This has had me thinking for a while now (shocker!).

I really took some time to evaluate a couple things; firstly, how I thought others might view me (which is psychologically proven to be difficult to do), and how I would like to be viewed.

And I decided that having everyone like you would be emotionally exhausting, and tragically boring. I mean we all have opinions, good, bad, whatever… different.  And the more time we spend tending to the sensitivities of those we disagree with and dislike the more time we sacrifice from making our lives better.  I arrived at that conclusion because most people just like people that are like them and share their opinions.  So to have everyone like you, you either have to have a very small group of friends, or act like a politician in all social situations…. or both.

Everyone has such a fear of disagreement. Its too bad, because, as long as we come upon at it honestly (dealing with facts, not heresay or Fox News) is where we truly find our closest allies in life.  But also, sometimes disagreement shines lights on issues that will never be repaired.  At that time, in my opinion, its time to leave these friends in the past like a girlfriend who hates sex. It doesn’t matter how great her veal parmigian tastes, some things are dealbreakers.

For friendships, that could be anything like betrayl, deception, or maybe just a fundamental shift in interests. Childhood friends can easily become adult strangers this way.

We need our closest friends to be the barometers of our rationality, and our breadth of quality friendships is what keeps us in line.

Two extremes:

#1 if you have a rolodex filled with coke heads, a friday night snorting back an 8 ball seems like a great time

#2 if you are raised by devout christians, virginity until marriage seems sensible and noble

Should either #1 or #2 be 80% of the people you engage with, even if the other 20% know better and have logical perspectives to share, if we never engage each other honestly we lose the opportunity to broaden our perspectives.

Rational decisions can only be made once we properly assess the other facts and perspectives available.

The only way this occurs is through engagement. Engaging with people that are totally unlike you, and learning to see what they see. And through these new sets of eyes you will know if the pictures look the same.

If we simply keep our opinions to ourselves and bottle true feelings for fear of rejection, I would imagine life would end up as a perpetual search for commonality in a group of people totally unsuited to your interests.  I see many people rating their friendships on the length established opposed to the quality harvested.  Not to mention, that by creating a homogenous environment you also run the risk of dulling bright spots of who you are.

So why do we put old friendships on life support when its really time to pull the plug?   Unfortunately, I don’t have those answers. Maybe its fear of confrontation, maybe we are afraid to be disliked, I really don’t know.

Some people change, and grow, others never leave the core opinions they acquired in the 2nd grade. Its hard to force yourself to read See Spot Run again once you’ve taken the time to understand Dorian Gray.

I think that’s certainly one thing my 30s are teaching me, that time is precious.

So either you’re spending time with those you enjoy speaking with and appreciate, or you’re wasting it on people you don’t really care for and continue pretending there’s a good reason for it.

I guess at the end of the day, if the majority of people I’ve met view me as interesting, honest, genuine, and I’ve put more smiles on their faces than frowns… that would be good enough for me.

Its about 4am and that’s all I can muster for now…. and like I always say, I reserve the right to change my opinion as new information may present itself.  

Feel free to comment below…

My first trip to Italy to visit my extended family started when I was 2 years old and every few years those trips continued into my early twenties.  But since each trip to the “old country” was kept to a specific part of Italy I didn’t really get a consciousness of how far I was from home until later in life.    As a kid, the plane ride was like a really long car ride, to a place where more people spoke the same language I’d hear at family gatherings in Canada.

I could only partially understand my relatives at home, and I could only partially understand them in Italy, the place wasn’t so different to me.  Come to think of it, maybe it began in Mexico…

Every year my father, without fail, would take the entire family on a vacation into the sun, and Mexico was the destination of choice in my preteen years.  My parents and I would spend a week or two discovering all that the Mexicans and the  Mayan people had to offer.  If there were temples or ruins nearby our hotel, my father would find it, and within 48 hours into our vacation he would have me climbing some ancient temple and driving into towns not recommended by our travel agent.

During one unforgettable trip, my father heard of a small town within a reasonable driving distance from our resort, so instead of sitting by the beach and letting my 8 year old self check out the talent at the pool, we were off exploring.   I remember getting to this town and we quickly realized it was siesta.  The entire town was asleep.   Not one store was open, nobody was in the streets, and besides a cat or dog, its like we had just wandered into a ghost town.

I can still remember us walking through the town square with amazement at how quiet this entire city was in the middle of the day.  Without much to see we started to walk out the gates of city wall, and lying there, like a bloated balloon lying on its back was the deadest, grossest, most giant rat I had ever seen in my life.

My mother and I jumped and screamed bloody murder for the first couple seconds as my father picked up the nearest stick and started poking the animal like he was sad it wasn’t alive to play with him and provide more excitement for the afternoon.

Its surprising we all weren’t kidnapped during the Mexican years.

In my teen years it was time to conquer the caribbean; Cuba, Aruba, and St. Maarten.  And with each trip came at least a few days of touring our location.  In Aruba we “had” to drive around the entire island, searching for lesser known areas and attractions.  In St. Maarten we toured both the Dutch and French sides endlessly, moving from beach to beach, and town to town to make the most with the time we had.

I remember my father always wanting to travel as a family.  At 18 years old, when my parents wished to travel to Cuba for two weeks and my school work only allowed for one; where I saw conflict my father saw simple solutions.  I would simply fly back on my own at the end of the first week and take an airport cab back home where I’d take care of myself for a week.   He believed this wouldn’t be a problem, so therefore I believed it wouldn’t be a problem.    Looking back, I think this was the start of believing I could travel on my own, and that anything was possible.

So its no surprise with this love of other countries, when I was offered a job as a trainee travel agent at age 22 I jumped at the opportunity.  What better way to learn about the rest of the world without taking out a loan.

I managed to live vicariously through my clients for about 18 months and then the itch to get going myself finally struck. After I decided to backpack through Europe, it was two months before I had recruited a traveling partner, quit my job, and was on a British Airways flight through London into Amsterdam.

I can still remember the feeling of picking up my backpack from the baggage claim. As I walked through into the terminal of a city I’d never seen, speaking a language I couldn’t understand, it hit me, “holy shit I’m actually doing this.”

Then for the next 7 weeks I traveled to over 15 cities, 6 countries, and my most favourite recurring moment was the arrival into a new destination.

Everything about that moment was sacred to me.  The new train station welcoming us into its heart, and possibly an entirely new culture to observe and interact with.  Do people smile more here? Are they assholes? Whats on the menu? oohh, the girls wear thigh high boots here. Score! How much is beer?  Endless opportunity for adventure.

As I write this I’m starting to think that everything about the sensory overload of a new destination is what drives my love of travel. And drives my desire to visit so many more countries while I am still young and healthy enough to do so.

Not to mention that it beings to explain my absense of desire to visit places like Australia or Arizona.  I see these destinations as merely extentions of my home in Canada and therefore not a priority over cultures like Japan, China, or Egypt that I have yet to visit. Filled with new cultures I could begin striving to understand from inside the looking glass.

Regardless of where I’ve been and where I have not, I realize how fortunate I am to have had the opportunity to expand my experiences with travel.  I suppose its only fitting that the paintings first hung in my new home were 5 foreign landscapes; London, Paris, Florence, and Venice.

I guess within the heart and mind of a traveler, its the reminder of other places, and the possibilities that await, that makes us feel at home.

The idea of this trip was spawned once it was announced one of my favourite cousins in Italy was planning on getting married on May 22nd, 2010. But as everyone knows, one week in Europe is never enough so I made arrangements to stay with a good friend of mine outside of Zurich, travel around Switzerland with him and then head over to jolly o’ England to meet up with a business partner for a weekend before finally making my way to the wedding and the carnival schedule of visiting relatives.

Switzerland greeted me this past Friday with cloud cover and a steady forecast of heavy rain, but still with that, I’m just happy to be here.

Not surprisingly, as Monday morning came around and my buddy went to work I found myself looking for something to do for the brief periods of time between torrential downpouring. Within this time I accomplished two things:

1) Of 4 or 5 grocery stores I managed to shop at the most expensive.

Now, I don’t know if any of you have ever been mugged at gun point but I am guessing the feeling of grocery shopping in Switzerland would make someone feel equally victimized. Mind you, as I stepped off the plane last week and saw a sign for a 25 CHF ($25 usd) club sandwich, I realized I should probably up my traveling budget for this trip.

2) I managed to find myself a nice Italian coffee shop to hang out at. Leave it to me to visit the German part of Switzerland and source a spot to eat gelato and drink espresso every afternoon. Seriously, every afternoon. They speak to me in Italian and I do my best to return the favour. So far there’s been no sour faces so I guess I’m doing ok.

Though the remainder of this week I am planning on covering Lucerne, Basel, and Bern either on my own or with my buddy this Sunday morning we really kick it into gear with a road trip that defies most logic.

Salzburg, Austria

Between Sunday and Thursday of next week I will be visiting Salzburg, Austria; Munich, Germany, and then Lugano, Switzerland, in the Italian part of Switzerland. After all of this, we will be leaving Lugano around noon so to make sure I can catch my 7pm flight to England for the weekend. should be quite the whirlwind for those few days.

But in all of this flight and travel confusion, sometimes I need to stop and realize that this is the life that I wanted the freedom to explore, these are the opportunities that I one day dreamed I would have the chance to experience.

Lugano, Switzerland

It’s hard to not take these trips or moments for granted sometimes, or get caught up in the pirate-like prices in this country or the fact that I may have to build an ark should this rain continue as it has been. The fact of the matter is that I am a very lucky guy, and for whatever reason, my trips to Europe seem to always remind me of that.

North American mentality can drag down even the best of us into the Joneses mentality, and even when I am home I have moments where I need to remind myself how pointlessly empty the race of material acquisition is.

Coincidentally enough, a few books I have read lately on success, marketing, and philosophy have touched on the same point;

There is truly only one thing on the planet that is worth having money to buy, Time (for the point of this discussion I am going to include Health in this definition of “Time”).  And within that acquired time, is the freedom to live your life as you choose. Yes, this is a much denser notion to possibly be covered in another post, but I thought I would share it now as even the past few days has made this fact crystal clear.

Time allows you, not just the luxury of spending time how you choose to spend it, but also with whomever you choose to spend it with.

Geez, I’ve only been over here for 4 days and I’m already having revelations, I’m sure after a month I’ll have the cure for cancer.

Stay tuned.

For those of you either not reading the news, or if you’re Catholic, ignoring it, Pope Benedict is in the middle of quite the disaster right now.  I call it a disaster instead of scandal because this is a very serious matter.

Tiger Woods bedding every stripper and hooker in the US is a scandal, but when you are the vicar of Christ on earth and it is now proven that you covered up multiple cases of child abuse as a Bishop and Cardinal, well, that’s a disaster.   At least it should be, but from where I’m sitting, most Catholics are still sitting in the pews acting like someone’s grandfather farted and the stink will soon pass.

Christopher Hitchens made a good point in an interview this weekend saying that, even as recent news of more and more child molestation cases come out against clergy all around the world, all Pope Benedict has done is “expressed regret” for these actions.

Am I the only one that finds this infuriating?

I “express regret” when I can’t attend someone’s birthday party, not when someone’s children are being repeatedly sexually abused.

Benedict does not ask for the arrest of these Cardinals, or further prosecution… or not even reparation for the families.  This is mainly because if the Pope supports criminal prosecution for these child molesting criminals he is effectively supporting prosecution of himself.

Pope Benedict is not just the leader of the church, but also the head of a nation, a political leader, yet we still allow a  proven accomplice to child abuse travel freely, and live without consequences.  This action alone looks at every child that has ever been abused by a member of the clergy (and the number is now well into the thousands), and says… “You don’t matter to us. We don’t care”

Christians that claim otherwise are fooling themselves.

These cases of abuse are not “rumours” or “heresay” they are recognized and documented FACTS.  Everytime you walk into a church and give money to your parish and volunteer at mass you are supporting an organization that is clearly and blatantly sexually abusing children on a massive scale all over the world.

This entire issue has been a real blood boiler for me for a long time, mainly because it is obviously a HUGE problem within the Catholic church, yet Christians seem to look past it as if its nothing.

More than one Bishop and/or Cardinal have been allowed to flee their communities and take refuge within the Vatican City. So, is that what the Vatican City is allowed to become now; a refugee state for child molestors and sexually predators? Yes, it is.

And every Catholic worth their Sunday missal should be, as far as i am concerned, up in arms enraged over this world wide acceptance of child abuse.

So the next time you hand over your donation to the collection plate, know that you are doing your part to make sure that future generations of volunteers and alter boys can experience all the torture and therapy that every other generation has.

You just better pray its not someone in your family that gets to reap the nightmare and consequences of your own apathy.