I bought a new pair of shoes a couple weeks ago. They’ve been a tremendous help to my sanity. They’re just a pair of plain Converse sneakers to most people, but to me and a few of you, there is a special significance to this brand of shoes. Because Converse sneakers, like a bow tie, or even a fez, are cool. I’m referring of course to Doctor Who. It is one of the few television shows to which I’ll admit I’m a fan. Because, like a few great works of drama, it is entertaining (funny at times, scary at others, and often simultaneously) and is a constant reminder of what is important. The most important things, I’ve often said, are also the things we tend to forget the most easily.

So for my friends in the U.K. and Canada where the show is easily available, here are ten reminders of important life lessons from Doctor Who:

1. Curiosity counts. I was recently asked what is the most important quality in life and, to my surprise, the word that came out of my mouth was “curiosity.” Helen Keller once said “Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” If this is true – and I suspect it is – fostering a deep commitment towards curiosity is the distinction between these choices. I don’t think you could survive a lifespan over 900 years without it. Even while being faced with genuine danger, The Doctor is always the embodiment of curiosity. More often than not, it is his curiosity that helps him solve the mystery behind the danger.

“There’s something out of place – let’s go and poke it with a stick.” – The Doctor (Amy’s Choice episode)

2. Being weird is cool. Running shoes and a suit, bow ties, or even a fez – none of these things in themselves cool. But being yourself, in all your quirkiness, is. Human societies are good at teaching individuals to mind their place, to keep in line and to conform. We teach our children too often to fit in with society’s expectations. Yet I cannot think of a single person who I admire, or who has accomplished anything extraordinary, who was not weird in some major way.

CRAIG: Has anyone ever told you that you’re a bit weird?
DOCTOR: They never really stop. (The Lodger episode)

3. Life is complicated. Have you ever noticed how quickly most people “understand” something without really understanding it? Whether its your feelings about something, or quantum physics, most humans will listen to only a sentence or two before they begin nodding their heads like they get the whole picture when they have only

RORY: How we can we be outside the universe? The universe is everything.
DOCTOR: Imagine a great big soap bubble with one of those tiny little bubbles on the outside… Well, it’s nothing like that… Yeah. No. But if it helps, yes. (The Doctor’s Wife episode)

4. People are scary. I don’t know about you, but people scare me. That is plural, as in groups of people. I can relate to anyone one on one, but en masse… that’s when things get scary. In Doctor Who, on one side you have masses of aliens, like the Daleks or Cybermen, trying to change the universe as they have decided it should be. On the other side, you have masses of panicked humans either trampling over each other to get way, looking on with apathy, or just submitting without a struggle.

5. People are amazing. Individually, that is. One at a time. Or in small groups. Really small groups that is. It’s not only the Doctor and the Doctor’s companions who amaze us. Consider Mickey’s transformation from a scared little boy to a man of action, dedication and determination. In fact, any individual the Doctor is able to coax from the crowd usually amazes us.

6. Life is amazing. This goes hand in hand with the curiosity. Miracles surround us if we choose to see them, and the more we try to understand the world around us, the more miraculous it becomes.

Time isn’t a straight line. It’s all… bumpy-wumpy. There’s loads of boring stuff. Like Sundays and Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons. But now and then there are Saturdays. Big temporal tipping points when anything’s impossible. ~ The Doctor (The Impossible Astronaut episode)

Have TARDIS will travel.

7. Home is where your feet are. For someone who is rather a gypsy and does not understand homesickness, this is a reassuring reminder. While Thomas Wolfe maintained “You Can’t Go Home Again,” the Doctor has no home to go back to. And this is mostly okay. We should feel at home wherever we are, I think.

8. Don’t take anything for granted. Stone angel statues that come alive when you close your eyes, an impossible astronaut, walking mannequins… well this list could just go on and on. In Doctor Who it is often the smallest detail that proves to be the most important at the end of an episode. A wink, a whisper, a random comment… again this list cold just go on and on.

9. Embrace new experiences. I made fish sticks and custard for my children a few weeks ago. It was actually pretty good!

Don’t look away. And don’t Blink. ~ The Doctor (this quote being completely out of context, certainly)

10. You can always recreate yourself. I don’t think you need two hearts and a TARDIS to regenerate yourself. With every new experience the human brain rewires itself, creates and uncreates itself on a biological level. This is usually a slow, subtle process, but sometimes, with the snap of one’s fingers, the change can be dramatic and even miraculous. Although in my case,  new teeth would be kind of nice.

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When I was ten years old, I fell into a small windfall of sorts. I had won a contest at school and was about to walk into a long summer with more cash than I ever had in my life. A whopping twenty dollars. Imagine that. I don’t recall what the contest was for, but I remember working very hard, through long hours each day after school, hoping and striving to win it.

My father, being a wise man for his years, understood more about human nature than I had dreamed possible. He didn’t ask what I was going to do with the money – he told me what I was not going to do with it.

“You are not,” he said, “going to spend that all on comic books and candy.”

With that, he took me to the car and announced that it was time I begin to care for my money. He drove me to Lethbridge’s Department Store and led me to a glass case containing watches, cuff links, tie pins, silk handkerchiefs and assorted finery. The  elderly Mr. Lethbridge, smelling of a discreet, fine cologne, stepped behind the counter, wearing a silk tie, gold cuff links and tie pin. He wore new suit, with a silk handkerchief tucked into his breast pocket.

My father pointed to the edge of the case, towards a selection of crisp, gleaning leather.

“My son is here to buy a wallet,” he said.

Mr. Lethbridge began taking wallets from the case, one by one, placing them on the glass before us. I remember clearly how shiny they were, each made of “Genuine Leather,” or calfskin, imported from Italy, from France, or “Made in Canada.” Some had compartments for change with zippers, some had what looked like plastic file folders for carrying pictures, identification and credit cards. None of them had ever been folded. Each felt as stiff as a school textbook in my hands.  For a few moments, I felt empowered. I marveled at the thought of owning my own wallet. I wondered if this would be the first of many trips to this same store, to later buy a watch, or cuff links, or tie pins as an adult, and to become a sort of gentleman myself one day.

The wallet I selected was not the most expensive, but it was not the cheapest either. It had a white piece of cardboard tucked inside where a driver’s license would be. The card had a tab on the top right corner, with the price printed in a bold, but elegant font. I purchased it, refused a bag, and folded my wallet carefully in half before pressing it into my back pocket. I remember well how my father nodded, approvingly.

It was a memorable summer, but no memorable than most. I played with my friends, rode my bike, explored the shore of Lake Erie, got sunburned often, and skinned my knees more than once.  I never ventured into that department store again until I was 13, when I got a job there sweeping the floors, cleaning the toilets, and taking out the garbage after school.

That wallet stayed in my drawer for more than two years, hated throughout the long summer, and then forgotten. The white card with the price tag was still inside. The wallet cost $18 and, with sales tax, it remained empty through that long summer. My twenty dollars was gone.

Money, in a way, is really time – captured and preserved to be used later at our leisure. Yet how often do we spend our time on things we really don’t need, to temporarily feed our egos. Afterwards, our savings are drained, and the memories left behind are shallow, forgettable, unsatisfying.

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Being synchronized has two connotations for me. First is what I imagine most people think of when they talk about being either in sync or out of sync: that is “synchronization.” It is, at least to me, a world of Newtonian clockworks, a vast system of gears, levers and pulleys that keep the world and each of us in working order. It is a world of schedules and meetings, timely phone calls, emails sent and received. It is a world of goals and plans, shared interest and commonality. It is a world I try not to think about too much.

The second connotation is based on Carl Jung’s word, “synchronicity.” This is, to me at least, a world of currents, of water and air, flowing, always moving, with each of us swimming or sailing or flying through the course of our lives, traveling through time and space, crossing paths with others, finding and creating patterns in our journeys, marveling at what coincides. There are goals and plans in such a world, certainly, but it is a different type of commonality behind them. It is free-flowing world, always surprising, and seldom goes according to plan.

Being in sync with the people important to you is a wonderful feeling, but being out of sync should be no less treasured. The silence between notes is a part of the music. The silence between conversations, the process of being away, is a journey that not only adds to the wonder when coming together again, but is a time of richness and discovery in itself.

“Now I knew what it was, and knew even more: that man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given the world its objective existence — without which, unheard, unseen, silently eating, giving birth, dying, heads nodding through hundreds of millions of years, it would have gone on in the profoundest night of non-being down to its unknown end. Human consciousness created objective existence and meaning, and man found his indispensable place in the great process of being.” ~ Carl Jung from Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Kenya and Uganda)

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What are your primary sources of news and information?

I use several. Online, primarily, I use Twitter. I also subscribe by email to the RSS feeds of a handful of online publications. I’ll use Google News to dig into more information if I need it. On weekends, I will read a newspaper or magazine like Maclean’s or The Walrus to learn more about things I wouldn’t have found otherwise. I listen to Radio Canada (French) to learn about stories I wouldn’t have otherwise, and CBC (English) to reinforce my opinion that most news is irrelevant to me. With the exception of The Agenda on TVO, it’s been over a year since I’ve watched the news on television.

On Friday, I woke to the news of the earthquake in Japan. This time, I turned on the television, browsing through 4 different news channels for about fifteen minutes to get a sense of what had happened and what was happening. I heard words like “worst ever”, “devastated”, and “terrible”. But the evidence I was shown was comprised of  cans falling from shelves in a store, and piles of paper falling from desks in an office. I was told 300 people had died. I was shown people eating breakfast in the subway, and pedestrians waiting for the traffic light before crossing the street. After an interview with a woman discussing how difficult it was to find a cab, I finally turned off the television.

Of course what had happened was terrible. One link on the internet proved that much. The problem was that, instead of focusing on the adjectives used by the commentators, I was focusing on the evidence they were providing – which was, 8 hours into the disaster, trivial compared to what was really happening, and compared to what they could have been showing.

At first, it’s tempting to say I should have trusted their adjectives more than I did, trusted their opinion more than the evidence. But if that was true, the reverse would also need to be true. If you trust what television coverages claims is important, like the difficulty in finding a cab during a tsunami, you are also trusting them in what is not important. Thousands of people could be protesting in Wisconsin, and you wouldn’t have a clue. Hundreds of thousands could be butchered in Rwanda, and you would have no idea.

When I talk to people who still rely on television as their primary source of news and entertainment, it often feels like I am talking to someone from a different planet then my own. They are always much better informed about products and celebrities than I am. They also seem to know what is tragic, amazing, or horrific, but seem unable to convey what makes it that way. In their world, the Gulf oil spill was cleaned up long ago; President Obama is left of centre; oil is expensive because of what is going on in Libya and Egypt, Disney is releasing what is supposed to be a great movie, and someone I’ve never heard of is really a great singer and probably deserves my vote.

All of these people I’ve spoken to, also have two things in common.

1. They get instantly bored or angry when asked “why?” or “how do you know this?” In one case, a woman was so angry with me for asking what made Obama a liberal, that she unfriended me from Facebook.

2. The more television someone watches, the more often they need to tell you, “I don’t watch a lot of TV.”

There has been a lot of discussion online again about the differences between digital natives and immigrants (those born before and after digital media). The novelty of this distinction is becoming less and less relevant, in my opinion. The important distinction, and what is quickly becoming a chasm, is something that has little to do with age. It is the difference between users of digital media (like the internet) and those who use analog media (like television), those who seek out information and those who take what is given, when it is given. They are becoming two different cultures. Not just in terms of what they watch, but in how they think, and how they see the world they live in.

Being in my own culture, I’m finding it more and more difficult to relate to the other. What about you?

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I fell in love last week. Her name is Julia. I discovered that she was on a dating website, and I actually considered logging on, creating an account, and paying a few bucks to find her. Yeah, seriously. And I don’t do “the dating thing”. So there I was, weighing my principals against this sudden infatuation, and was less than twenty seconds into the debate when I discovered she had already met some other guy anyway, so there was no point in logging into eHarmony. His name is Adam, and apparently they are very happy. And when she met him the first time, she just went “Boom!”. Or something like that. I wasn’t paying too close attention and have only seen the commercial once. I have a DVR so, aside from eHarmony and Nintendo, I really don’t do “that tv commercial thing”.

This is Julia. Sorry, she's taken.

And that’s when it occurred to me, a minute after the eHarmony commercial and thirty seconds after the Nintendo commercial (if it plays Blu-Ray too, maybe I should get one, y’know?) that I realized that being single really sucks.

Harsh Statistics

Dating websites have made multi-million dollar profits in recent years. More than Hallmark Cards ever made on the internet. More than Godiva Chocolate. And more than 1-800-BUY-HER-SOME-DAMN-ROSES. In fact, according to recent statistics, 4 in 10 divorced couples met on a dating website.

Bold Truth

The bold truth is that the creators of websites like eHarmony, LavaLife, and the others stumbled upon is this: if you can’t get consumers to buy a product, sell them another consumer. And it has been working like gangbusters. People all over are signing up and paying money hand over fist to buy Julias and Adams, Betsys and Fabians, for only twenty, thirty or three hundred bucks a head. Marketing is relatively inexpensive. Demand is always high. Furthermore, there is no inventory cost because the consumers are all doubling as products themselves.

Singlehood Doesn’t Sell

Unfortunately, when it comes to singlehood, there just isn’t anything to sell. A former-celebrity shut-in from New York tried to market singlehood a few years ago, by writing a book about the joys of eating when you want, staying inside when you want, and not having to shower regularly. However sales were weak. Aside from a book, therapy, and divorce specials, there really isn’t a product to sell. (Even vibrator sales are dominated by married women.) None of these products compare to the brilliance of selling consumers to other consumers.

Consumer as Product

With over 307 million people in the United States alone, and those stocks continuing to rise, this seems to be a market that will continue to flourish for quite some time. I don’t know if it is enough to bring the economy back on its feet all by itself, but it is certainly more promising than the Trump Network’s idea to reinvigorate the economy last year by getting everyone to sell vitamins to each other.

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You and I have something in common.

Just by the fact that you are reading this, I know that you and I belong to a select minority of people in the world, estimated now at the beginning of 2011 to be 2 billion strong.  A large number, yes, and nearly a third of the world’s population. What we have in common is that we are connected to the internet.

For me, it would be a serious change. Like many writers, I make my living through the internet, primarily from my own websites and writing articles for other sites. Several of my closest friends are spread across the world, some of whom I have never met face to face, except through internet video. Then there are movies, books, music, articles, games, photos, and all the other ways we use to communicate with each other, streamed directly to our homes at any hour of any day. Even ordering a pizza is done directly online, or – in my case – looking up the number by typing the name into Google. I have several dictionaries, but can’t recall the last time I opened one. Spelling, definitions, synonyms and even finding the etymology of a word is easily too done with a web browser to justify getting up and begin turning pages.

That is just how connected I am. What about you? Have you asked yourself how deeply entwined you are into the web? Have you asked yourself how you would be affected if the internet suddenly came to stop one day?

More important than this is that each time we turn on a phone, open a web browser, or access any internet-enabled device, we are not just accessing information. We subtly changing how humans access and store information. We are changing the way we think, changing the way we feel about things. And, step by step, year by year, we are changing who we are.

Some would argue that this is making us weaker as a species, removing us farther from nature, from the real world, and making us even more dependent on technology, and therefore more vulnerable when that technology breaks down.

I would like to share with you the words of Socrates, ironically transcribed by Plato, on the evils of storing information by writing it down.

“If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls; they will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only its semblance, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much, while for the most part they know nothing, and as men filled, not with wisdom, but with the conceit of wisdom, they will be a burden to their fellows.”

This could be more true today than ever. How we are shaped by technology depends a lot on what we use it for. Do you use the internet to go to the same pages, access the same applications, and talk to the same people every day? Are you using it to keep digging yourself into the same routine, further entrenching yourself in your own opinions? Or do you use this incredible technology to explore new ideas, new places, and to meet new people?

Are you using the web stretch your mind, or are you closing the threads more tightly around it?

A few weeks ago I created a website, Pencils and Crayons, for people to discover new writers and artists. I invite you to take a step beyond what you know today by visiting it. And to help others discover new people, new ideas, by sharing the work of people you believe the world should know more about.

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On November 11th, 1918 at 11:11, a cease fire began in the War to End all Wars. It was not actually the end of the war. It was just a cease fire. The Great War, as it was called for a while, would not officially end until Germans signed Treaty of Versailles, on June 28th, 1919. There, the Germans were forced to pay for the war, as punishment for their evil deeds. This act of revenge would soon send them towards bankruptcy and – with the rest of the world – into the Great Depression.

Within weeks of that treaty, one German named Adolph Hitler and a few of his buddies decided they would take revenge for the humiliation of that Versailles, and began making plans to show the rest of the world just how evil they could really be.

Such are the fruits of revenge.

Much of the conflict beginning in World War I had its roots in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) in which the Germans took revenge on the French, which was a direct result of the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), in which England, Russia, and the German states (before they were a country) took their revenge on the French, after the French humiliated them in the early years of Napoleon’s conquests, which arose from the French Revolution (1789) in which the kings and queens of Europe sought revenge for the  deaths of their cousins Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who had humiliated the people of France during their reign, who had taken their revenge on them…. And so on and so forth.

Do you see the pattern?

I had the privilege many years ago of interviewing a couple veterans of World War I.  What they sacrificed is deeply humbling and astounds me whenever I think about them. But when I hear people, as they often do on November 1tth, talk about the war that killed and wounded so many, and which planted the seeds for the next world war, my stomach turns.

Unlike World War II, in which millions were being brutalized, tortured and murdered by the Nazi’s, there was nothing noble, nothing just, in World War I. It was not a fight for democracy. It was not a fight for freedom.

The death of an archduke was not the cause of the conflict. It was just the excuse. The cause of that war came down to petty national rivalries, the desire for revenge from other wars, and train schedules that meant once troops were sent to defend the borders, there could be no turning back from war.

Certainly the sacrifices Canadians made during World War I helped create an identity for Canada as a country apart from its colonial roots. Certainly the men and women who sacrificed themselves for that war truly thought they were doing the right thing. Certainly we should honour their sacrifices and their memories. But the reasons why they needed to do what they did was neither noble nor glorious. It was, in fact, a crime. Canada could have extracted itself from its colonial identity in other ways than the blood of its people.

So  now that those who fought in the First World War are safely tucked away and laid to rest, perhaps we can stop revering the battles, the suffering and the killing. Perhaps we can stop referring to that war as a good thing in our history. Perhaps we can start thinking about the shame the politicians in 1914 should have felt when they led so many young people to their deaths.

Then perhaps we can start ensuring that another era of madness like the one that  began the War to End all Wars may never happen again.

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Sometimes we approach what appears to be a fork in the path ahead of us, but we are unable to determine what we should do. Perhaps we have not had enough time to consider the options, but need to act quickly. Perhaps we are caught up in something else and the whispers of the Spirit are difficult to hear.

Here is a simple trick that always works, when it is needed as a last resort. I was taught this by a good friend of mine several years ago, and it has never failed.

If all else fails, flip a coin.

Now, don’t let the coin decide your fate, but rather let your reaction to the flip determine your choice. If the coin comes up heads and you are happy with that, or even if you feel neutral about it, go with that choice. Decide and move on to other things.

But if your reaction is not favourable to the result, if you look at the coin and curse, or sigh with disappointment, go with the other direction.

In a blink of an eye, your reaction to the coin toss will reveal what you really feel about a tough decision.

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One of the interesting thing about social media is that after pictures and videos, the most widespread sharing seems to be, not original work, but quotes from other people, usually famous, dead and white.

Now I don’t have an issue with quotations, not by any stretch of the imagination. They are philosophical and literary icons, allowing us to dabble in great concepts without the drudgery of scholarship. They permit the shallow and the inattentive to appear and to feel as if they were intellectuals.

Most importantly, quotations allow mediocre minds to instantly brand themselves. Simply by placing a few well chosen quotations on their blog, or posting them to Twitter or Facebook on a somewhat frequent basis, the quotes become linked in our minds to the person posting them. Noticing that D. quotes Emerson quite a lot, we come to associate D’s name with Emerson’s. It’s the same principal as ringing a bell whenever you feed a half-starved dog, or having bikini-clad models hold bottles of mediocre beer on television.

Eventually, we can’t help but consider that the bell is what creates the dog food, that the beer might really be a lot more fun than we remember, and that the person who knows how to cut and paste with a mouse or keyboard might be a lot more interesting than we gathered from reading words he put together all by himself.

By stringing together a few well-chosen quotes, any personal coach can appear optimistic, any law of attraction expert can appear mentally balanced, and the veteran MLM’er can give himself that desperately needed whiff of success.

For the record, I intend to continue using quotations wherever and whenever possible, inserted randomly into otherwise engaging online conversations on Facebook and Twitter. Because unlike dinner conversations, in bed with a loved one, or whilst riding alone on the bus, inserting a quotation on the internet is one of the few places you can do so without explanation and without looking like a complete dork.

Or, as Mark Twain once said, “Failure is success if we learn from it. Malcolm Forbes.”

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As I’m writing this, I’m thinking of one person in particular who is at a crossroad in her life and has hinted that some advice may be of use to her.  So here it is:

If you want to set out on your own in this world, if you dream of becoming an artist, a writer, or have a goal in mind towards which you want to build your life, you must learn to keep moving towards the essential. You must ignore all the distractions that will inevitably find you.

Your dream must be your only compass, not any path or road you may find. Ignore every path you may find unless it is aligned with your compass. Often – very often – there will be no path, and you must make one for yourself. It is difficult at times and the temptation to walk along paths already made by others is great indeed. The ease of a paved, and tree-lined boulevard is even more tempting.

Your dream must be your first and truest love. Any other loves that come along that would lead you in another direction, along another’s path, must be thought through carefully before a single step is taken. And, as you take each step, understand that every step is taking you not towards later fulfillment, but away from it.

But any love that takes you away from yourself is not truly love anyway, and this is usually recognizable by the unhappiness it brings you.

The smaller temptations are usually the most perilous. It usually begins with a credit card and something pretty that catches your eye. New dishes. A nice couch. A new television. An Xbox. Any of a thousand different things that everyone else has, and which seem to make them happier and more comfortable for having them. Soon the dishes lead to a new table, new chairs, a bigger kitchen, a house instead of an apartment, a lawn that needs mowing, a car that needs maintenance. This leads to a better paying job, longer hours, promotions with added responsibilities, and vacations to escape the prison you’ve constructed for yourself, full of beautiful, inessential items stuffed into every room.

For most people, these things are essential.  The house and car, the family playing in a big back yard, and a pension or stock portfolio to guide them towards retirement truly is their dream. It is what makes them happy. The question for you is not whether the new dishes will make you happy, but whether the life that comes with it will make you happy.

Never assume that what makes others happy will have the same effect on you. And do not assume that the path I’ve taken in my life will bring anything but misery and an early death to you.

Instead, trust that you were born for a reason. Trust that a part of that reason was to explore your own life. And trust that the same forces that brought you into this world will guide you along your journey, regardless of how perilous it may seem at times, no matter how bruised you become, or how scratched your hands and face may be.

And trust that there is indeed a beautiful meadow ahead, with a few friends awaiting you, with bruises and scratches of their own. They are waiting to share their stories and for you to share yours as well.

If you do not keep your own compass, and keep moving towards the essential, you have not just denied yourself the adventure of your own life, but you have denied the world all the discoveries you have yet to make.

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