She is Hilarious + Regret is Painful + All These People

Good Morning from sunny Prince Edward Island, 

I hope everyone had a great week. It is so hard to believe it is near the beginning of September. 

Four months to complete any New Year’s resolutions you may have had. For example, if my goal of reading 21 books had been purchasing 21 books, I would have easily achieved my goal! 

Anything on your list that September 1st might kick you into the finish lane? 

I am currently reading Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott. She is hilarious. 

I try to write the books I would love to come upon that are honest, concerned with real lives, human hearts, spiritual transformation, families, secrets, wonder, craziness—and that can make me laugh. When I am reading a book like this, I feel rich and profoundly relieved to be in the presence of someone who will share the truth with me and throw the lights on a little, and I try to write these kinds of books. Books, for me, are medicine. ~ Anne Lamott

Wisdom is listening to advice from others. But it also includes listening to what life itself tells you through experience. -Tim Keller

Over the last few months, I shared a wee bit of my life’s journey with you through this blog. 

In learning how to write, I am starting to realize that bad decisions make great stories. I have so many bad choices in my past and consequently many stories. 

“How we spend our time is how we spend our days. How we spend our days is how our life goes. How our life goes determines whether we thought it was worth living." ~ Keith Yamashita

The only thing I am an authority on is the life I've lived.

Over time I will get more comfortable with sharing. But for now, I will take a break from my stories and share what I found interesting this week. 

“There are two types of pain you will go through in life, the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. Discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons." – Jim Rohn.”

As a Canadian, I am happy to see the issues of our indigenous peoples coming more and more to the forefront of the community conversation. 

I once heard the expression, “what is more expensive ignorance or education?” 

Humility will teach you knowledge; arrogance will teach you ignorance. If you think you know it all, you have learned nothing. Thibaut

I met my birth mother in 2010 and learned a bit about my family tree. One of the tidbits of history I found intriguing was my great-grandmother was full-blooded Mi'kmaw. 

Before knowing this, it is interesting that I had always been interested in understanding the world’s indigenous peoples, particularly those within the Canadian borders. 

Perhaps in a later blog post, I will write about my first ‘sweat’ experience. It was amazing. Over the last few years I have been longing for another. 

There is much to learn. Though I am a part of the settler community, I have always appreciated native wisdom. 

During one of the many drives to Halifax, I picked up a hitchhiker who left me with a different way of looking at life. Something he said about the world always stuck with me. 

He said, “there are too many isms in the world.” 

I was a bit puzzled and asked what he meant. 

He repeated, “there are too many isms in the world, alcoholism, racism, narcissism, consumerism, workaholism, skepticism.” These were just a few that he shared during our drive. It was such a great conversation; I drove him twenty minutes out of my way to make sure he got to his home easily. 

I am intrigued by the initiative of Victor G Temprano. 

“I’m Victor. I am a settler, born in traditional Katzie territory and raised in the Okanagan. I am concerned about many of the issues raised by using maps and colonial ways of thinking when it comes to maps. For instance, who has the right to define where a particular territory ends and another begins? Who should I speak to about such matters, anyway?

Native-Land.ca started in early 2015, during a lot of resource development projects in British Columbia. While mapping out pipeline projects and learning more about them for the sake of public awareness, I started to ask myself whose territories all these projects were happening on. Once I started finding the geographic data and mapping, it just kind of expanded from there.

There are over 630 different First Nations in Canada (and many more globally). I feel that Western maps of Indigenous nations are very often inherently colonial in that they delegate power according to imposed borders that don’t exist in many nations throughout history. They were rarely created in good faith and often used in the wrong ways. I am open to criticism about this project, and I welcome suggestions and changes.”

If interested in understanding more about global native communities, territories, languages or treaties, check out their website. 

https://native-land.ca/

https://native-land.ca/category/community-blog/

Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice. Anton Chekhov

Today, I have been listening to http://www.visionstringquartet.com/.

Sample listen here. 

Or watch here. 

Have a wonderful weekend. 

I hope you can take care of someone near you. 

With love from Prince Edward Island

Bruce + Mille 

Your Morning Smile.