I’ve never been the best with goodbyes; I don’t think many of us are.
It might be why I’ve come to dislike airports as much as I do. If you’re in an airport, you’re saying goodbye to someone, or something, in some way or another.
Part of me wonders why we put ourselves through these types of feelings.
And here I am, in another airport. I’m looking around and watching the goodbyes everywhere. Sisters holding each other tightly in an embrace. A father holds his little boy who is crying because he’s leaving. Lovers hold hands until that final, desperate moment.
The older I get, the more I realize that every goodbye could be the last we have with that person.
And yet I realized today that it’s for that reason exactly that goodbyes are a beautiful thing.
In a little over an hour waiting to board my plane, a million memories of the person I had just said goodbye to flooded my mind.
I felt a strong appreciation for all of the times I was lucky enough to spend with her. I laughed aloud at the many good memories, and replayed with understanding and compassion the uncomfortable ones. I found myself momentarily regretting all of the times I wasn’t completely present in the moment with her.
The experiences with our loved ones are special because we have to, at some time or another, say goodbye to them. With this in mind, each moment becomes a singular treasure to be cherished and appreciated.
I used to want to live forever. I wanted my friends and family to live forever. I wanted to stay close to home. I didn’t want to say goodbye.
But what would relationships be worth if we were not doomed to one day say goodbye?
So spend time with those you love. Connect with them on the deepest levels. Laugh off the perceived issues and embrace the great times.
Stay completely present, because one day you’ll say goodbye.
Horrific events such as those which took place in Sydney a year ago, and those seen in Canadian parliament a few months before it, make it easy to lose (at least a little) faith in humanity.
They make it is easy to generalize.
It becomes easy to blame and to point the finger.
It becomes easy to hate.
Yet as easy as it is to become less humane, it is not the reaction I witnessed in the aftermath of the Sydney siege.
I saw Australia come together as a people, no longer bound by any political, ethnic, or cultural differences.
I saw the brave men and women of Australian law enforcement sail into a storm of bullets attempting to save people they had never met.
I saw people of all religions rally around the hash tag #IllRideWithYou, supporting those beginning to feel ostracized by their faith – which extremists’ constant misrepresentation has sullied with a crimson stain – to continue to freely and without fear commit themselves to their God and their religious beliefs.
I saw candles lit for the safe keeping of those taken hostage, brothers and sisters we knew could be our own.
I saw a country – and a global community – in mourning for a son and daughter taken too soon. We willingly made their families’ pain our own.
I saw, if even for a moment, how beautiful humanity can be at its best.
For at least a day, I saw us no longer blinded by a veil of ignorance. We were – all around the world – simply human.
That universal empathy for the human struggle was alive in all of us. We had no idea of the races, religions, or cultural dispositions of those taken hostage. Yet we feared, hoped, and prayed for them in earnest and with a single voice.
Most importantly, that love exclusive to humans – the one which transcends space and time, life and death – beat louder than ever in how we responded. We were a singular beat in a united human heart.
It is always difficult to look past the hate, to see light in the darkness. Sydney was no different. Why is this so?
Because love isn’t as jarring as a black flag pinned against a shop window, held up by victims terrified for their lives. It isn’t as easy to sensationalize as a man driven by darkness, willing to cause pain and suffering to pursue his own deranged motives. It isn’t as loud as early morning gunshots shattering the innocence of a peaceful nation.
The jarring image that many of us remember. [Source: http://www.bbc.com ]
But isn’t that what makes love such a special thing? It isn’t easy to find. Its rarity is what makes love precious.
We see glimmers of it in the passing smiles of strangers and in the laughter of children before it drifts away on the changing winds of the seasons.
We too often let hatred and prejudice bury love next to our slowly eroding humanity. But we didn’t on that Monday a year ago.
Instead, we came together.
What happened in Sydney was not a demonstration of the deterioration of humanity through hatred and social division.
It depicted a single lost soul who had allowed himself to be corrupted by the evils of fanaticism.
My heart aches for all of those who are mourning the loss of those we lost on this day a year ago. Yet it hurts more to think that the memory of them will be tainted by associations with the evil which manifested itself in the form of a broken man.
Instead let us remember the lessons of love that came from their deaths.
Let us remember the brave men and women who risked their lives trying to save them.
The thousands upon thousands of complete strangers who turned an entire Sydney square into a garden of Eden by filling it with beautiful flowers, paying their respects to people they had never known.
Australia turned a site of horror into a garden of beauty and love. [Source: 702 ABC Sydney: John Donegan ]
The coming together of all races and religions in astounding candlelight vigils full of love and empathy.
The memory of those lost must be remembered for what that event showed us.
It demonstrated how truly powerful love can be when we fight all the prejudices suffocating it. That is how we can honour their memory. That is how we must make sense of such mindless and depraved acts of violence.
When I was growing up, I always took great delight in the autumn season. I’m not sure if it was because my birthday was coming up, hockey season was around the corner, or simply because of the beauty of the Canadian wilderness in fall.
The ordinarily green landscapes would be stroked orange, red, and yellow by the paint brushes of the gods. Fields full of grass became oceans of amber. Bronze sunsets would tint the city gold and set the sky ablaze.
And yet, everything around me was dying.
A Canadian Autumn [Source: canadianmusichalloffame.ca]
It’s curious to think that I don’t know of a single person who has wept for fallen leaves, or wilting flowers, or dying grass. We innately understand this is the way of things. We know that spring will come, and the cycle of life (and death) will renew itself.
Why then, do we fear death? Why do we see our own death as the end of the straight line we’ve travelled since birth? Why is it so uniformly regarded as something negative?
Whether we’re afraid of what comes next, or dying painfully, or just the thought of our lives ending, it’s the ultimate boogeyman in the human experience.
Even the Romans, as battle hardened and fearless as they were, refrained from uttering the word “death.” By doing this, they gave power to the very word.
Death is certainly a part of life, and is certainly inevitable. It comes for us all. Does this give it power over us?
Of course not. We do not fear sunsets and sunrises, we do not fear the passage of time, we do not fear breathing. Yet these things are all inevitable. Inevitability doesn’t give something strength, but fear does.
The fear of death is death’s only weapon against us. Like the monster under our bed, it grows in ferocity and size as long as it remains the great unknown. In tackling the fears that surround death, we free ourselves from its grasp.
The Kiss of Death statue in the Graveyard of Poblenou, Barcelona, Spain. [Source: http://www.kuriositas.com]
Why, exactly, do we fear death?
(1) We fear death because we don’t know when it may come.
We fear the idea of dying young.
I think of Jimi Hendrix, Alexander the Great, Amy Winehouse, Frédéric Chopin, John Keats, Tupac, and Tutankhamun. They all died at extremely young ages. Yet I would be willing to bet they lived lives more rich and full of experience than many of us rotting away in a cubicle.
On the grand scale of time and space, the difference between living 30 years and 80 isn’t even a blip on the map. Whether we die old or young we’re only here for an infinitesimal period of time, a period of time we cannot control.
We only have the power to make those years count.
(2) We fear death because we don’t know what comes next.
If I’m being perfectly honest, I usually have no idea what day of the week it is without ample reminders. Every day is a surprise. I’m at peace with the fact I generally have no idea what’s coming next.
We didn’t know what came next when we escaped the womb and came into this world kicking and screaming. We didn’t know what came next when we shipped off to university.
Sure, there was a little nervous energy, but we were generally excited about that great unknown. It was all new and beautiful.
Life can change in an instant, and that’s exactly what death is – life changing in an instant.
Whether death is the start of a new life or the end of an old cycle, change is never something to be feared.
It is only our concern with what may come in the future, or what happened in the past, that binds us to the wheel of life and death. By remembering that the present moment is the only moment, we free ourselves from that ever spinning wheel.
(3) We fear death might hurt.
I think I can speak for all of us by saying life usually hurts. Breaking bones was a price of playing the sport I loved, for example, and I broke pretty much everything above my waist – twice.
We’re riddled with coughs and colds and aches and pains and pimples and gas. We battle the seasons; we’re freezing in the winters and choking on smog in the summers. The suffering of life is unavoidable.
It seems a bit absurd to worry about the suffering of death, when our suffering is constant and unrelenting in the life we’re living. As far as we know, death is a release from our daily human suffering. Death is the absence of pain.
I’ve seen many people and animals suffer in life – but have never seen one struggle in death.
Nothing can be grievous which occurs but once; is it reasonable to fear for so long a time something which lasts so short a time?” – Michel de Montaigne, How We Weep and Laugh at the Same Thing.
I often wonder if a rose would be as beautiful if it were perpetually in bloom, or if we would cherish the springs if there was no winter. Life isn’t beautiful because it is long, or painless, or safe.
Life is beautiful for the simple fact that we are mortal. Death is what makes life a special gift. Every moment can be our last. For this reason, everything we touch, smell, hear, taste, and see is magical.
Death is our constant reminder to appreciate this life that we’ve been given.
Appreciate the people around us, the things that we have, and the healthy bodies we’ve been given.
I didn’t plan on writing about the horror that struck Beirut and Paris, just a day apart, over a week ago. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure why.
I guess a part of me didn’t think it was a time for heavy-handed words. Humanity was once again bleeding from wounds caused by senseless violence against itself. Infected and swollen from thousands of years of agitation, we had once again ripped off the scab.
I wanted to people sit in that wound. I wanted us to feel the pain and the sadness that my brothers and sisters across the world were drowning in.
A part of me wanted a moment to breathe. We humans, when overwhelmed with powerful emotions, are vulnerable to overreacting. I didn’t want to be swept away by the tsunami of aggression, hatred, bigotry, Islamophobia, and calls for vengeance that flooded my news-feed.
Another part of me felt a bit hypocritical writing about Beirut and France while I, like most of us, had largely ignored the other 287 terrorist attacks that have taken place thus far in 2015.
Even the tragedy in Beirut was barely whispered about, until the Lebanese community finally came together and made themselves heard.
Female relatives of Samer Huhu, who was killed in the Islamic State twin bombing attack, mourn during his funeral in a southern suburb of Beirut on November 13, 2015. [Photo Credit: Getty Images]
There was also the part of me who witnessed so many of you fighting the good fight; rational minds not being overwhelmed by fear; pure hearts preaching love instead of hate; devote warriors of peace refusing to be goaded into a trap and ambushed by the desperate plotting of Ares.
In short, I felt that you didn’t need my words to echo your own, and I still don’t believe you do.
But I recently come across a story that Livy included in his “History of Rome” that really struck home with me. Although it seemingly has nothing to do with Beirut and Paris, I think under the surface the two events are directly related.
Gaius Mucius Scaevola was a Roman warrior who was captured during a war with the Etruscans. Mucius was brought before the Etruscan king who showed him a raging fire. Mucius was told that unless he betrayed his fellow Romans, he would be thrown into the flames.
The king was using the heat of the fire to strike fear into Mucius, and attempting to use that fear to break him.
Mucius announced that he was a citizen of Rome, and that he would rather die than be a slave to fear. Livy explains that after his declaration, Mucius
thrust his hand into the fire that was kindled for the sacrifice. When he allowed his hand to burn as if his spirit were unconscious of sensation, the king was almost beside himself with wonder.” – Livy, History of Rome.
Staring into the eyes of the king, Mucius demonstrated that he would always have the power of choice. Outnumbered and helpless, he choose to put his own flesh to the flame rather give into the fear the king was trying to use to control him.
He did not scream. He did not flinch. The pain was welcomed. It was a demonstration that Mucius, though in a dire situation, never gave away his personal power and freedom.
The king feared Mucius’ bravery might be a representation of the Roman people as a whole. He released the man and immediately sought a peace with Rome.
He knew that if the spirit of a people cannot be broken, then the people themselves cannot be broken.
Mucius Scaevola (c.1680-4) by Sebastiano Ricci; Although in this rendition the artist’s flames are not quite big enough to be “flung into” – the fate Livy suggests was awaiting Mucius – the act of defiance is equally as powerful.
We, as a collective people, are in the same situation that Gaius Mucius Scaevola found himself in.
Paris and Beirut were our captures. ISIS, sensationalized media, and governments with very specific agendas play the role of the Etruscan king. Muslims and refugees are our fellow Romans; our brothers and our sisters.
Here we stand in front of the king’s black flames of hatred of ignorance. Forces of evil watch eagerly to see if the heat of those dark embers will scare us. They watch to see if their tactics of fear will make us turn our backs on our family in the middle east. They need, and want, us to betray our fellow humans.
For their power comes only from our weakness; they cannot break us from the outside, so they pray that we will cave in.
The power of choice is ours. I look around me and I see the strength in all of you.
Stand before that fire of darkness. Look defiantly into the eyes of the love’s enemies and keep your steady hand in the flames of their hatred.
Choose to be a champion of love and acceptance, rather than a slave to hatred and fear.
If one man changed the mind of a king and altered the history of Rome, imagine what humanity can do if we stand together, as one, against prejudice, fear, and hatred.
Every year during this month, on the eleventh day, at the eleventh hour, we remember.
But what, exactly, are we remembering?
Not one veteran of the first world war is still living. Of the over sixty-five million central and allied soldiers who fired a shot in that war, there is not one of them who still draws breath. Think about that.
There is not a single person alive who experienced the horror of the battlefield first hand. Of the hundreds of millions of bullets and shells exchanged in the first world war, there is no longer anyone who actually remembers pulling a trigger.
Two Canadian Soldiers Share Cigarettes on the Battlefield. [Image Source: stcatharinesstandard.ca]For our part, we remember statistics, dates, key players, and usually a story or two regarding a distant relative who fought in the war.
Our countries remember glorious victories and heroic deeds. We remember who “won” and “lost”. We remember the names of leaders and generals who led the troops. We remember the rhetoric about our freedom. Men gave up their lives so that we could live free ones.
But are we missing something? Is there something else we should remember?
Too often do we forget it was not statistics fighting the war. It was not the generals and leaders who were up to their stomach in mud, blood and human waste.These were fellow humans, living through terrifying nightmares that our lives of comfort cannot allow us to comprehend.
Historian Dan Carlin refers to it as the “human element” in his fantastic Blueprint for Armageddon series.
These were people like you and I, thrown into the 20th century version of a meat grinder. This was the future generation of an entire world being gambled like poker chips.
In forcing ourselves to face the human element of war, we force ourselves to remember what we have.
Children forced to evacuate their home country of Montenegro as a result of Austrian occupation. [Source: U.S. Army Signal Corps No. 153238.]Roughly 18 million people died in the first world war alone. To put that into perspective, take the two biggest cities in North America (Mexico City and New York) and then imagine every single person in both cities being wiped off of the face of the earth. Our minds simply cannot conceive how much life was lost during those four years.
Entire neighbourhoods of men signed up together, and were slaughtered together. Think of a group of your closest friends, people you grew up with and love like family. Brothers from another mother; sisters from another mister. You may think of team-mates, neighbourhood besties, dance-mates, the list goes on. I think of a group of brothers I grew up with in the cold rinks of Canada.
Now picture the group of you, walking miles in a wasteland. Think Mordor, the aftermath of Hiroshima and Dresden, or the Moon. You shiver as the cold spring rain beats down on your group. Bullets whiz past your heads, and shells are exploding all around you.
On the first day, half of your group is killed by a single shell. Their body parts litter your trench but you’re uncertain what leg belongs with what torso, so you don’t bother with the pieces of them.
Your closest friend of the group goes insane within days of your arrival because of the constant pounding of artillery and screaming of machine gun fire. That friend is accused of cowardice by your superiors for his refusal to control himself, and is executed for it. You know he wasn’t a coward, his mind had just been incapable of accepting the horrors all around him.
The rest of you are sent over the top of the trench which, like the last fourteen attempts, ends in complete failure. You fall into a hole carved into the earth by an explosion and hide there, hoping the enemy doesn’t jump into the cavity and gut you with his shiny new Nahkampfmesser made of the finest German steel.
At dusk, you hear one of your last remaining friends screaming in pain and crying for help. He’s bleeding out in no-man’s land. Just as you build up the courage to try to save him, you see another friend you had no idea was still alive dart across the barren waste in your injured friend’s direction. He is immediately cut to pieces from machine gun fire. You lose your nerve.
Meet a few of the members of the 1st Newfoundland Regiment; of the 801 who arrived at Beaumont-Hamel on July 1, 1916, only 68 were able to fight the next day. Among the dead, 14 sets of brothers died together in a single day. Stories like this are more common than we appreciate. [Photo Source: Wikipedia]Darkness falls. You rush out into the field while the artillery fireworks light up the night sky. You find the friend who had been crying. He’s dead. His own fist is shoved down his throat. You realise that he had seen one friend die because of his screams, and didn’t want to see another, so he gagged himself with his own hand. You remove the letter he wrote to his fiancée back home, who is pregnant with a baby girl, and you run back to the trenches.
Everyone you arrived with is now dead. It hasn’t been a week.
By the end of the war, this will happen to thousands of people. Some will witness people grasping at their throats, eyes bulging, as they fight for the air that chlorine gas is suffocating out of them.
Some will look into the tear filled eyes of barely eighteen year old boys gasping their final breaths. Some will see men wrapped up in barbed wire and covered in bullet holes. Most will smell the stench of millions of rotting corpses. Many will starve or freeze to death. This is the human element.
Early gas masks were terrifying, but not as terrifying as everyday life for soldiers on the front. [Source: historyonthenet.com]And yet, for the most part, these people dug in their heels and kept fighting. The romance of war had long been shattered by the horrific scenes they were forced to endure, and yet these men trudged on. They weren’t stupid, but they felt they had no choice. They were terrified. They believed they would die.
And yet they showed a resilience that is the truest testament to the strength of the human spirit. Let us remember that these were the people that, after witnessing humanity completely shatter itself, had to pull up their boots after the fighting was done and put the pieces of civilisation back together again.
But I can’t help but ask, how would we have handled it? We in the west have lived in relative peace for a long time. We have no great war to fight, no existential threat to truly fear.
In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons.”Herodotus, The Histories.
We think poor WiFi signal is a problem, or that it’s preposterous when we don’t get a strong cell phone signal in our apartment. We think the weekly grind is a struggle, and our weekend spin class is torture. We think we’re hungry when it’s 6 pm and we haven’t yet had our third meal. Many of us can hardly handle the loss of a dog or a cat, how would we react to witnessing millions of humans being slaughtered in front of us?
So what, exactly, are we supposed to remember?
We remember all that they lost – in the most tragic and sickening of ways – so that we may appreciate all that we have. We remember the darkness they were forced to endure, so that we may embrace the light. We remember the senseless hatred and violence so that we may promote love and laughter.
Let us remember the horror our fellow humans endured, so that we may never again do it to each other.
In putting ourselves, as best as we can, into the shoes of those who walked in the trenches, we’ll realise that we actually have a lot to be thankful for.
And to the soldiers who walked through hell, we thank you and we remember.
I had finally arrived home, just ahead of the sunset. Exhausted, I dropped onto the couch with a sigh.
The rain sputtering on the window reminded me that I was sitting in wet clothes, but I was too tired to care.
Looking around the room, a book on a nearby shelf that was collecting dust caught my eye. I had bought it some time ago, on a whim of no real design, and it had sat there neglected ever since.
As we sometimes do, I flicked absent-mindedly through its pages; I landed on book number two. A certain paragraph seemed to stick out off of the page, a little further than the others.
I ran my fingers along the black lettering. It seemed to be bulging from the paper as though it was braille. I can still remember my eyes actually growing wider with a desperate gluttony as I began to hungrily devour the words presented before me:
Remember how long you have been putting this off, how many times you have been given a period of grace by the Gods and not used it. It is high time now for you to understand the universe of which you are a part, and the governor of that universe of whom you constitute an emanation: and that there is a limited circumscribed to your time – if you do not use it to clear away your clouds, it will be gone, and you will be gone, and the opportunity will not return.” Marcus Aurelius, Meditations.
I had always heard of people having a moment of clarity, which also happens to be my favourite Jay-Z song of all time, but I had never experienced one myself.
You always hear people say that when you’re truly in love, you’ll just “know” it. The same people say if you’re unsure if you’ve ever been in love, then you haven’t.
I believe the same distinguishing factors apply for a moment of clarity. Simple words, usually so easily manipulated in order to shape an idea in your head, suddenly fall short. Clarity is a poetry that is not written or spoken. It is felt with every fibre of your being.
The Black Album by Jay-Z – which features “A Moment of Clarity”
I put down the book in complete disbelief after reading that simple paragraph. I was wordless and shapeless. That simple passage had an unbelievably powerful effect.
This is the point in the story when it ceases to resemble any sort of cliché Hollywood script.
As the protagonist, I didn’t go out that day and achieve greatness. I didn’t compose a masterpiece, save a drowning puppy, or help to end the suffering of one of the millions of children in need. I didn’t change the world, and I certainly wasn’t saving it. Put me in a spandex suit and I still wasn’t Superman.
This was not me.
I did, however, experience a moment of clarity that I will carry with me for the rest of my life; I saw things clearly and simply. Three things had suddenly become abundantly clear to me:
The first was that the universe is a system of infinitely complex and interrelated pieces. A clock with trillions of perfectly operating cogs and dials. As children of this universe, we are pieces of this puzzle. We are cogs and wheels in the clock of time and space. Each and every single one of us has a purpose. You and I have true meaning. We are each of us important.
The second was that our notion of time is an illusion. An illusion we’ve created. We’ve fabricated the idea of time as a quantity so we can count it and spend it and sell it and trade it the same way we do money and raw materials. Life is a single, uninterrupted and endless opportunity that we’ve for some reason separated into years, days, hours, minutes and seconds. When it comes to your true purpose, there is no fixed timeline or Monday deadline. It is never too late to pursue it. If we’ve wasted moments or decades, it does not change the opportunity that is our life. You can’t waste what doesn’t exist. Time doesn’t exist, but opportunity does as long as you draw breath.
The third, and most important, realization was that the universe had always been speaking to me, I just hadn’t been listening. It speaks to all of us.
The sun came up the morning you were born, and sunk that same evening. It’s done this every day of your life since.
Each sunrise does not represent the start of another day, a fragment of time the universe has no concept of. Each sunset does not represent another collection of wasted chances. The rising and setting sun is the universe’s constant reminder that nothing has changed while you slept. You fell asleep in a life of opportunity and you’ve woken up in its midst.
We need to stop thinking about the days that have passed. We need to stop thinking about the days that may or may not exist in our future. Think instead about how today, in this very moment, you can pursue your true calling. Today you can make a change, or make a difference. Today you can do anything.
Hubble’s High-Definition Panoramic View of the Andromeda Galaxy: You are a tiny cog in this magnificently crafted clock. [Source: Nasa.gov]
I didn’t receive divine knowledge telling me my life’s purpose or how to pursue it that day. I was simply reminded of something I already knew. Something that, deep down, we all really know.
As miniature pieces of this wonderfully chaotic and perfect universe, we are perfectly designed for something. Every single one of us has a purpose.
We’re not too late or incapable. Those thoughts are just grey clouds in our sky as we’re chasing the sun – grey clouds that we’ve created.
So look up at the sun today. Close your eyes and let it warm your face. Let it remind you that you are basking in a perpetual moment of opportunity.
Think of the thing you’ve always wanted to do. Think of whatever it is that has always called to your soul. Then open your eyes and take that next step, big or small, in pursuing that purpose you were put on this earth for, whatever you feel it may be. You are strong enough. You are capable enough.
I’m not talking about the superficial sincerity you try to muster into your facial expression when you tell your friend their dodgy haircut looks great. It’s not in the tone you try to force into your voice when you tell your significant other they didn’t burn the (completely black) steak and that it tastes fine.
Growing up, we all picked our sides; cowboys or indians; ninjas or samurai; the (very talented) blue players or the (slower, less skillful) red players on a foosball table.
As much as I loved those genetically mutated turtles who ate pizza and ran rampant in the sewers, I was never really a ninja kid. Personally, there was something about the samurai class that I was always drawn toward. This affinity for the samurai travelled with me well into adulthood. There was a certain romanticism about them. They were, to me, the very definition of warrior poets.
I studied Bushido (the way of the warrior) which inevitably led me to stumble upon Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s work, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai. I found that the more I read, the more disappointed I became. The teachings were often elitist, sexist, selfish, ruthless, and sometimes extremely barbaric.
A player from team blue with the foosball, presumably about to score due to poor red defending.
I found myself able to forgive these massive flaws, however, when I put everything into the proper perspective. These men were not by nature the skilled killers they had become famous for. They were born the same as you and I.
These men could be our fathers, our brothers, our husbands, or our boyfriends. These men were capable of love, compassion, mercy, and generosity. I found it fascinating that they were able to completely transcend their humanity in becoming samurai. I felt myself drawn to the teachings that helped these men – who were people just like you and I – rise above the human restrictions they were born with.
Most of us have no desire to transform ourselves into heartless marauding mercenaries, myself included. That doesn’t mean there are no important lessons to take from Hagakure and the legendary code of the Samurai.
I think we’re all looking for a higher version of ourselves. We all have a deep seated desire to become someone that reaches beyond the limitations we’ve all convinced ourselves we have. Yamamoto’s teachings emphasised a single word that, until that point in my life, I had never placed much importance on.
There will be many giants for us to face in this life; we must face them like samurai; we must face them with sincerity.
In the Hagakure, the importance of sincerity is constantly stressed. It emphasises the absolute necessity of sincerity in not only self improvement but in all aspects of our lives.
I’m not talking about the superficial sincerity you try to muster into your facial expression when you tell your friend their dodgy haircut looks great. It’s not in the tone you try to force into your voice when you tell your significant other they didn’t burn the (completely black) steak and that it tastes fine.
I’m talking about true sincerity, the kind that can only flourish inside of you. You can put on a Leonardo DiCaprio-esque performance to the rest of the world, but you can’t fake true sincerity to yourself. There is no such thing as almost sincere, or partially sincere. Whether it’s an action you’re taking, a plan you’re making, or words you’re speaking, you either absolutely mean it with every last fibre of your being, or you don’t.
Sincerity does not only complete the self; it is the means by which all things are completed. As the self is completed, there is human-heartedness; as things are completed, there is wisdom. This is the virtue of one’s character, and the Way of joining the internal and external. Thus, when we use this, everything is correct.” – Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai.
It is an extremely simple and logical concept. Sincerity is the distinguishing factor between those who actually want something and those who only claim that they do. Many people wish to lose weight; those who take it upon themselves to research proper nutrition and exercise before implementing what they’ve learned into their everyday life exemplify sincerity. Those who take the option of a gluten free bun for their burger, before adding a large fry and a coke, are those who are demonstrating insincerity. Sincerity will quickly show you results and insincerity will leave you wondering why you’re not achieving your goals.
The samurai, for example, were so sincere about living an honourable life that they would actually disembowel themselves – a practice known as seppuku – rather than shame themselves in battle or die a dishonourable death. This practice is actually one of the things I found barbaric about the samurai, but there is certainly no denying the absolute sincerity by which they lived their lives and by which they honoured their code.
They were willing to sacrifice (literally) everything to obtain and maintain something as intangible and obscure as honour in their lives, while most of us couldn’t even give up chocolate for lent. Through sincerity they were able to completely transform their human selves into automatons of destruction. Sincerity was the power behind their ability to become the fearless, emotionless, masters of death that they were.
Suicide by River – Kabuki (1856) by Utagawa Kunisada
Sincerity is present in every aspect of life. In sports, sincerity lives in the child who gets excited for practice, who studies the game. Insincerity lives in the child who’s playing because his parents want it for him, or because it could translate into millions of dollars. Insincerity exemplifies itself in the workplace, in those who switch onto autopilot for forty-plus hours a week in a job they chose because there was a market demand or because it sounded prestigious. Sincerity emits from the ones who jump out of bed in the morning because they’ve chosen to do something they love, regardless of the money they make or the status it brings them.
The more we look for sincerity, the more apparent it becomes. The more we act with sincerity, the more we’ll develop a reciprocal relationship with it. When we act out of sincerity, sincerity acts back. It acts back in the form of noticeable improvements, lessons learned, successes, and (most importantly) failures. These failures tell us we’re on the right path, they tell us we’re going in a sincere direction.
When we speak with sincerity, sincerity responds. It responds in the form of advice from others, grapevine opportunities, offers of help, and real talks with those around us. When we love others with sincerity, with all of our soul, our lives become full of love that is – in turn – sincere.
Life becomes simple when you live it with sincerity. Be sincere with every one of your actions and words. Be sincere with those around you. Most importantly, be sincere with yourself.
And you’ll find the life you attract is sincere to you.
What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other — that whoever wanted to learn to “jubilate up to the heavens” would also have to be prepared for “depression unto death”?” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.
The buzzing of the planet is a daily reminder of our mind-bending advances in technology. Our satellites glimmer amongst the stars in the evening sky, a sky that plays host to thousands of soaring planes during the daylight hours. Our technological prowess has vastly increased the comfort of our daily lives. Like most things, however, our technology comes with a cost. Everything from iPhones to automobiles cost us money, which puts a price tag on the comfort and convenience they provide us. Comfort has thus become a thing of value. It has become important to us.
The importance placed on comfort by our society has inspired in us a ruthless seeking of it. We centre our lives around obtaining things that will aid us in avoiding discomfort, pain, and suffering. Yet I’m beginning to wonder if this spread of a certain Epicureanism throughout the western world has actually bettered our lives, or if it’s part of the reason we live such unfulfilled and relatively unhappy lives.
Flashback nearly two years ago, to my life of comfort. I was the Dionysus of an eastern Toronto suburb and my basement apartment man-cave served as my Olympus. I lived at home rent free, had no university debt, and was earning a full-time wage I could have saved to buy a house and a car with. I had nearly a dozen close friends close by, whom I had grown up with on the ice rinks and considered them more like brothers than friends. I had the best all-you-can-eat sushi joint just around the corner from my house. I had a gym buddy who wasactually a ninja. I possessed the disposable income to do and purchase essentially whatever I pleased. I was a tree of comfort, and my roots were strong and deep. Life was painfully easy.
But I was unhappy. I was stagnant. I was unfulfilled.
An artist’s rendition of my gym buddy. [Source: Hokusai Manga (1817) by Hokusai.]Fast-forward to the present. I have long since left my job, friends, and family. I have vacated my Mount Olympus throne to travel across the Pacific ocean. I traded a life of comfort for the pursuance of something more. As of now, I’m uncomfortable, but I’m happy and feeling more fulfilled every day. I wouldn’t disillusion anyone and say anything about this has been easy, comfortable, or painless. Law school is a grind. Money is tight. I’m homesick. I miss my sisters, my mom and dad, my band of brothers/thieves/merry men. And I haven’t seen a single ninja since I landed here.
Yet is that pain and suffering not the price we pay for fulfilment, for happiness? Isn’t that our inherent agreement with the universe we are a part of? I look around myself and see that we naturally understand this contract.
I’ve seen “No Pain, No Gain” on gym singlets and “Pain is Temporary, Glory lasts Forever.” splattered on dressing room walls. I see all of us – the warriors of love – seeking out a significant other regardless of the pain relationships have caused us in the past, or the heartbreak we could be forced to endure in the future. We take the tests regardless of the chance of failure, or the immense effort required to study and learn. We play our various sports, knowing we’ll be bumped, bruised, and judged. We train our bodies to be strong through toil, trouble, and tears, even though they will eventually wither under the taxes of time. We paint, write, and dance, undeterred by the visions of the starving artist. We love our families and friends to the fullest, knowing the pain we’ll feel when they are inevitably taken from us. We do these things because we innately understand the nature of fulfilment.
What if pleasure and displeasure were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much as possible of the other — that whoever wanted to learn to “jubilate up to the heavens” would also have to be prepared for “depression unto death”?” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science.
We know that the treasure of fulfilment is closely guarded by pain, suffering, and discomfort; the three heads of a hellhound protecting the gateway to happiness. We know that the most uncomfortable places are the classrooms where we learn and grow the most. We know that catching that perfect wave is worth the endless paddling, the hours of waiting, and the salt we get in our hair. We understand that the discomfort of rising in the early morning is the price of watching a stunning saffron sunrise. We know that trading the uninspiring view from base camp for the breathtaking scenery of the summit requires hours of treacherous hiking up the side of the mountain.
I think it’s entirely possible to live your whole life in comfort, confronted by minimal pain and suffering. I think this very moment there are many people who are dying in their retirement home beds who managed to accomplish this. I also believe that those same people would be willing to trade all of the days they lived in comfort for one chance to go back to their youth. They would go back and put themselves directly in the path of that same pain, suffering, and discomfort they have avoided all these years. For in doing so, they would also risk a life of happiness and fulfilment.
Don’t settle for comfort. Take the risk. Catch that perfect wave. Watch the sunrise. Fall in love. Climb that mountain.
It is in these darkest of moments that we, as humans, possess the inner strength to find a way. We pick up an oar and we paddle. We crawl across the blackness centimetre by centimetre, with every stroke bringing us deeper into that haunting abyss. Surrounded by fear, with no light to guide us, we find the flicker of a flame within ourselves.
As a little boy I was afraid of the dark. I’m not even sure what it was about the dark that terrified me as much as it did. Finding myself in darkness, a wave of dread would wash over me. I drowned in that great unknown which floods any heart engulfed by its greatest fear. Paddling furiously, with nothing but dread and panic to swim toward, I would try desperately not to choke on the violent waves of darkness crashing against me.
I often found myself envying those friends of mine that seemed unaffected by darkness. Some of them were even bold enough to sleep in their dark rooms without a night light. Those boys were legends. I thought I was a coward and they were the bravest souls I had ever met, because I confused their lack of fear with bravery. Life, however, has funny ways of teaching us lessons about what it means to be brave.
Clearly one of the children who were not afraid of the dark.
Those of us who were lucky enough to survive the voyage through the arduous seas of adolescence, too often found ourselves in dark and stormy waters that shook our soulful ships down to their very core. Yet no matter how violent the gale, we sailed on with our tattered banners until they were glowing in the light of the dawn and the storm had finally passed. We came to realize we are so much more than masts of bone and sails of skin. We are durable. We are bendy. We possess a power somewhere deep in our hulls that cannot be measured by stress tests or feats of strength.
I believe it is the greatest storms which teach us the most important lessons. The greatest struggles sire the smoothest sailors. It will be such a storm which will teach us the true meaning of bravery. Life has its ways of forcing us to face our deepest fears. It has its way of sitting us in that dark room.
Though I recall my great storm well, I do not remember exactly when my ship changed its course. I do not remember the sun dipping beyond the horizon. I can only remember the darkness of the night. Life had put me on a ship that was empty with no wind in its sails. My breath would have been visible in the icy night sky, had there been enough light to see it. I was stranded in the deepest darkest waters of the mind and, like those heroic friends from childhood, had no light in the night to guide me.
I think, in some form or another, we all experience this moment in our lives. A desperate moment in time, void of hope and happiness, that threatens to completely shatter our resolve. We find ourselves lost and afraid to move. With our ship sinking, we feel it is our duty to go down with it. It could be something as little as cramming the night before an exam, or as monumental as hearing the cancer has returned. Regardless of the depth of the dark waters we’re thrown into, staying the course – whatever that may be – becomes the portrait of insanity and we begin to paint the thought of surrender with the most beautiful and exotic of oils. Nothing seems as simple as lying on the deck and closing our eyes, waiting to welcome the black waves as they devour captain and craft.
It is in these darkest of moments that we, as humans, possess the inner strength to find a way. We pick up an oar and we paddle. We crawl across the blackness centimetre by centimetre, with every stroke bringing us deeper into that haunting abyss. Surrounded by fear, with no light to guide us, we find the flicker of a flame within ourselves. We trust in that feeble fire because it comes from a place that no darkness can breach. It comes from a place we don’t understand, but that we have an unwavering faith in.
If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened.” General George S. Patton, Drive to Victory – General Patton’s Third United States Army.
Those who walk into darkness without a fear of the dark are fighting a battle they have already won. They may be bold and courageous, but they are not brave. The brave are not without fear. On the contrary, it is only when we are overwhelmed with fear that it is possible to truly demonstrate bravery.
The brave, when sinking into the terror of the deep, find a way to paddle through. The brave, when consumed and surrounded by darkness, find a light within themselves. It is those who trudge undeterred through the darkest parts of themselves that are the true champions of bravery.
The fact that you’re reading this is enough to tell me you’ve made it through your share of storms. Maybe you’ve even survived your great hurricane, your grand and defining moment. Our life, however, is a single voyage comprised of many storms and there will always be another on the horizon. It’s part of being human. Before you die, you will face many more storms in all aspects of your life. Some of them will terrify you. Always remember that fear doesn’t define you; we cannot choose the things which strike terror into our hearts.
But we can choose to paddle on. We can choose to be brave, because bravery is within each and every single one of us. You just have to know it’s inside of you. I promise you that it is. You are not a coward. You are unwavering and unbreakable. You are strong. You are brave.
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MICHAEL GIORGI 