighbourhood as you'll ever find, with the kids every fall sneaking from one garage or cellar to another to sample on the sly the many and varied fruits of the vine languishing in barrels and jugs. Bulgarian, Serb, Greek, Italian, Argentine, Syrian, Dutch, even Punjabi - everyone had a tradition, and often one shared across the back fence, or indeed with the neighbourhood on the occasion of a new birth.

On immigration, my glass is more often than not still half-full, rather than half-empty. That's not to say I don't see problems with cultural enclaves, but it's rare to hear them summarized with any intelligence in a tweet, or even on a blog with as many perspicacious and well-educated observers as this one has.