IMHO

Opinions and perceptions are the way many people colour the world we live in. How a person perceives events, people or attitudes profoundly affects their lives. Being opinionated, however, only seems to raise hackles in all those around them, but never in themselves. Most people live comfortably in their opinions. When it comes to the dangers of offering up an uninvited opinion, the only parallel I can draw is going for a leisurely stroll in a minefield while blind-folded. 

To borrow a phrase, opinions are like a nose (or fill in your choice of body parts).... everyone has one.  Quite often they have more than one and in general, people are not shy about disseminating them to anyone who wants to hear them. Sadly enough, they are also imparted to those who don't want to hear them. Many a peaceful family get together have been disrupted with a drunken opinionated rant of one kind or another.

Opinions do not have to be fact based; in fact they rarely are. They can be uninformed, uneducated, unbelievable or unwavering, but yet they are still put out on display and held up as a shiny example. On the other hand, opinions can be well thought out, unimpinged by emotional or moral convictions, well balanced and reasonable in logic for all. Of course, these opinions are about as common as fairy dust.

Even the internet has its IMHO (In My Humble Opinion) which finds its way onto newspaper comment boards and newsgroups. It appears to me that by just prefacing their comments with this acronym it allows the poster a carte blanche opportunity to opine about anything at all. If  you have read any of these, there is rarely anything humble about their opinions.

Historically, Kingston certainly has had a fair amount of raging public opinion. When our present day City Hall was constructed in the 1840's, the general opinion of the day was that it was a little too grand and a lot too expensive to build for such a small town. It was felt that the tax burden would be too much for future generations to handle. Does that sound at all familiar?

It was a huge gamble thinking that by erecting such a grandiose building that the government would decide to stay put and keep the capital here. As we all know, it was decided that Kingston was far too small, not cosmopolitan enough and didn't offer enough amenities for those political folks and off the capital went. Still, in hindsight, imagining Kingston without City Hall and its cupola would be like imagining Paris without the Eiffel Tower. If opinion would have ruled the day and the naysayers won out, then that limestone edifice might never have been constructed.

The list of conflicting opinions on past and present local issues goes on and on.... the Teron Project, Block D, the Hendon Hole, the location of the KRock Centre, the merging of high schools KCVI and QECVI, the third crossing,  right down to today's opposing opinions on high-rises in the centre core of Kingston. We never seem to be running short of expressing conflicting opinions in this town.

Worldwide events, specifically the Brexit Referendum is a perfect example of asking for public opinion, getting it and then asking what the hell were they thinking.  There are historic reasons why the general public is often referred to as the "great unwashed".  Referendums are a wonderful way for the elected politicians to be absolved of any controversial subject and declare that, "the public has spoken". Forgive me, but I thought that was the general underlying principle of elections. We elect people to make informed, educated decisions that affect our future. If every time an important decision is needed to be made and the people we elect to make decisions for us throw it back at us (and at considerable expense) then what is the whole purpose of electing these people in the first place? 

Here in Canada, do we really need the public's input by holding a referendum on changing the electoral process? I would bet the majority of Canadians don't understand or care about the entire process of today's system, let alone giving them two or three other options to chose from.  Just getting them to vote in the first place is a big enough challenge. In the case of the United Kingdom, we have to remember this is the same group of people who voted to name the Arctic research ship, "Boaty McBoatyface".  You leave the economic future of your country in these hands?

A glance south of the border only reinforces where public opinion will get you. While the Democrats have followed along on a predictable path where general opinion seems to have fallen in line with expectations of the party, the Republicans have been asking the same question as the Brits. What the hell were they thinking? The right has spoken and it seems to be in a language that the G.O.P. hasn't translated yet.

Where does this all lead? Everyone is entitled to their opinion just as everyone is free to express their opinion. As George H.W. Bush once said, "I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them". Well, if the past leader of the most powerful nation in the world can't agree with his own opinions, then where does that leave the rest of us? 

Of course you must take note, this is only IMHO.

And Time Keeps on Slippin', Slippin', Slippin'

Since my wife and I have become empty nesters, we have on more than one occasion silently looked at one another and mumbled something about, ‘what do you want to do?’ before shrugging our shoulders simultaneously and mumbling, ‘I dunno, what do you want to do?’ I am sure it is not because we are boring or even worse, bored with each other. I think it has more to do with the fact that the maelstroms, otherwise known as the children who encompassed our day to day lives for 20 odd years, are all grown up and moved away.  I mean, after playing in what seemed like a Stanley Cup final every day, it's a little hard to get excited about a game of shinny.

There is a certain elation when the last child finally leaves home and suddenly the options are there lying before you. I have written before of the plans to convert bedrooms into offices or studios or concert halls.  But after that period of elation and construction, comes the day to day living of pretty uneventful lives.  There are no real challenges now with work, neither of us are changing professions; please refer to the idiom, old dogs/new tricks. Retirement is not really on the table as that would just give us more time to shrug our shoulders at one another and ask each other what we wanted to do.

There are fleeting thoughts of shaking things up a bit, but I certainly won’t present my wife with a radical new look or lifestyle. If I did, she would probably laugh herself into an early grave. The middle aged crazies have already been there and gone and fortunately, I did not buy the T shirt.  I have focused a bit more on physical health; I have taken up running, but of course all this does is provide me more of an opportunity to hurt myself. Running on icy roads in the dark with eye sight that seems to fade on a daily basis is certainly a recipe for all sorts of new pain. I am sure I will try to elicit some level of sympathy from my wife, but I think we all know what that will get me.

We are certainly welcoming our time together, as most couples do. Over the years as children enter your family, there is less attention paid to one another as the focus of your life becomes your children. You work hard at raising them with the proper values, the proper outlook on life and respect for other people. There is no manual, there are no guidelines, just your own values that you try and instill in them and hopefully a few of those values stick and they turn out well enough that visits to the big house are not in order.

My son and his wife have recently taken this step on their own and welcomed a baby girl into our family.  I can often see the questions in their eyes as the reality hits of just how massive their responsibility is. This tiny human being relies on them for 100% of her needs; 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and one more on a leap year and will for many, many years to come. It is certainly not something that should be taken lightly and sanity is sometimes sorely tested. Perhaps that is why I’ve written so much about Thing One, Thing Two and Thing Three. It was my method to maintain some level of sanity which I am told by some, wasn’t a very successful method.

A few days ago I was trying to organize our collection of videos that had been burned onto DVD’s. With my perfect memory, I figured I would be able to remember what shows were burned to what disc without that frivolous little thing called labeling.  I forgot I didn’t have a perfect memory anymore.

As the stack of DVD’s reached the critical out-of-control stage, it suddenly dawned on my wife that this was one thing that could be done with my time, instead of thrashing around on dark icy streets. So with her encouragement I started to pop the discs in the player to decide whether or not they were worthy of labeling or tossing into the trash.

That was how we came across a disc of videos of our kids when they were very young. I had, many years ago, transferred most of the video tapes into electronic format and stored them on disc to sit unlabeled and forgotten.  We were transfixed for almost an hour just watching their antics, hearing their wild giggles and screams and seeing their young faces absolutely loving every second of their lives.  It was difficult to stop watching.

I was told so many times in the past by people older than me, that life races by and before you know it, there are a multitude of life events that happened years ago that felt like they just happened yesterday.  I just wanted to say to all the young parents out there, that those sentiments are true. It really did seem like yesterday.  Years ago in these very pages I quoted from a song by Steve Miller, “Time, keeps on slippin’ into the future”. Yes it does Steve, but now it also seems to keep slippin' into the past.