Some of you know my husband, Greg. Those of you that do, know that he can make anybody laugh. He’s truly a funny guy. Both of my girls, Alicia and Melanie have his sense of humour. Thank God. I never really knew how to laugh until I met Greg. I took life pretty seriously. When I met Greg and we started dating, it wasn’t very long after that he told me ” you better take that stick out of your ass if we’re going to be together. Life is serious, but that’s why you gotta laugh at it”. So , pretty much since then, I pulled the stick out and started laughing. It’s been 31 years since we started dating, and we’re still laughing.

We were driving one day and we’re at a stop light. The light turned green and Greg  started moving forward. A guy drove by us spinning his wheels and basically being a jerk. Greg said ” what an ass.” I heard ” Spartacus”. I looked at Greg and started killing myself laughing saying ” whythe heck   would you call him Spartacus?” Greg gives me this blank stare and says ” what the hell are you taking about? I said, What an ass!” ” Oh”, I said, I heard Spartacus”! My stomach hurt from laughing so much. Greg just looked at me and said “you do know that’s how wars start you know? With misheard words?”hmmm, he’s probably right!

Recently, Alicia and I were cleaning up. Mel was gone house and dog sitting, and Greg was playing with our dog. Alicia picked up a pop can, and looked at her dad, and gave the can a little shake. He looked up and said “yeeeees?” She just rolled her eyes and looked at him. ( he has a habit of not putting his can in the recycle bag we have for them.) He came and put the can away. No problem. Except that he didn’t put it in the bag, he put it in Alicia’s boot! Well, this is totally something that Greg’s dad, Hilmar would have done. And… the war was on!  Since then, Greg has hidden a pop can in Alicia’s bed, in her shirt, in her pillow and God only knows where else. But… Alicia has hidden a pop can in Greg’s tie drawer, in his shoe, behind his shampoo in the shower, and on the ceiling fan blade in our bedroom. And… this is how wars escalate!

This got me thinking. I pay attention to politics, as I’m sure most of us have, over the last couple years anyway. The campaigns on both sides, whether we live in Canada or in the USA, became absolutely ugly. It was one-up-man-ship, it was ugly, and it was, in my opinion, absolutely disgusting.  Whatever beliefs we have can truly affect our view of the world. I think this is true for politics, religion, education, and circumstance. I mean, most of us never grew up seeing violence in our homes, or really, even in our country. I don’t think many of us  truly know what kids of severely addicted parents see and live. My friend who is a police officer says that many of these kids live in the equivalency of “war-zones”. I don’t think many of us know what it is like to run for our lives from a war torn country. I know our kids certainly never grew up with their parents screaming and fighting and hating each other. They’re not supposed to see that!  Really, they’re not! Yet we, and they, see  these things  every single day on the news, in movies, or on Facebook, or on our Twitter feeds. And we sit and do nothing, because really, we all feel that “there’s not much we can do”, or  “it’s over there”, or “it’s not my problem”, or ” I’don’t know what to do to stop it”.  But really, it’s really easy to help. We talk about the violence and war and hatred being so bad, but fixing it starts with me.  It starts by my talking with my kids about what they’re seeing and hearing. We started this right when they were really little. If there was a program on TV that they were unsure about, or if they heard things on the news, we never hid it from them, but talked to them about what was real, what was true, and how it made them feel. For example, our girls have loved horror movies since they were young. Not my choice of thing to watch, lol, but it was something that they did with their dad. He always talked with them about it, and if they were scared, off it went.

But it goes beyond talking with our kids about stuff like this. For me, I believe that the more posts I see about “the goat herders” or  ‘turban wearers’, or “those people”. Or ” oh they’re fags”.  It’s the same as using the “n ” word.  When we say things like this, I truly believe that it comes from a place of ignorance and lack of knowledge. When we get to know people, we realize they are just people. They are just like you or me. And I truly believe that by getting to know people, it is so much easier to like them. Both Greg and I have worked, and our girls have gone to school with, every nationality, religion, sexual orientation, colour etc. We really like talking to people about where they come from, what brought them to our area,  what struggles they had, who they are. One of my good friends husbands came as a refugee from Vietnam was he was 5 and his brother was just a baby. He, his brother, and his parents spent months on a small boat fleeing the Vietnam area. They arrived here with nothing! Literally the clothes on their backs.The parents worked and worked and worked until they were able to save enough to buy a restaurant.Then they worked some more.  Then they bought another one.  Our friends arrived here last year from Syria. They escaped to Lebanon and lived there for two years trying to come to Canada. Their little girl wanted to bring her toys with her, but they were allowed only one backpack of items for each person. So her parents told her she could bring just a couple of small toys. Do you know what she chose? Used shell casings that she had found in the rubble in what was left of the park they played in. Those were her collection. Those were her toys. Many of the people I’ve worked with over the years have similar stories. We don’t seem to realize that the difference between “them” and us… is the place of our birth.   We forget that unless we are First Nations, all of our families immigrated here at one time. We forget to look at things from a different perspective, one not our own. By educating ourselves to what is happening in the world, by meeting and talking to people, and by opening up our minds, we open up our hearts,and we are the ones who will teach the next generations about love and kindness and what being Canadian means. I own this. We own this. Not someone else. I own my response. We own our responses. We own how we react when someone is rude, when someone is hateful, when someone hurts us. We also own what we post to social media. When we share posts and slurs that are racial, or anti gay, or whatever, we contribute to  the hatred. We contribute to the fear. We contribute to the ignorance and violence. So, how do we help instead of hurt…. we need to think before we say derogatory things, before we post hateful, hurtful things, we need to educate ourselves and our children, and we need to listen with open hearts.

My personal belief is that what we put out to the universe, is what we’ll get back. So if I am looking for love and abundance and happiness, but I’m posting things that are hate-filled, angry, judgmental and unhappy, I am never going to get what I’m looking for. I truly believe that most of us whatever our nationalities, race, religion, colour,sexual orientation, we  are looking for just that: for happiness, for love, for abundance. Abundance to me is not just wealth, but good health, great friends, lots of laughter, and sharing that with others. I’m sure it means different things to everyone, but overall, I think it’s a similar definition for us all.

I’m sure that this sounded kind of preachy, and that’s not my intent. My intent is to live my life with my heart wide open, and hopefully to share some thoughts that make sense to people. My intent is to reflect on my own actions and words. All it takes is one tiny pebble in a pond to cause a ripple effect. My thoughts and actions too cause ripple effects, and maybe, just maybe, by saying and doing and thinking differently, I can help create a world of love and tolerance… and maybe, just maybe, it’ll be enough to stop the “wars” from escalating.