Honey, You Shrunk the TV

My factchecker, Dorothy, caught the error. In an email last week, I gave the size of the TV at the church as 17 inches. That was a mistake. Our congregation is small but not Lilliputian. The TV is actually 70 inches. No harm done. Easily fixed with another email. Mistakes are normal. Knowing when you are wrong is another matter.

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At the mall last Wednesday, we visited Staples for ballpoint pens. When we got to the checkout, we were held up by a loud disagreement between an elderly lady and the cashier. She was insisting that she should get change back from her twenty dollar bill which she had offered as payment for an ink cartridge. The cashier, a young man, was patiently explaining that the price was over $90, so she hadn't given him enough. She was sure she was right, so she turned to me and asked my help to sort it out. 

When I understood what was going on, I explained to her that it wasn't $19 she owed. It was over $90. She didn't get it. Maybe deaf. So I repeated my explanation louder. She still didn't get it. What she wanted was somebody to explain to the cashier how he was wrong, not to explain to her how she was wrong. 

That argument was going nowhere. Another cashier waved us over to another till and rang us through. While I paid, I recall muttering, "God save us from getting old." 

I know. It's too late for that. 

Mistakes are normal, and it's not just old folks. Great minds and lesser ones are fallible at every moment from cradle to grave: the newborn with a growing brain, the child trusting what it's told by parents and teachers, the adolescent learning from mistakes, the adult doing 'research' on social media, the elderly who had it figured out before the world moved on. 

We do our best, but reality in all its complexity will not submit to exact representation in words and analogies based on fuzzy memories of sketchy sensations tagged with fractious emotions, all of it mapped in a wet mess of neurons and synapses. Getting it absolutely right is unlikely. 

However, approximations are useful if we don't take them too seriously. They hint at probabilities and give us an edge. I'll take an edge over pure chance and reluctantly exchange that edge for a better one if you set me straight before I get stuck in my version of wrong. 

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Anyway thankyou, Dorothy.
The TV is 70 inches, not 17.

That Too Is Evolution

Did you watch the Flames and Golden Knights break their tie yesterday? Not me. I don't do hockey. We went to a game back when. Some guy lost an ear. I don't remember who played or which team won. I remember the ear.

We once had a guest from the mid-west here for lunch. He didn't know me very well, so the conversation came around to hockey, in particular, the under-representation of coloured players in the NHL. I can listen to people talk hockey for hours. Just wake me up when they're done. I can also fast-forward through the sports news quicker than Gretzky on ice. Therefore I had no idea that racism in hockey was a thing. I just assumed that we Canadians were the good guys, socially responsible, politically correct; so our national sport must be good clean fun for kids learning teamwork. 

Yes, but what would you expect from kids engaged in a meaningful activity like slapping a rubber disk into a net while the other team tries to stop it, with the prospect that someday the best of the best might be earning seven figures? They aren't learning respect, restraint and reciprocity. It's aggression, intimidation and smack-talk, because that's what the fans will pay to see: raw entertainment for folks who are tired of being nice and want a fight without getting hurt or going to jail. It's standard human behaviour because we are winners descended from winners. The losers are extinct. 

That's evolution.

Yes, but we can't win alone. We need teammates who can skate and stickhandle and bodycheck and pass and score and throw a punch. Because we need each other to win, we have discovered ways of coexisting without murdering our mates. 

That's evolution.

Yes, but without losers there is no game, which means sometimes we take a turn as losers. We squabble a bit until it's over, and then, win or lose, shake hands. That we survive is proof that the ancestors learned how to lose and win gracefully so they might play another day.

That's evolution.

Yes, but did you ever wonder about nations at war bombing cities flat? They need hockey: skates and pucks in place of tanks and missiles. We do hockey (some of us) because it blunts our aggression so we can win and lose and survive with or without ears attached while the arena remains standing. The next day, we go to work, and get the job done together, and fill the coffee breaks with hockey talk. Until the next game.

That's evolution.

Yes, there's always another game
when the gloves come off
and the crowd goes wild.
But behind the primal make-believe,
if we so choose,
we winners and losers of every colour
may sweat out our ambition
immersed in the joy of practiced performance,

the contest transcended by friends in the zone
playing together.

Yes, I hear you:
we're not quite there.
But we have a choice.

That too is evolution.

Look Well to This Day

The new year every year has us remembering and thinking ahead. Wedged between what was and what may be, we experience this brief moment called reality. 

I recall a plaque Mum had on the wall seventy years ago displaying a poem translated from Sanskrit:

Look to this day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course
Lie all the verities and realities
of your existence:
The bliss of growth
The glory of action
The splendour of beauty,
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow only a vision,
But today well lived
makes every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day!
Such is the salutation of the dawn.