Category: Opinions

A truly magical advice column

 

I’m feeling a bit stressed. Term papers, year-end projects, and all those readings I’ve neglected over the term are suddenly due and I’m overwhelmed. Do you have a potion to help me study? Any fauns or mermaids who give discount tutoring rates? Any and all advice is appreciated.

 

Sincerely,

Seriously tested

 

One doesn’t need to possess much skill in scrying to know the difficulties you’re facing, so I shall put my crystal orb aside. I do believe I can be of some service, however, in this, your pressing hour of need.

The hard truth of this matter is this: you will find yourself in this position again. Not because you are weak but because you are human, and humans are finite. The feeling will come and go and change form, but like a pendulum it returns unbidden. It is the same for wizards, if you can believe it.

As finite creatures we will always be surrounded by a crushing amount of opportunities, challenges, and decisions—not to mention homework.

But now is not the time to give in to despair! Neither is it the time to chase after magical shortcuts like spells and potions. Also, steer clear of fauns when there’s work to be done. They’re rubbish with deadlines; I swear all they do is dance.

Perhaps there’s a chance we can get at the root of the problem if—and only if—we avoid moonlit forest clearings rife with the hoof-beats of a faun party.

While there are a number of tinctures and potions available in enchanted mountain-side caves and from traveling sales-gnomes, I do not recommend them. They help for a moment but weaken the will as well as the body. You will grow to need them and they will not love you back, no matter how great your desire for them.

If a gnome offers you a vial, say no.

Potions are off the table then, but I can still offer you a bit of magic: perspective. It’s a funny bit of sorcery, perspective, and can hurt as likely as it is to help. Few of us seek it out in times of trouble, but what a help it can prove to be!

I will try to be tactful. You, are small. Very, very small. Not pixie-small but, in the grand scheme things, really quite little. Even a Grand Wizard, while undoubtedly a bit larger up close, is just as insignificant from the proper Perspective.

And here is where Perspective cuts two ways: it can either be liberating or debilitating.

To see one’s self and one’s projects as small; as one person in a big school, on a large planet, in what may as well be an infinite universe—it can free you from the crushing nearsightedness that many humans suffer.

Or it can crush you—if you believe the lie that you are insignificant.

What is a letter grade compared to love? What is the whole of philosophy to an evening of good bread and wine with friends? If the whole of your humanity is actually quite small, how much greater are you than your trials?

We can learn from the difficulties we live, even when we fail. The only real failure is running away. It’s a lesson that everyone keeps on learning and no matter how long your beard gets, it remains a struggle. This dragon has many heads, but it can be vanquished.

You have a lot on your plate. But when you’re finished there will be fauns and dancing and friends and laughter.

The Seattle-based coffee giant cares about selling lattes, not representing Christianity

Another day, another pointless controversy brewing on social media.

This week’s drama involves Starbucks and their annual holiday cups. Since 1997, devout Starbucks customers have awaited their arrival to signify the beginning of the holiday season. The design varies from year to year, but has consisted of things from snowflakes and snowmen to Christmas ornaments and reindeer. When the holiday menu debuted at the beginning of the month, the seasonal cups had no snowflakes or Christmas trees—in fact, they had nothing at all, they were just simply red. You might think this is just a creative liberty, a new minimalist approach to the holiday classic, but some people on social media took this as an all-out war on Christmas.

Even though some years the cups didn’t feature any sort of religious symbolism—unless it was a snowy night in Jerusalem when Jesus was born—many outspoken Christians believe that removing things like snowflakes and Christmas ornaments from the cups was Starbucks’ attempt to push their secular agenda on their customers and is yet another sign of our society’s decline into political correctness. The decision prompted people on Twitter to start the hashtag “#BoycottStarbucks,” and Joshua Feuerstein, a former television and radio evangelist, went so far as to say that “Starbucks removed Christmas from their cups because they hate Jesus.”

Republican presidential candidate and all around hothead Donald Trump even addressed the controversy by calling for a Starbucks boycott, and suggested that he wouldn’t renew the lease of the coffee chain’s Trump Tower location in New York.

Starbucks set the record straight by explaining that they intended the two-toned ombré design to be a blank canvas to encourage customers to draw their own designs and tell their own stories as a way to embrace people from every background. “In the past, we have told stories with our holiday cups designs,” Jeffrey Fields, Starbucks vice president of design and content, said in a statement. “This year we wanted to usher in the holidays with a purity of design that welcomes all of our stories.”

This controversy not only seems unwarranted, but completely ridiculous. A Starbucks cup is just a piece of cardboard that you fill with a fancy $6 latte and then throw in the trash. They are not trying to make a political statement. And the cups didn’t even always represent Christmas! Snowflakes and snowmen are not Christmas-related, they are winter-related, and the cups are for the seasonal drink menu from November to January, not a Christmas menu. There doesn’t need to be a religious connotation at all; even if they have featured Christmas trees or Santa Claus on their products through the years, those images have gotten so commercialized that they barely even represent the Christian religion for most people. What’s the point in getting mad? Do people really have nothing better to do?  Besides, it’s a coffee shop chain—since when are they the moral compass for the nation?

Possibly the most laughable part of the whole thing is that outraged customers started telling baristas that their names were “Merry Christmas” so that they would have to write it on the cup. Seriously—because nothing says “TAKE THAT, STARBUCKS!” quite like spending your money in their store. You sure got them! If you’re truly outraged by this whole ridiculous situation, just stop buying your daily venti non-fat caramel brûlé latte and go somewhere else that will cater to your immature overly-sensitive needs.

Some want the white ‘peace’ poppy to supplant the classic red symbol.

Every November, my grandmother wears a red poppy. It’s a nice one, with a small Canadian flag in the center. I remember her giving me one when I was younger, and teaching me to pin it on the left side of my jacket, over my heart. She wears it not only to show respect for veterans, but to remember my grandfather, who was a veteran himself.

Pretty much every Canadian knows what the red poppy stands for, and we’ve all seen volunteers from the Canadian Legion in grocery stores and shopping malls with a donation tin and a box of pins. But not everyone has heard about the white poppies that are trying to take over Remembrance Day.

The white poppy campaign is a practically non-existent movement that believes that red poppies glorify war. The supporters are trying to get people to wear white poppies instead of red ones, in the name of promoting peace. What these wannabe-peace-activists don’t seem to understand is that remembering the past is not the same as being an active supporter of certain political views.

I am far from being pro-war, yet I still wear a poppy because I can recognize the significant contribution that veterans have made to Canada’s history. I can also understand that wearing a red poppy doesn’t indicate my policy on current military situations.

The white poppy campaign seems to think its cause is noble, but in truth, there isn’t one solid reason to attack the red poppy. In fact, white poppies could be doing more harm than good.

The little donation you make to wear a red poppy doesn’t just vanish into thin air—and it certainly doesn’t go to funding wars overseas. According to the Canadian Legion, the money doesn’t even go straight into veterans’ pockets, either.

In Montreal, the money from the red poppies mainly goes to charities. It goes to the Ste. Anne’s Veterans hospital, school boards, food banks and scholarships for students who have veterans in their family, among other things.

What is the white poppy movement doing for anybody?

Luckily, although the movement is quite prominent in the UK, Canadians don’t seem to be catching onto the idea of white poppies. It was started in Ottawa by the Canadian Peace Alliance, and made headlines across the country. But in truth, the distribution of white poppies can’t even compare with red poppies.

Over 18 million Canadians showed their support for the Canadian Legion by wearing a red poppy last year.

Basically, there is nothing wrong with red poppies. They bring the country together in remembrance.

We all grew up with them; we attended assemblies where bagpipes were played and the poem “In Flanders Fields” was read to us. Wanting peace isn’t a bad thing, but pulling out the white poppy argument at a time when we are trying to show respect for the people who served our country is extremely inconsiderate. Promote peace somewhere else, at an appropriate time.

Let the country remember its history.

Lawmakers have until February to decide if and how to regulate the practice

The discussion about physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, or PAS/E, has not been very clear. The situation is often portrayed as mercifully ending suffering versus cruelly allowing people to suffer. The problem with this is twofold. It falsely portrays the motives of people who disagree with PAS/E and it takes advantage of ambiguity cloaked in language like ‘suffering.’ Let’s tackle both options here.

Firstly, people who are opposed to euthanasia are not cruel. They are compassionate, which at its root means with and suffering. They want to be with people who are suffering and give them support. Their motive is to care. It is harder to walk with those who are suffering and enter into their experience than it is to end their lives.

Second, it is unclear to many what suffering entails. Suffering is a word that evokes a strong response in us. We don’t like suffering and we want to do away with it. Call something suffering and people will believe it is evil and should be eliminated. But what suffering are we talking about? Terrible pain? This is often suggested but is simply not the case. I’m a McGill grad, physician in training at Western University and currently on my palliative care elective. Physicians are typically able to make patients comfortable. Studies have shown that people who desire to die can change their minds once effective care manages to relieve their pain. Compassion, and knowing that alleviating pain often gives people comfort in their final days, surely plays a role in why the vast majority of palliative physicians are against euthanasia, according to an internal survey by Canadian Society of Palliative Care Physicians.

I believe the issue at hand is more related to the god our society loves to worship: autonomy.  We want to get what we want when we want it. Can’t we see the bait and switch? The whole issue is framed as suffering and thrives off the notion of terrible pain. But this is not the case.  The pain can be dealt with. The issue is not getting what we want. We don’t typically call not getting what we want ‘suffering.’  But continue to call it ‘suffering’ and you have produced sympathy in your listeners based on a false reality convenient for the cause. This is not surprising. I agree with the journalist G. K. Chesterton in his book Eugenics and Other Evils when he said, “evil always takes advantage of ambiguity.”

We must clarify the issue. This does not suggest that people who personally desire euthanasia don’t experience any form of difficulty or are somehow being deceptive. However, I’d suggest that those who support euthanasia use ambiguity to their benefit.

So what then of autonomy? Would my desire for someone to end my life warrant a law that mandates it be done? In our heart of hearts, I believe everyone knows our individual independence cannot be our ultimate arbiter. In practical life we restrict autonomy based on the principle to do no harm. If a random stranger asked you to kill him, would you do it? No; you would refuse on the basis that it is wrong to kill. Do you make qualifications? Do you say, “I will not kill you because you’re healthy” or, “your life is enjoyable?”

No. Your instinct tells you that this simply must not be done.

Now the example I have given may seem bizarre, but it is at the root the very same as our reasoning for PAS/E today. People are suffering and they want us to give up our own right to self-determination in order to honour what they see as their right to end their life. Suffering is a subjective criterion. How can I tell you that your suffering is not great? If we accept suffering as a criterion for PAS/E, who can we turn away? And yet every day we strive to change this subjective perception through encouraging friends, appreciating what we have, and seeing psychiatrists. Why do we do that? Inherently we know autonomy cannot be our ultimate arbiter. Having to make any justification at all suggests we are operating with another arbiter in mind whether or not we like to believe so.

And what is that? To do no harm.

There is confusion between the differences of active and passive responses to people suffering. I believe PAS/E advocates also take advantage of this. They suggest there is no difference between passive and active ending of life. Yet there is a world of difference between letting a disease take its course and knowingly infecting someone with a disease that kills them. They are two different causes of death.

Some still object and say that if a man is choking and you do nothing then you are letting him die, but that is not acceptable. Of course, this is true if you have no sense of intention and only know how to focus on outcomes. But consider how intent is everywhere in human interactions. Deliberately shooting a man and gleefully doing nothing as he chokes both fall under the umbrella of intent to end life. But aiming to kill versus accidentally pulling a trigger? We have different names for those people.

Medicine is built on helping people, on those who are strong and able taking care of those who are sick and weak and in need of others. It is altruism.  But we are seeking to forsake this in our new outlook. We are rejecting the cultivated ethic of caring for the weakest in our society.  Instead we are nurturing a new idea that people suffering have unworthy lives so we should actively take measures to remove them. Or let’s get back to the language game. We help them die. Or better yet, we mercifully bestow them an elixir that eliminates all suffering… by making them dead.

The reality of this world is that we do not always get what we want. Our bodies don’t always work the way we want. But we cannot end our lives whenever things do not turn out the way we hope. For the very autonomy we wish to have is built on natural life, and neglecting the Hippocratic principle to do no harm destroys the very life that makes autonomy possible. I propose a move towards solidarity, a time of coming alongside those who are at the end of their life, to show them that their lives are valuable and that we care.

Some candy is deadly so some colour and more Halloween safety isn’t going to hurt anyone

Big, orange jack-o’-lanterns are the symbol of Halloween. No home would be complete without one on Oct. 31, but what if this year, people were swapping out the traditional orange colour for… teal?

The “Teal Pumpkin Project” is a movement that started in the U.S.A. and is now moving to Canada. Homeowners are putting out teal pumpkins to signify that the house is offering allergy-safe treats on Halloween for trick-or-treaters. For kids with allergies, this is great news; but for the back-in-my-day folks who have nothing better to do, it’s yet another thing to complain about.

Homes that are taking part in the Teal Pumpkin Project are offering kids things that won’t threaten their lives, and will give their parents peace of mind. They will be giving out non-edible treats, such as small toys or stickers, instead of potentially harmful candy for kids with allergies.

The concept of giving treats to kids for them all to enjoy safely shouldn’t be a controversial issue, but it seems to be. The comments section of an online article on the CBC News website is riddled with criticism. Remarks such as “the gluten panic strikes again” or “why not just ban Halloween completely?” attack a harmless gesture, seemingly without reason. Putting out a different coloured pumpkin won’t ruin anyone’s Halloween aesthetic, and giving out seasonal stickers instead of chocolate bars won’t disappoint any kids. On the contrary, allergy-free treats will make trick-or-treating way more enjoyable for all the little monsters running around on Halloween night.

But the people of the internet seem to think that kids are just being coddled these days—as if going into anaphylactic shock is character building instead of life threatening. True, no one likes helicopter parents who protect their children just short of wrapping them in bubble wrap, but no one can blame families that want their children to have a normal, exciting, and safe Halloween experience. If a child with a severe allergy or food intolerance gets a hold of the wrong candy, it could be dangerous, and this risk leaves children out of the fun of the holiday.

While everyone is more-or-less familiar with the common peanut allergy, things such as celiac disease, which is an extreme sensitivity to gluten, are not as well known. Kids with Type 1 diabetes, gluten sensitivities, and uncommon allergies have a tough time on Halloween. The candy they get from trick-or-treating has to be sorted out and the majority is inedible; some kids don’t go out for Halloween at all because it’s safer for them to stay away from candy altogether.

The Teal Pumpkin Project is nothing but a good thing. Children deserve to be kept safe on the spookiest night of the year, and a cool new colour for Halloween is hardly the worst way to do it.

Every kid deserves to have fun, regardless of their differences, so here’s to hoping we see a little more teal next All Hallow’s Eve.

Unequal expectations at work mean women have to work harder to be heard

Listen up ladies: you should be assertive, but you shouldn’t be bitchy. You should be talkative, but you shouldn’t take over the room either. You should be sexy, but shouldn’t be slutty. You should be sweet, but you shouldn’t be a pushover. You should act like a man, but behave lady-like. Right?

Bullshit.

We have this misleading concept that we should be everything and nothing all at once, so, we constantly doubt ourselves. Personally speaking, I question myself every day and overthink everything. Do men do this as much as women do?

In the workplace—or simply in daily events—us lovely human beings “blessed” to be the weaker sex have a lot going on in our heads. We don’t want to be labeled as the ‘bitch.’ And you are perceived as the ‘bitch’ if you are too assertive. However, reversing the roles, a man is being the boss, or simply a man, if he is boldly self-assured about his opinions. Negative feelings are heaped on women when they act like a man should, sure, and men experience the reverse when they behave the way women are “supposed to”, by being called a sissy—or worse. This just reinforces negative gender stereotypes. This happens because of how gender is culturally constructed in our society, and it continues despite our best efforts.

Our fear of being seen as unattractive or out of the norm is perpetrated by the gender inequity in the workplace: that is the still remaining wage inequality along with male dominated professions. Women are still being paid only $0.82 to every $1 earned by men and a majority of men at work encourages this ridiculous idea and vicious cycle of men acting bigger and women acting smaller. Yes, this is what contributes to women apologizing more for their actions because of the actual fact that they are not as valued as men—according to their paycheck that is.

My mother used to be president of her company alongside my father. When they got divorced, she lost her position. My father and his colleague now have that title. Divorce comes with its own taunting quarrels and my mother didn’t want to fight relentlessly over job titles. So she let it be. I wonder if a man would have let go of that title of power that easily. That’s the thing isn’t it? Men are born into the world with a position that makes them more eligible for power than women.

I sometimes silence myself in front of issues that bother me to avoid looking stupid or overly sensitive. Overly sexualized women dominate the media in our day-to-day lives and we mindlessly accept it.

This only drags on the issue. Speak up about your thoughts and don’t apologize for sharing them. Be labeled as the ‘bitch’ for being assertive, and don’t act like a man or a woman—but as a human being.

A Montreal church is getting a lot of attention for offering to help struggling students

Mark Twain once called Montreal the city of a hundred steeples, but not every church has a steeple—they’re expensive.

Take the church I attend as an example. Église du Plateau Mont-Royal is a small, francophone Protestant church that meets in the Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood. The church-goers don’t meet in a church building because it doesn’t own one, which is common for new churches with small congregations. In fact, Église du Plateau Mont-Royal doesn’t own a building for the same reason I don’t own a house—real estate is expensive.

In early September the church started renting the auditorium at Jeanne-Mance High School for Sunday gatherings because the previous rental space was being filled to capacity.

You may think this all sounds benign, whether you consider yourself religious or not, so why are we talking about this? A recent story by Radio-Canada and later CBC has thrust my little church into the spotlight—even politicians are talking about it—but why?

Because Jeanne-Mance High School is a school with needs—needs compounded by austerity measures—and Église du Plateau Mont-Royal is big on community service.

From what I understand, the decision to rent space at Jeanne-Mance was motivated by a desire to serve the disadvantaged. The school is ranked third worst in Quebec, according to the Fraser Institute, and has a course failure rate of 49.9 per cent.

The problem is not that the church wanted to help by offering tutors (many congregants are university students) or volunteers to keep the library open when the librarian was laid off. No, the problem seems to be that a church wanted to help.

The Radio-Canada report also got a few facts wrong. The article says members of the church are already tutoring and volunteering in the library. We’re not, because we haven’t been trained by the school yet or agreed to the terms that would likely be imposed on any volunteers.

The majority of those who commented on the article seem convinced that the plan was to put on Jesus t-shirts and hand out copies of the Bible with students’ library books.

That’s ridiculous.

Regardless of what you may have seen on T.V., that’s not Église du Plateau Mont-Royal—and that’s not me. I get it though, I’m a native Montrealer and I know the history of religion in Quebec. People just aren’t comfortable with religion in schools since the Quiet Revolution—for good, valid reasons—and I think the de-confessionalization of school boards was a good thing.

I know what it means to live in a pluralistic society. I know that in Canada, and Quebec especially, my worldview is not the dominant one. Because of this I try to live out my faith humbly, answering questions instead of offering answers.

I have a question of my own: if my church didn’t meet in Jeanne-Mance’s auditorium and I wanted to volunteer my services as an ESL teacher, would I be allowed? I’m a Christian and sometimes I talk about that fact. If someone asked me why I volunteer anywhere I’d mention something about Jesus’ command to love my neighbour.

Église du Plateau Mont-Royal isn’t planning to put on t-shirts and proselytize kids. We saw a need and asked if we could help. I’m a one service-minded individual among many at the church and yes, that service mindedness springs from my faith but that doesn’t change the nature of my service.

If all this media coverage means Église du Plateau Mont-Royal is strictly forbidden from mentioning our faith while volunteering, that’s fine, I just want to help. If the school gets much needed funds out of this, even better.

But my motivation for helping will always stay the same.