Attend

Dear Kate,

Why is it so hard to speak an authentic word?

To get beneath the surface is to go under the skin.  Whichever way you perform the incision, your words are going to feel like a surgical knife to anyone who's in the position to feel it. 

Today a member of the federal Liberals became the first party politician to speak out against his own government’s mandatory vaccination policies, and called on the government to review federal vaccine mandates, travel bans, and other measures.  "I will abstain from the kind of generalizations that we’ve heard these last few days," he said, pointing to some protesters who "looked and sounded nothing like a white supremacist."

These are simple but authentic words that invite scrutiny and conversation, words so far we have not heard from our highest leaders.  In fact the only message I've received (I acknowledge others might have received differently even when receiving the exact same words) from our Prime Minister was that there should be no "negotiation," no dialog with people who are so plainly wrong and purely evil.

Do you know how many plainly wrong and purely evil people I speak to in a day?  Do you know for the longest time the most powerful evil person that I felt wronging me every moment waking or dying was my own son? that I would shudder at the first hint of his low voice's gathering rumble at around 11 in the morning, when he would emerge pissed right out of the gate of his bedroom, ready to, I felt, piss on me?

If I didn't "negotiate" with him and negotiate my way out of the "common ground" (ironically the title of our great leader's memoir) between us that was nothing but landmines, I wouldn't be speaking to you now as a father.

Now tell me, if this little father of a small family needed to suffer the pain and embarrassment, often utter humiliation and unmitigated defeat, to maintain a dialog with his poor son (and I am very sure he felt likewise reaching out to me), who is a highest leader of a free nation to say he is free to deny anyone of a conversation?  Contempt and condescension, do they even work to stop a playground fight?

The Oscar nominations came out today.  I love to know the movies I love are getting the love they deserve.  "The Power of the Dog" speaks powerfully, among many other things, an authentic word about "toxic masculinity," but you will need to pay attention to hear the speaking.

That's it, isn't it, attention, or our lack of attentiveness, is what renders life fake, dialog forged, judgement facile, goodwill fraudulent?  Canada is giving peace a bad name: one would almost think it means playing deaf and dumb, wishing tomorrow everyone will just go home happy.

Yours, Alex