Agendas

   A couple of weeks ago I was headed off to work and Doralyn asked me what my day looked like. I listed off the things I thought I needed or wanted to do. At that point, the list became my agenda. There was great comfort in having an agenda that seemed effortless and manageable.
   Upon actually arriving at work, however, my agenda went right out the window.
   I work with people who are intellectually challenged and the first person I went to see presented me with a t.v. which had been pulled out from the wall, a mess of wires and cables leading from it to a brand new dvd player he'd bought on his own. Nothing worked.
   When it comes to technology, I am as intellectually disabled as the next person and was of little assistance in this case. The overriding situation, however, was the conflict of agendas. My agenda included taking this gentleman for breakfast as this was our once-a-month routine. His agenda, obviously, was being able to use his dvd player.
   I was much more annoyed at the agenda conflict than he was. My annoyance, coupled with my hunger and lack of tech ability, made the situation unresolvable. We managed to still make it out for breakfast and while eating I was able to come up with a line of action for this man to follow. Doing so allowed him to hook up his dvd player successfully.
   Unless you are a single person who is self-employed, you are going to run into agenda conflict on a regular basis. Even if you do fall into this category you will still occasionally find your self in this conflict with drivers in cars, store clerks, bank managers, customers, crossing guards, repairmen, spouses and pets. In short, any other person with a mind of their own. And an agenda.
   The trick in dealing with all this is simply to realize that we all have our own agendas and that what a person is saying on the outside may belie what they are actually thinking or planning on the inside. Of course, behaviour over a period of time will give you the truer measure of a person.
   It's really not possible to walk around without an agenda of your own, they pretty well help chart a course for your day, week or even your life. Having an agenda which somewhat meshes with the important people in your life, however, always helps. They don't have to always be totally in sync but just realizing where they might diverge will get you through a lot of rough spots.
   At work, agendas can be an issue. Any time you have a large group of people who are supposedly all gathered to accomplish the same goal you're going to have to deal with agendas. Where I work, one of the agenda issues we face on a pretty well daily basis is similar to the one I described above. We, as support staff, spend time with people whose agendas can be widely variant. We have been given what seems like, both to them and to us, an unspoken power over their lives. Throughout the work day we encounter situations where it is quite easy to impose our agendas on the people we support. Realizing this and remembering not to do it are vital. It is also vital to watch what goes on with other people and point out where you think there might be a perceived agenda issue.
   A very quick work-related agenda issue story---a few years ago one of the people I work with called me at home to say he'd fallen in the bathroom, hit his head, and that he was bleeding a little. I had to drive more or less across town to go and investigate and on the drive there was desperately trying to figure out how to mesh our two different agendas. It was my day off, I had stuff to do, could I get by with just applying a band aid, etc., etc. He greeted me at his apartment door and when I took a look at the ear he said had been bleeding, I realized that he had somehow almost severed the top half of it right off and that it was only really hanging there by a fleshy thread. At this point, no real issue with agendas! In an odd kind of way this was kind of cool because when I saw his ear any sort of agenda burden I might have had on the way there flew right off my shoulder. Nine hours of emergency room waiting later, he was all taken care of!
   As I mentioned before, sometimes the trick is just to remember that yours is not the only agenda in play out there. Nowhere is this likely more apparent than right in your own family. There are as many different agendas as there are family members and if you're going to pick one to try to more or less be in sync with then I would suggest concentrating on your spouse's. Enough said, as this is likely a whole new blog topic somewhere down the road!
   Good luck, hopefully, with your agenda and trying to follow it. There's a true skill in realizing when it can be altered and when it is something which really needs to be adhered to. Don't give up your principles along the way but, at the same time, you are not alone in the world either. Not only is your agenda likely going to differ from the next person you run in to but that person's perception of what the issue even is could be totally different and wildly divergent from yours, or even a lot of people's. So take this into account and, every once in awhile, experiment with flipping through someone else's agenda for a change! 
  
  

Mediums

   As I travel through my day, I occasionally find myself wondering how many of my dead relatives might be watching what goes on in my life. I then find myself wondering if they approve and are they disappointed or proud. I also wonder what I might hear if there were any way of communicating with them.
   I have always enjoyed watching mediums ply their trade on television, people such as Sylvia Browne, Theresa Caputo and John Edward. I am prone to believing in their abilities and always enjoy the reactions you invariably get from the people being "read".
   There is something in me (and, I suspect, something in a lot of us) which makes me want to desperately believe in mediums and, by default, the spirit world. It is simply comforting to think there is a benign and welcoming place we're all headed for after we pass.
   If mediums truly are capable of communicating with the dead, however, this raises a multitude of questions. As I have pondered the issue of mediums' abilities over the years, the questions have only mounted. Here are some:

   Why aren't most murder cases instantly solvable?
   Why do the dead only seem to have nice things to say about the living?
   What can the afterlife be like if I need to jostle other spirits out of the way in order to communicate with my loved ones?
   What do the dead do when they're not communicating with mediums? Do they talk amongst themselves?
   Do the dead watch you in the shower?
   Why don't spirits from 1754 ever show up? Or 1906 and so on...?
   Are there animal spirits running around in the spirit world, too?
   If spirits can watch out for you can they also enable bad things to happen?
   Can spirits follow around total strangers? Or are they more or less tied down to people who were in their lives in the earthly world?
   Are spirits around forever...? Or is there a shelf life?

   Some of these questions seem a little frivolous and I am aware of that. It might also seem as though I am making light of what mediums do. At the same time, what I see represented through the media begs most of these questions, when you really stop to think about it.
   I also find it vaguely irritating that, after a reading ends, life seems to go on normally. It always feels as though there should be more to it than a spirit saying "It wasn't your fault that Mack truck hit us" or "The other day when that picture of your dead mother fell in your soup, that was me!" Sometimes I just want to scream hey, you were just talking to dead people, find out what it's like out there! Is there a God, are there angels, when will the world end?! Get back in there and find out NOW, dammit!
   Think about it. Someone on T.V. claims to have just communicated with the dead. This suggests there is life after death and, if this is the case, might explain why we are all here. Perhaps at this point anything else you might have seen on T.V., any book you might have read, any conversation you may have had, or any act you took part in becomes almost irrelevant by comparison. Speaking with the dead is monumental and yet in this world we live in it is used only as a hook for reality T.V.
   The dead seem happy. They don't seem to carry grudges and they appear to be very forgiving. Given the show you are watching, however, they are portrayed as either very warm and comforting or restless and terrifying. Who knows what the spirit world is truly like (if there is one), perhaps it is a world very (too) much like our own, with all its different layers of happiness and despair.

   I used to have my own vision of an afterlife. In this vision, when I pass I finally lose all the earthly constraints of the laws of physics and am suddenly able to explore the far reaches of the universe, maybe even engage in a little time travel. Truly, there would be no limit to what I might be able to do. The mediums I have come to be familiar with through the media seem to suggest, however, that spirits are a little more earthbound than that, a little more intrinsically tied to the goings-on of their loved ones. This would be okay, too, in my afterlife. In the end, as the mediums suggest, life goes on in some form and life going on in any form is of some comfort.
   Earlier on, I listed some of the questions I had about the nature of the spirit world. One more just popped into my head.
   I wonder if mediums are afraid to die?
  

  
     

The King Dies In Battle

Skeleton of Richard III

   This past week, much was made about the apparent discovery of the bones of Great Britain's King Richard III. It was particularly big news here in London, Ontario because they were able to ascertain that this particular set of bones were indeed the king's through DNA testing which combined a sample from a former Londoner whose mother was a direct descendant of Richard.
   The injuries on the skeleton were consistent with the historical account of how Richard III died--as the result of taking an axe to the head in the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485. The skeleton also showed signs of scoliosis, a curvature of the spine which would produce a hunchback. Richard III is said to have been hunchbacked.
   The Battle of Bosworth Field marked the end of the Wars of the Roses and was the last time a British monarch was killed in battle.

Canadian Michael Ibsen, DNA provider, and a computer-generated 3D likeness of Richard III

   I found this whole story to be quite fascinating but the aspect of it that I found most thought-provoking was the fact that a reigning monarch had been engaged in a battle in the first place.
   Granted, these were medieval times and wars were carried out totally differently but how odd that the most important person in your country might be subjugated to an actual battle and all its obviously inherent danger.
   The death of Richard III and the end of the Wars of the Roses is regarded as the end of the medieval period, as well. I can only imagine that future monarchs, when faced with the possibility of having to take part in an actual battle, likely declined, on the grounds that doing so seemed so...well...medieval.
   It's interesting to ponder the future of war if the leaders of the various factions involved were required to physically participate. Barring that, would a war even begin if the leaders' family members were required to be the first to enter the fray. I think not.
   I wonder what Richard III was thinking as he rode off to battle that day. Did he know he would end up in the fiercest part of it? Did he begin the march far back at the rear of things or did he bravely (stupidly) affix himself to the forefront? Was he so enamoured of his own sovereignity that he imagined himself invulnerable in battle? Or was he as scared as any of the foot soldiers?

Depiction of the Battle of Bosworth Field--Richard III in a slightly better moment...

   After his death, Richard III's body was apparently subjected to all sorts of abuse and humiliation before it was unceremoniously dumped in a grave, without benefit of a shroud, coffin or even clothes. How demoralizing this must have been for his followers, to not only lose their king but then to have their noses rubbed in it, so to speak. Perhaps this is reason enough to leave your leaders out of the fray.
   As a combatant, I wonder what it must be like to have your leader, king or general fighting right along beside you. Would this be an uplifting and inspirational thing? Or a distraction? In the middle of a battle do we all become simply soldiers with nary a regard for crowns or rank?
   I have never been interested in soldiering. Were I to find myself in that situation, all I might want from a leader is to demonstrate that he or she was aware of my sacrifice and was prepared to go to the ends of the earth to enable me to fight and protect myself in the best way possible. In a perfect world, though, this sacrifice would be shared from top to bottom. In an even more perfect world, there would be no need for it.