Self, Centred

Dear Kate,

A "self-centred giant baby," that's how a certain other giant of a nation has been bashing Canada, this True North strong and free.  I couldn't help but laughed.

There are many self-description I would use on ourselves, but "self-centred giant baby"?  How come I've never thought of that?

It was dead-on.  I can't top it.

Babies whine, even when pampered, probably because too pampered.  We all whine, and it's probably a good thing, in a world that we know can be, should be better.  To not protest is to lose our yearning for truth, justice, beauty, and, really, the meaning of life.

The questions are: How do we whine? and What do we whine about?

Big old Job was a giant of a whiner, but he ain't no baby throwing things around in his playpen.  The cosmos his stage, he stood there on behalf of Man to wrestle like a god.   The point of the story is not that he finally got his "stuffs" back, but for God to declare the kind of stuff Job was made of.

Last night I watched "1917," exactly 104 years after the purported event happened on April 6, 1917.  You've probably heard about this movie, if for nothing else, that it is composed of one single shot (not really one continuous take, of course; for that, you will need to check out the achievement from another giant of a nation).  Nineteen minutes and 17 seconds into it, I realized I needed to watch "1917" standing up.  In ovation.

At the end, the hero sits himself down, back against a tree, the same way he did at the beginning of his journey, shot-through with an urgency to save those who knew not their need for a savior.  What is he thinking now?  Does he feel miserable about himself and everyone, everything else (like how today's headline suggests many in this most beautiful city of mine are)?  If there's protest in him, what is he protesting about?  When the Self is shattered, where does the person place her Centre?

Yours, Alex