Life Has It Covered

Last week, while walking to work, I noticed a vehicle parked on the street. It had super cool seat covers. They had the pattern that I often see on hats, backpacks, ponchos, hoodies and wallets that I sometimes buy from a little hippie import shop on Salt Spring Island.

It is called The Wardrobe.

A few days went by. I kept seeing this vehicle with its super cool seat covers. I almost kept walking, but something made me stop. I took out my wallet and retrieved one of my business cards. I wrote on the back, asking where they got the seat covers. I slipped it into the driver’s side window frame.

Then I carried on with my day.

At the end of the day, as I was walking home from work, I saw that the vehicle and the note were still there.

I got home and did a few things. And later on, I got a text message. It was an unknown number. The message said they got my note and told me they got the seat covers on Amazon. I texted back and explained the whole hippie island vibe and not knowing what the pattern was called. The sender said that if I searched for ‘boho seat covers’, I should be able to find them. I said thank you and that was that.

The next morning I got ready to head out and meet a new friend for tea.

We were supposed to meet at a pub, at 9:30 in the morning. This was weird, to be meeting in a place like that, at that time of day. But I went. I got there right on time and walked in. It was dimly lit, with only a few people sitting at the VLTs.

The decor was decent.

So I sat and waited. And while waiting, I checked my phone. A message came in just then from my new friend. She said she was going to be there in a few minutes. So I sat and waited. And while waiting, I became aware of a heavy smell of deep fried grease filling the air from the kitchen. It made me sick.

And I decided I didn’t want to stay there.

So I got up and headed towards the door. I was going to stand and wait for my new friend outside. But as I got to the door, I turned around for one last look at the place. I don’t know why. And when I turned back around, she was standing there, right in front of me.

I said hello and asked if we could go somewhere else. I explained why. She said sure. We headed out and across the street to a cafe. We got a table and started talking. A short time later, our server came up to me and told me that her coworker said to tell me that she really loved my hat. It is a patchwork floppy hippie hat that ALWAYS gets more love than I do, every time I wear it.

I told her to say thank you.

She said I could tell her myself. I turned around to see a young woman with a bit of a hippie look approaching. She had the biggest smile on her face and in her eyes. She walked up saying again how much she loved my hat. She asked where I got it. I told her I got it at the Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal. She didn’t say anything.

She looked at me. I looked at her. She still didn’t say anything.

I looked at her coworker. She looked at me. I looked back at the young woman.

She looked at me.

I looked at her.

I explained that it was on Vancouver Island near Victoria, and where you went to get to the other smaller islands. She lit up at this and said her and some friends were going that way this summer. I said that was very cool, and that judging by her vibe, she would totally love Salt Spring Island. She said she needed to write that down and that she would definitely check it out. I said that if I was her age again, I would have started my life out there, instead of staying in Manitoba.

She seemed inspired by that. She praised my hat again and I said thank you (again) and she went back to work.

I went back to talking to my new friend.

A while later, my new friend got up to use the washroom. So I sat and waited. And while waiting, I thought about the girl and the island, and I turned around to see her standing right behind me. I motioned her over. I took out my wallet and retrieved one of my business cards. I handed it to her and told her to feel free to reach out with any questions about the island, where to go and what to see and do, or even about living there. She took the card from me and said she would.

She looked at the card.

And she looked at me.

I looked at her.

She looked back at me.

I looked back at her.

Her eyes went wide.

Her jaw dropped and she broke into a big smile.

She said her girlfriend found one of my cards on her vehicle the day before, with a note asking about her seat covers!

My jaw dropped.

My eyes went wide.

I looked at her.

She looked back at me.

I said that was amazing! And we both babbled excitedly back and forth.

And then she said that she was the one who bought her girlfriend the seat covers.

My mind was blown.

If I had never stopped to leave that note, and if I had stayed at the pub to meet my new friend, these things would never have aligned like they did.

But they did.

So I say take a seat…

Life has it covered.

Leave Some Common Cents Behind

What did the leper say to the sex-worker?

Keep the tip!

LOL.

But seriously, what an inappropriate joke. We should not be telling jokes like this anymore. How would a leper feel if they heard that one? They might be upset, or even lose face. They might even fall to pieces.

Oh stop.

Because this isn’t about lepers, or jokes.

It’s about tips.

So here’s a tip for you.. 

Don’t leave tips.

And when I say don’t leave tips, I mean don’t feel the need to leave tips. It’s kind of become an expected thing. It’s now a part of almost every transaction we do. I mean, there are exceptions. If you go to a store to buy something, you probably only have to pay tax. Which is basically giving the government a tip. But if you go buy a coffee, you will be asked to tip. The person serving you doesn’t tipically ask for this, but the machine that takes your card payment does.

And it’s gotten a bit ridiculous.

Robots asking for money.

Times must really be tough for robots and machines. I can see that. They are basically slave labour to the human masses. Nobody pays them to do the work they do. So naturally, they started putting their hands out. Except they don’t have hands. So maybe they’re not looking for handouts. Or maybe they want to just be given a hand. Or a foot. Or a leg. An arm? Probably just your hands. Or maybe all they want is your fingers.

Or just your tips.

Humans however want a little more from you. This is because all humans should be paid. We exist to support one another in a world where we all have needs. We need food. Shelter. A safe society. We need protection. Guido and Vinnie come to collect their tip money to make sure we have it. And if you don’t believe them, just try not tipping them. See how safe you feel then. You see? We all have needs.

We need heat and water. Electricity. And the day will come when you go to pay your utility bill, and you will be asked to tip. Because now we are being asked to tip just for someone doing their job. It has lost its meaning and purpose. At one time, a tip was also known as a gratuity. And gratuity means to “pay a percentage more for something you will receive anyway”.

It’s gratuitous.

And so it is that people who wanted tips would try a little harder to make sure you were happy. Or safe. They would bring you food. And if they did so with a smile and came back after 3.7 minutes and asked you how the first few bites were, You would say, “Good!” And they would say “Perrrffeect”. And to make sure that things were always perfect, they would say that word at least 4862449562529.04537 times more. And then you could give them extra money later on. This was just the way it worked. It made cents. Like anything you could spare. You could leave it on the table when you were getting ready to leave.

But then the robots got in on the (trans)action.

And everything changed. Suddenly we were being asked to tip for every transaction. We were being asked to pay more for someone showing up at work. It was no longer about someone coming to serve you at your table and giving you extra special service. It was about everyone wanting a piece of your (trans)action. If it was a restaurant, your tips were now being distributed amongst the entire staff. The servers had to share the tips they earned for giving you excellent care and attention.

I guess people saw how much they were making and they got jealous.

And jealousy can be a nasty beast. It can give birth to greed. Which by nature is a baby nasty beast. And it is born hungry. It screams for more and more and MORE. And the more you give it, the bigger it gets and the hungrier and more demanding it gets. It is never satisfied. This baby grows and grows into a big needy greedy monster that destroys everything that is good in the world. It doesn’t care. It wants what it wants and it always wants more of it.

It eats and demands and destroys and takes a big smelly shit on everything.

And boy does it smell! It leaves a stain too. You can’t get it out. The soiled and spoiled things that greed has shit on can be anything that we once valued and treasured. They could be ethics. Morals. Or morale. They could be enjoyable moments. They could be employable opportunities. They could be the way we treat each other. Or the way we see the world. When we feed greed and let greed eat and grow, we are giving up our living up to a better way of life. We make money a priority and money is nothing more than a means to an end.

It is the end of us all.

It doesn’t mean anything. It has no value. Yet we place so much value on it. It does not give us a better life. It does not make us appreciate things any more than we used to. It does not bring us happiness. It does not buy us love. It only makes us feel distracted from what is real. It is shallow and empty and it is never consistent. It is always changing. It once took the form of cash. Now it is just numbers on a screen that robots bounce back and forth and play pong with. It does not exist in the real world. It does not exist in nature.

It is something that WE created.

So take this tip from me. Do not feed greed. Give tips where tips are earned. And if you can, leave some common cents behind.

The Downfall Of Us All

People like attention.

But not everyone gets it. So they have to try harder. To be more of a spectacle. They will put on a shit show. They will rant and rave and yell and display outrageous behaviour. That should get our attention. Because all I really want is your attention. Paying attention to people makes them feel important. It makes them feel like a celebrity. And nowadays everyone is trying to be a celebrity. They will say and do whatever it takes to steal the spotlight. They are finding new ways to get more attention. And this is what is motivating and inspiring people. Especially young people. They want to be center-stage. They don’t want to cure cancer. That’s just too much work. They don’t want to work towards saving the planet. That’s just too much work. They don’t want world peace. That’s just too much work.

They just want to be the most paid attention to thing.

I should know. I have worked with young people for decades. I have seen the shift in their life goals and aspirations. I recently asked my grade 7/8 class what they wanted to be when they grew up. Over half of them replied that they would like to be social media influencers. And surprisingly, this did not surprise me. It requires very little work. And most of the skills it does require are the skills that young people are learning on their own anyway. They are learning how to use social media. They are learning how to record and edit media. And whatever they are not learning on their own, they are learning in schools.

Schools are requiring them to learn everything on devices now.

So naturally they are wanting to be a big part of what they are learning every day is the world out there. It’s all about the big voices and faces of those who get the big number of followers. The more followers you get, the more popular you are. The more popular you are, the more you feel like a celebrity. And social media loves to breed this kind of motivation, inspiration and ambition. It applauds and encourages it wholeheartedly. In a BIG way.

It all starts with a simple social media account.

It provides an avenue for self-exhibition. You post yourself in some way, whether it be a selfie or a self-fulfilling desire. Perhaps it’s food you like. Or a place you visited. Maybe a pretty picture you took. Or made. And you wait and see who is going to like it. Or love it. Or react to it in some way, that makes you feel validated. Appreciated. Important. And maybe a little bigger inside. 

It is an over-inflated take on something that actually gives us very little.

For what it gives us is fleeting. It comes and then it is gone. It does not last or linger. It has no real substance, so it does not sit or stay with us for any period of time. And then when it is gone, we are motivated to find it again with something new to share. We crave the dopamine hit we get from getting some attention. It is a conditioned thing. We weren’t always this way. I mean, yes, we had the potential to be this way. It stems from a basic human need to be heard and seen and understood. We want to feel accepted. Feeling like you have a place in this world is perfectly normal. Even healthy. We all need a sense of belonging.

But now we be longing for more.

We go looking for it. We try to create it. We see how others get it and we try to do the same. It can be quite competitive. So we have to try even harder to get out in front of everyone else. We have to be louder, crazier, more controversial, more dramatic and more outrageous. And the world responds in our favour. All you have to do is look at the most “developed” nation on Earth. They elected a president who was all of these things.

For people just love a shit show.

(But The X-Files is a GOOD show!)

We used to line up to see the circus freaks. But television came along and we could watch them on Jerry Springer from the comfort of our homes. After that, the stage was set. All we needed next was a globally connected media source where we could interact as if we were part of one of those shit shows. And it came.

The internet connected us in ways that we have never been before.

We could now immerse ourselves in each other’s lives. We could be in each other’s living rooms. And bedrooms. And with that, we could get in each other’s business. We could now throw our weight around and weigh in on things we couldn’t before. Suddenly our opinions had weight. They had voice. And everyone had a voice! But nobody knew how to use it. They just had to say things that got people’s attention. It didn’t matter if it was what was really felt or not.

Only that people listened.

It didn’t matter how stupid or insane it sounded. In fact, the stupider and more insane it sounded, the more people listened. It was entertaining. And the outcome and effect of this was a global mindset that became confused and muddled. Suddenly the most preposterous ideas were being proposed and preported. It got people thinking and believing in things they wouldn’t have normally. They didn’t care if it was valid or valuable. They wanted to jump on the bandwagon.

They joined protests that served only the purpose of dramatic effect. They challenged and dismantled agreements about what was the greater good. It broke down the foundations of society. It ate away at reason, as the tendency to mindlessly follow gained a new following. 

And following that could lead us into the downfall of us all.