52 People

Stranger 42 – Part I…

I have yet to learn to give myself a break and interview my strangers early in the week so that I have ample time to write and prepare. Nope.

I was out scouring the streets in my new hometown late Sunday night and I thought the local tavern would be a good pace to find a stranger. Unfortunately a live band was playing and it would have been impossible to hold an interview. My next plan was to head out to a truck stop just outside of town on the highway, hoping to find a truck driver having a late night coffee before heading back on the road. No luck. Finally, I headed back into town and took a shot at the hockey rink to see if there were any late night hockey players who’d be the next stranger

I entered the doors and it wasn’t so busy. There were games going on in each of the rinks, but really no one else around. The janitor was cleaning the floor and I thought I’d give him a shot, but then another man started walking in my direction. He was quite tall and had a thick build. He wore a light jacket over top of a Toronto Maple leafs jersey.

Strangely I became a bit nervous but approached him and made my pitch. He scrunched up his face and looked at me like I was crazy. He questioned what this interview was about and I shared a bit about the experiment and how far along and that he would be the 42nd person.

He stood there and looked down at me, contemplating the situation… and agreed.

1) What is your dream job?

“In the operations planning department for NATO or UNDPKO in New York. My background is in military and those are areas that you get to go out and do some good in the world, but you do it in a proactive way instead of a wishful thinking way.”

2) What fulfills you?

“I think recently I’ve discovered that it’s family. I’ve got a new daughter…

3) What is your greatest fear?

“Failure. It’s a measure of who you are, what you are, what you think, you believe, failure is a big thing.”

Check back Wednesday for part II…

Stranger 41 – Part I

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t
own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep
it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it
you can never get it back.” Harvey MacKay

Over 77,000 fans screamed inside the Georgia dome as they waited for the kick off to begin the second half of the game. It was the nationally televised Sunday night football game between the visiting Chicago Bears and the Atlanta Falcons.

My wife and I had arrived in Atlanta on Thursday night and had enjoyed an incredible weekend. I was surprised with Yo-Yo Ma tickets on Friday night, we toured the Atlanta Falcons facilities on Saturday and spent time conversing with friends, all before the big game on Sunday night.

We were watching the game from a luxury suite in the stadium and there were several people milling about and around the suite. A young woman had just finished a conversation and was sitting alone looking out onto the field.

I walked over to her and kneeled down to make my pitch. At first she was a bit hesitant, but after a little prodding on my part, this young woman who works in high level sports administration had agreed to be stranger 41.

1) What is your dream job?

“I would want to be a professional athlete. Soccer. I’m just a competitive person and I’ve played soccer all my life and to be able to play at that level would be my dream job. And because I work in professional sports and I see these players doing what they love to do and they’re making money to play sports, it’s just… amazing.”

2) What fulfills you?

“Friends and family around me. I mean, that’s what makes me – me. It’s how I was brought up. And the friends that I have, just them being around me, It just fills who I am.

3) What is your greatest fear?

“To be honest, dying. That is my greatest fear. Because I don’t understand. Not that I don’t understand, I just don’t… I know that there is heaven; on earth and I just don’t know what’s going to go on in my life after that and to not… and for that not to be the same as what I’m doing right now… change… a lot… It comes down to change… that is my biggest fear.”

Check back Wednesday for part II…

Monday is a day off for travel back from Atlanta…

Stranger 41 – Part I will be up Tuesday morning.

Stranger 40 – Part I

“I would much rather have regrets about not doing what people said, than regretting not doing what my heart led me to and wondering what life had been like if I’d just been myself.”

It’s been a crazy few weeks, few months… My wife left for the weekend to visit her parents and I stayed back home in our new place and did some work on our house. We are putting a yoga/meditation room in our basement, so I conscripted my Father and brother to help me out and we plugged away at it. The room is almost done, but the list of other things to do has actually gotten larger. Hedges, more painting, still settling into the house, garage needs organizing and… oh yeah, I also have to work so we can pay for this thing.

I’m getting more and more excited about the arrival of our first child. My wife’s belly is getting larger and soon we will get to see it at our first ultra sound. Soon I will be holding our bay and soon we will be rising our child/children in this world…

What would a young child think about life and the world we live in?

This blond haired, blue eyed boy of nine years shared his wisdom with me…

1) What is your dream job?

“Uhm… That ones hard. I would love to be, just like, a person who goes out and does his own thing. He just goes out, like if he has a dirt bike he goes dirt biking with a friend, just takes a friend with him, go quading, fun… stuff like that.”

2) What fulfills you?

“Well, one thing that I love that makes me feel like that is snowboarding. It’s just getting out on the hill, just doing what you feel like. It’s just the freedom that you get. It’s talking to friends and just, yeah. It’s awesome.”

3) What is your greatest fear?

“I’m not sure… Well, sometimes if my friends are in trouble. Like with family and stuff, and like if one of them has a ‘heart attack’ I really try and help them, but if it keeps going… I hate to let it go I guess.”

Check back Wednesday for part II…

HAPPY CANADIAN THANKSGIVING!

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Stranger 39-Part I

Snow arrived on Sunday and left the ground covered with a thin layer of white stuff while blades of green grass poked out, confused at the unexpected early arrival. While the cold weather came, I spent the majority of my weekend indoors.

I was locked up all weekend in the basement of a rural community centre surrounded by ravens, foxes, grizzly bears, hawks, wolves and buffaloes. Was there a traveling zoo, you ask? No. Taxidermy? Nope. The basement was also full of drums, rattles and a master shaman.

The workshop was a two day, 8 hour a day event based around shamanism. While there was quite a bit of interaction among the group, at the end of the workshop I still hadn’t really spoken to some of the other twenty or so participants.

I had got a gut feeling to interview a woman that had spent the weekend sitting about ten feet to my left. She was a petite’ woman with dark hair with large brown eyes. A University professor, she agreed instantly when I asked her to be stranger 39…

1) What is your dream job?

“If I could step into my dream job tomorrow I would have two components. I would take pictures of places all over the world, places and people all over the world that would have elements of healing, or love or compassion in them. So, they would invoke those kinds of feelings in others who viewed them and also it would bring the world together to actually see that there is beauty everywhere. And then I would also like to be able to continue to learn and as well teach different healing modalities.”

2) What fulfills you?

“The first thing that came to mind was food. (Ha ha). Yummy, delicious, very flavorful food. Taking pictures. Without having time constraints or people constraints uhm, being able to travel in the biggest sense of the word. So, being a traveler in the sense that it’s being able to travel with your taste buds, travel with your eyes, travel with your feet and legs and… So, seeing, tasting, meeting people from all over the world, and tasting new things from all over the world, seeing new sights from all over the world, that’s when I’m most happiest.”

3) What is your greatest fear?

“Failing. not meeting… not doing what I was meant to be doing in this lifetime. So, missing the mark or not even seeing where the mark was. Or, being to scared to take up the staff to do what I’m supposed to do . And then because I’m a Raven, it’s no so much a fear as it is a dread, that I’d have to do this journey in this life alone, without a partner. I’m very comfortable doing so, but I’d really rather not.”

Check back Wednesday for part II…