Category Archives: Lifestyle (MC Archive)

Lifestyle-related columns that appeared on Jason Menard’s previous Web site, Menard Communications.

Intellectual Darwinism Doesn’t Always Cull Weak

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By Jason Menard

The dangerous thing about natural selection is that it’s not always the weakest members of the human herd that end up getting culled – often times through their moronic behaviour suffer the effects of their lack of intelligence.

Case in point is a recent story out of New Millford, Connecticut. It seems that a weekend party turned macabre when some intellectually deficient reveller decided that tossing a quarter-full keg into a blazing fire would be cool or fun (please note that the intentions of the thrower are all based upon speculation – but it seems like a normal thing for someone taking the risk of killing their all-too-rare brain cells would do.)

Unfortunately, our perpetrator in this sad story didn’t have a firm grasp on basic physics or chemistry for that matter.

As you can imagine, flames plus beer plus confined area led to a build-up of pressure which was too much for the keg – which was not designed for such an activity – to take. In the end, the ensuing explosion and shrapnel flying through the air at an extreme rate of speed and force, killed a 22-year-old man and injured seven others who presented to a local hospital with cuts and burns.

Sadly, it’s probably not the last time something like this will happen. And we’re powerless to make it stop.

That’s because even the brightest of us — those who believe we’ve climbed a few rungs up the Darwinian evolutionary ladder — get the urge to survey the land from our lofty perch and think we’d be able to perform a triple-pike dive and live to tell the tale.

We’ve all done things we’re not proud of. We’ve all done things that we look back upon and chuckle with friends, amazed that we didn’t get more hurt. But usually those are activities that only affect ourselves – and if we caused ourselves severe, permanent damage, we’d be resigned to the fact that it was self-inflicted.

What’s worse is when someone else’s stupidity negatively impacts your life. Take, for example, our aforementioned New Millford friends. Imagine you are at this party and that you’ve taken all the requisite precautions. Since it’s outdoors, you’ve worn appropriate clothing, or even sprayed an insect repellant with DEET – just in case! You’ve arranged for – or are — a designated driver. Essentially, you’ve done everything in your power to ensure that you have protected yourself from the potential hazards that this bush bash may present.

That is, every hazard except the moron who decides to toss a keg into a roaring flame.

There are those who like to throw out the statement that any day we could meet tragedy. They’ll state that we can simply walk off the curb one day and get hit by a bus. But that’s not the truth of the matter. In general, we look both ways before crossing, we don’t stand so close to the side of the road so as to worry about falling into the path of oncoming traffic, and – most importantly – we don’t have morons chucking busses at us, foiling our best laid safety plans.

It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. You’ve said it, we’ve all said it, and we’ve all chuckled about it. Unfortunately, some of our revelry – especially that which is influenced by the presence of alcohol – can lead to painful consequences. Unfortunately, most of the time it’s others who get hurt.

Drunk drivers are a prime example of this. But there are others: kids swinging a baseball bat rarely hit themselves – but they’ll nail the poor kid walking by. Throwing snowballs into traffic seems funny until you scare the bejeezus out of the poor, unsuspecting driver (who has probably checked all mirrors, buckled up for safety, and recently replaced their brakes) who then swerves into on-coming traffic.

While it would be nice to think that social and intellectual Darwinism culls the weakest from the herd, the sad fact of the matter is that the rest of us often suffer the brunt of a bad decision made by someone else, out of our control.

And if you don’t believe me, ask some of those partygoers in New Millford whether they thought keg tossing was going to be on the agenda.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Revisiting 100 Years of Caring

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By Jason Menard

It’s been 100 years in the making – and, for one night, a group of people are going to try to prove that you can go home again. And while news of a reunion for a student newspaper may not set the world on fire, our experience at that publication was what sparked passions in countless people.

It is without hyperbole that I can say some of the brightest lights in Canadian journalism will descend on The Wave today in celebration of the 100 th anniversary of The Gazette, the daily student newspaper of the University of Western Ontario. But beyond the journalistic glitterati – a significant component of Macleans and a good number of people representing national and local papers throughout this great land of ours – there will also be those of us who left journalism behind to find other uses for our talent: from photographers to authors to drug company execs and everything in between.

The tie that binds us all is that we all passed through The Gazette.

It’s safe to say that, while I attended the University of Western Ontario for knowledge, it is atThe Gazette that I discovered my passion. Having entered university with a mind for psychology, it was what came after those first tentative steps into (at the time) a portable located near J.W. Little Stadium that changed my life forever – and for the better.

It was there that I met a group of people that I’m pleased to call both my peers and my mentors. I met a collective of passionate student-journalists and photographers who refused to place the term student before newspaper. We worked long hours, sometimes seven days a week, to create Canada’s only daily student newspaper.

The people there became almost a second family – in fact, during my year as Editor-in-Chief, putting in 12 to 15-hour days, they became almost a surrogate family as I saw them more than I did my own. Countless cups of coffee and far too many bad take-out meals refused to sate the hunger many of us felt searching for the next great story.

Since then, I’ve lived in Montreal and come back to London. I’ve kept a toe – well, more of a foot – in journalism, in print, on the Web, and in radio. I’ve built up a fairly substantial corporate communications resume, and I’ve succeeded in jobs that I really had no right having (medical writer? Hello? I pass out at needles). But it was The Gazette that gave me that foundation upon which I could build my dreams. The fact that a dedicated few were able to consistently put out a paper of which we could be proud, with limited resources, time constraints, and publisher pressure gave us all the confidence to know that we could do anything. And just by associating with such wonderful people, I believe I was able to learn, by osmosis, how to be a better writer.

It’s the nature of the beast that people don’t understand how important this publication was to those who passed through its doors. The concept of a working for a student paper is one that’s regarded almost as quaint, but for those of us who were a part of it, it was more than a job or a hobby – it was an all-consuming passion. There was nothing quaint about it – it was our life, and we were able to live it to its fullest.

We strove with each printed word to ensure that our readership – a diverse market of 18,000 students – were represented and responsibly informed. We tried, through education, irreverence, and sober editorializing, to make people aware of the issues that directly impacted them. We became invested in the betterment of the university and its students in a way that few appreciated – certainly not the administration or students’ council who were often the targets of our investigation. Yet our goal, as always, was to ensure that students were informed and empowered. Lofty goals, but ones we took seriously.

Each day we laughed, cried, railed against the system, and rejoiced in our successes. We were there for each other in good times and bad. We also partied as hard as we worked – compressing as much release as we could in our limited down-time.

Of course, time passes. And, like others, friendships that you believe will last forever fade into memory as work, family, and life give you other avenues in which to invest your passion. Personally, there are people that I haven’t spoken to in 10 years, who I once spent over half my day with each and every day – others are kept in touch with via semi-regular e-mails.

But the passionate fire that The Gazette once stoked in us has yet to die out – it only smolders. And for one night, as over 150 of us gather around to catch up, reminisce, and share stories, that passion will burn. No matter how far-flung we may find ourselves, no matter where life has taken us, we all have one common tie that binds us tighter than anything else – a little student newspaper that didn’t know when to quit.

Simply put, those who made The Gazette a significant part of their lives cared. We cared about our university and our readership – and that’s why so many of us return today to celebrate 100 years of this fine publication. And we’ll raise a glass to the passion that’s fuelled the fires that have kept The Gazette burning for a century – and will keep it burning bright for a century more.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Don’t Let Mother Strike – Fire Her Instead

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By Jason Menard

The mother who’s fed up and can’t take it anymore, pitching a tent on her front lawn and declaring that she’s on strike from parenting shouldn’t be allowed to walk out – she should be fired!

Complaining that her children are unruly, disrespectful, and unwilling to help out around the house, she chooses to stage a grandstanding display for the masses deftly attempting to deflect the blame from where it should lie – herself.

Now, let me state that I know intimately how difficult it is for a single mother to make a go of it in today’s world. But I also know there are many single mothers – and fathers – out there who are making it work. They’re able to be proud of their children and these kids are often more responsible and dedicated that their colleagues from two-parent homes.

I also know unruly kids who, despite living with two parents, are veritable hellions – destructive, uncontrollable, and unpleasant to be around.

And in both cases, the majority of the blame falls to the parent or parents.

Kids need boundaries. Parents want to be their kids’ friends and not come across as the bad guy. The two don’t always mix. Sometimes parenting’s difficult, sometimes it downright sucks. And there’s nothing worse than having to see the sadness or disappointment in your child’s eyes when they’ve had a much-anticipated event or gift taken away for poor behaviour.

It breaks your heart. But it’s also part of the tempering process that will forge our children into responsible adults. Sometimes, you just have to say no – as much as you want to give your children everything and anything they desire, to do so doesn’t teach them the realities of life.

My wife and I aren’t perfect parents by any stretch of the imagination. To some we may be considered strict, in that our kids are severely restricted in their activities on school days. And if requested tasks aren’t completed, then playtime is postponed. Oh, and TV, video games, and computer time? A maximum allotment each day.

Is it easy? Of course not. It’s hard to make a 12-year-old see the value of dedicating time to homework while his friends, often from the same class, are out playing in the street in front of him. And while their parents may not see the value of putting their kids to bed early, we know that our kids need a set amount of sleep. If that means going to bed earlier than their friends do (or, more likely, say they do) then so be it. We’ll be the bad guy.

In any case – and this includes our own children – negative behaviour can be traced to parenting decisions. And once a behaviour is ingrained, whether it be coming out of bed repeatedly at night or refusing to sit at the dinner table to eat, it only gets harder to change as they get older. After all, if the children have been conditioned to accept one reality, why should it come as a surprise that they’re resistant to changes to their status quo?

Sympathetic to the plight of the single mother, her status does not allow her to abdicate her role as a parent. However, her lack of judgment is apparent in her reference to the state of her kids’ rooms (I’m sure people through whose homes Hurricane Katrina did go through would love to switch places, even today).

Sure, you can say the kids are old enough to know better. But if you’ve grown up all your life being told that blue is green, why should you be expected to believe otherwise just because of a calendar? These kids have grown up with behaviour that’s been accepted to this point, so is it their fault that they behave selfishly?

Unfortunately, empathy comes later in life. As we get older, we are able to look back and appreciate more the travails we put our parents through. But as children, adolescents, and teenagers, we live in a world that’s very small – it revolves around us and our friends. It is only through the restrictions and guides that our parents set that we develop into well-rounded adults, capable of accepting responsibility and making sound decisions. If we’re not taught that, then whose fault is it?

If this mother didn’t want her house to turn into a pig sty, then perhaps she should have made her kids clean the room. If they refused, then luxuries would be restricted. If they continued to refuse, then there would be consequences – certainly one that wouldn’t involve a foosball table. It may be hard, it may require patience and stubbornness, but eventually the delineation between parent and child, rule-maker and rule-follower would have been set. No one ever said parenting is easy – and it isn’t. But the rewards in the end far outweigh the challenges.

Instead, this striking mother has chosen to teach her children another lesson. One where when life gets too tough, or you don’t get your way, instead of working through it together in a rational manner, you simply give up and walk away from your responsibilities.

Forget a strike. This should be a lockout.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

English Doesn’t Excuse Ignorance

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By Jason Menard

After participating in a global conference call, I have come to the conclusion that I am an ignoramus. The problem is that I can only say that in two languages. While I’m not alone in this situation, we, as a society, continue to revel in our ignorance instead of embracing a chance to improve our stature.

I had the pleasure of participating in a conference call with colleagues around the world, from Russia to Venezuela and all points in between. And guess what language it was in? That’s right – English.

As I sat through the meeting, chatting convivially with my cohorts in my mother tongue, it slowly dawned upon me that they were conversing with a dexterity and alacrity of which I could only dream. They were laughing, joking, and speaking in confident tones, navigating the English language – occasionally in a more cumbersome manner than normal, but still in a way that puts us to shame.

As I listened to these people who speak two, three, even more languages with confidence, I began to feel shame. While I’m fluent in French, and I can also understand a fair bit of Spanish and Portuguese, I felt shame about the way that we look at language in this country.

Whereas other countries look at multilingualism as a normal part of their everyday life, many of us continue to look at bilingualism as an imposition. Instead of embracing the opportunity that learning a new language offers us, we close our minds and assume that, simply because we don’t encounter a language in our day-to-day lives, we don’t need to learn it.

We couldn’t be more wrong. While we may not utter the phrase “Speak White,” we live it by our insistence that the world must come to us, instead of us meeting the world half-way. And in any language, actions speak louder than words.

This insular attitude persists, even in the reaction to our school curriculum. Reading through the literature that my son brought home with him from his first day of school, there was a note explaining why French was being taught in the schools. The fact that some need an explanation as to why one of Canada’s two official languages is being taught to Canadian students should be an embarrassment.

Already our children don’t receive enough language training. The level of language education is inadequate and leaves our students unprepared when confronted with an actual French speaker. In high school, graduation requires only two credits in French. And yet still people feel this is to onerous.

Yes, but there may be those of you who will never travel outside of English-speaking countries. So why should you learn French? Simple. It helps your English.

I like to consider myself the perfect test case. All though my elementary school and into high school, English grammar was an afterthought. With the focus on reading comprehension and displaying the ability to express your understanding of the reading, not enough focus was placed on the basics of language construction. We could understand the paragraph, but were unable to craft a sentence.

My English was passable, but certainly not eloquent in my youth. I could express myself well verbally and was able to string a sentence together. But I wasn’t cogniscent of the how’s and why’s of language. That came later on in my life, when I started taking Latin and French at higher levels.

There I learned how a sentence is constructed. There I learned the basic grammar rules that allow language to escape its pedestrian roots and literally fly off the pages. It was through learning about various clauses, tenses, and agreements in French and Latin that I was able to apply that knowledge to my English speaking and writing, and understand the correlation.

Forget the fact that languages allow us to understand each other better. Forget the fact that an appreciation for someone’s mother tongue enables us to bridge cultural and physical gaps. The greatest gift that learning another language has to offer is the ability to improve the way we speak our own.

This world is shrinking. Even during my not-so-lengthy stay on this planet to date, I’ve seen a marked shift in the diversification of Canadian society. While our canvas was fairly monochrome in the past, now the image is increasingly being enriched by a multitude of different colours, swirling together to create a cultural mosaic that’s striking in its beauty. The Internet has rendered the farthest corners of the world just a click away. And yet we continue to resist embracing diversity in language.

The world is literally at our doorstep. The question is, why do we continue to bar the door? And why are we afraid of opening it to a world of new experiences and self-improvement?

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

What Happens When the Promise of a New Day Gets Broken?

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By Jason Menard

Today marked the first day of school for many of our children. Little faces were aglow at the thought of re-acquainting with old friends and meeting new ones. Older faces were awash with a mix of anticipation and anxiety wondering where they’ll fit in the social pecking order.

All in all, it’s a day of promise – one where we hope for the future. Most importantly, it’s a day of fun and the anticipation of more days of fun ahead. While we want our kids to savour each and every moment of their days, it’s hard not to feel a little jealous about the freedom that their lives carry.

For them, the promise of a new day is always positive, but the true test of life comes when, as we get older, that promise gets broken.

The question is often asked as to why gossip rags and tabloid TV are so popular? Why do soap operas capture the imagination of so many? Why do we get lost in the search of fantasy? The answer is that we’re obsessed with an idealized version of life, the kind of which we’re not likely to obtain. And that promise of an unlimited future we enjoyed as a child, slowly ebbs away under the eroding forces of everyday life.

Driving past any schoolyard, we are regaled with the sounds of joy: raucous laughter and squeals of delight. We experience so much as youth and enjoy so much more, one has to wonder where does that sense of joy go as we get older?

Bogged down by financial constraints, time commitments, and interpersonal challenges, we spend too much time focusing on the can’t-dos and the negatives, instead of appreciating the positives. Every joy comes with a cost, which tempers our ability to fully feel everything that life has to offer. As a child, we enjoy the experience, as an adult we take measured joy out of the activity, balancing it with the financial cost and its impact on our budget.

That’s why we love the tabloids and that’s why we’re obsessed with stars. They’re not living beyond our wildest dreams – they’re living our wildest dreams! They’re living life free from the constraints that shackle us down and prevent us from exploring and expressing joy to its fullest. They have the financial wherewithal and time to enjoy the best that life has to offer without worrying about family budgets and mortgages.

The old adage states that money doesn’t buy happiness. And that’s true, but money does buy you the opportunity to maximize your return on life’s investment. Having the financial wherewithal to allow the mundane aspects of day-to-day life to recede into the distance doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy. But it does provide a freedom that we average folk just can’t enjoy – and that’s why we so hungrily gobble up the tabloid garbage.

And that’s also why we take such pleasure in discussing their failures. We don’t build them up to break them down – instead, we break them down because we can’t be built up ourselves to that level. If we can’t enjoy that idealized lifestyle, then we don’t want others to do so either.

It certainly isn’t an attractive aspect of humanity. In fact, it’s downright ugly. And it’s also a taste for schadenfreude that we acquire. After all, our kids are living life blissfully ignorant of the challenges that they’re going to face. They’re living in the here and now, not budgeting and forecasting for the future. That’s our job as parents and our jobs as adults.

Sometimes life throws you curveballs. Sometimes you get hit by that pitch. But as painful as it may be, getting hit by that pitch offers you an opportunity to get on base and, eventually, come around to score. Of course, some of us will be tagged out at second, some of us will come tantalizing close to home plate, only to be met by the catcher. And others of us will circle the bases and add another run to the board. Life’s not offering us promises, it’s offering us potential – and how we use that potential is up to us.

It’s forgetting that potential that prevents us from being happy. Sometimes we forget and lose our way, weighed down by the challenges that we’re facing. Instead of meeting the day with hopeful anticipation, we face it with grim resolve, stoically ‘getting through’ the day, instead of relishing every moment.

Our kids have it right. They don’t live Utopian lives: they face peer pressure and rejection on the school yard; they carry the weight of their parents’ struggles with them; and they are facing a future as full of uncertainty as promise. Yet still they’re able to laugh long and loud – they’re not wasting the freedom and joy that life has to offer. The key is to do the same as an adult. It’s not about forgetting about your challenges, it’s about maximizing the good in your day and dealing with the bad, but not letting the latter taint your appreciation of the former. It’s simple to say, but not so easy to do, but it’s something many of us have to get better at doing.

In the end, living in spite of life is no way to live. And when we look back on life do we want to say we endured it or enjoyed it?

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved