Not with a whimper part two

So here we are, on the 22nd day of the 1st month of the 1st year of the 2nd half of the 2nd decade of the 21st millenium. All those ones and twos - they have to mean something, don't they? Some bizarre, post-binary omen... The perfect time to present...

It's the End of The Festival Celebrating the End of the World as We Know it!!! Here's the second half of the...you know the rest...

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

Steve Carrel and Keira Knightley meet up two weeks before a giant meteor, “Matilda”, is due to hit the planet Earth and destroy all life forms. He is an unsatisfied insurance salesman who, when she apologizes for ruining his life, says “I had a big head start.” She is a slightly flaky optimist who misses the last plane home to England before all commercial flights are grounded. They go on a road trip to try to achieve some meaning in their last remaining days, he to attempt a reunion with his high school girlfriend, she to find a plane that will take her home. Along the way, they meet all kinds of people who are dealing with the upcoming end of the world in their own ways, by “finally taking that pottery class” to doing heroin (“Bucket list!) to just carrying on as does the news anchor who decides to keep broadcasting right until the final day. There are some truly funny scenes, including one in a roadside eatery, “Friendzy's”, where hedonism reigns. The truth of the movie lies in its emotional veracity and fearlessness in facing the sadness at its heart.

Steve Carell is amazingly good in this movie. I would compare him to Jack Lemmon in The Apartment, one of my favourite funny/sad movies. Both play men who have allowed their lives to be empty because they don't believe that they deserve better. They are hapless and brave and sweet. Like Lemmon, Carell has the most heartbreakingly sad smile, and I can't watch the last few scenes without a tear in my eye. This is the best of the “end of the world” movies, with the most consistently good writing and the best mixture of the comic and tragic. If you see only one apocalyptic movie before we all die in a blazing fireball...

Melancholia

First of all, I would cut out the first 25 minutes of the movie, and hope that everyone in the theatre is so tired and depressed at this point that they don't notice. The movie starts out with a long sequence involving the elaborate wedding reception of a woman which is being hosted and choreographed by her sister and her wealthy brother-in-law. It's not that this is poorly done or lacks dramatic tension. It's just that it has almost nothing to do with the second half of the movie, which takes place some months later as the newlywed woman leaves a mental hospital and goes to stay at her sister's house. It's the same characters and setting as the wedding scenes, but really nothing in the first half is necessary to the second. 'Sright, Lars von Triers, I do think I know better than you how to edit a movie.

So as this visit begins, rumours and speculation abound regarding a newly discovered planet which some believe is on a collision course with Earth. The married sister, Charlotte Rampling, tries to avoid thinking about this possibility, while her smug husband Keifer Sutherland reassures their son that this is impossible. As you might guess by the movie's inclusion in my film festival, he's wrong and also absolutely no help as the two sisters try to protect the boy from the horrors of the situation while coping themselves with the inevitable annihilation of their planet. It is a chilling film, emotionally authentic, and incredibly moving. And that is the way the film festival ends, both with a whimper and with a bang.

THE END?

Not with a whimper

I have a fantasy of curating a film festival at some crucial part in our history – the turn of the new millenium would have been ideal but I'm not sure I can wait for the next one – featuring only movies that are about the end of the world. Like planetary annihilation end of the world, ones where the military doesn't save the day by blowing something up. It seems odd to me that there are so many of these movies. We are as a society justifiably worried about our world-ending behaviour, but other than “The Road”, I can't think of another recent movie that deals with slow environmental planetary death of our own making. We prefer to outsource our doom to meteors and invasions from outer space. At any rate, here are four movies that I would definitely put on the schedule. In this order, lightest to gloomest, so that you are guaranteed to leave the theatre either considering throwing yourself under a bus or else thanking your lucky stars that this is all fiction.

This Is The End

On the surface, this is definitely not my kind of movie, and I don't know why I picked it out from the library shelf. It stars a whole bunch of actors whose popularity has mystified me for years, but whose movies I'll be more open-minded about in the future. It has Seth Rogan and Jonah Hill and guys like that who always seem to travel in a pack. They are all playing characters with the same names and resumes as their own, though they are probably exaggerating their personality traits. I probably missed some of the humour because I don't know them as well as their fans do, but I still found the movie very funny.

Seth Rogan and Jay Baruchel are best friends who go to a party at James Franco's new house against Jay 's wishes. The house is filled with pretentious celebrities, all playing versions of themselves. Michael Cera seems to be acting out someone else's dark side, because I doubt that he even fantasizes about being Michael Cera the absolute pig and self-centred ass-hole, doing lines of coke off of starlets' buttocks to the amusement of the other guests. After a giant pit opens out in front of the house, most of the party guests die in the immediate aftermath including Michael Cera's epic death. Left is a core group of guys who try to figure out what is going on and how to survive, as LA burns in the distance. Is it the apocalypse or just a really big earthquake? There are probably a lot of in-jokes that I didn't get, and a lot of it is crude and juvenile, but enough of the humour got through to my 52 year old self that I laughed a lot. All the way to the end of the world....

It's A Disaster

A group of friend meet for their monthly”couples” brunch, one of them bringing her new boyfriend to be introduced to her oldest and dearest. It's clear that this particular group is starting to outgrow one another as some of the relationships are beginning to fray a bit at the edges. Most of the men would rather be watching the game (there's always a game on, isn't there?) than visiting with one another, and some of the couples seem to be experiencing a bit of tension. Just as it starts to seem that the title of the movie is referring to this awkward social get-together, something happens “out there”. TVs and internet connections aren't working, so the group can't really get a clear handle on what's happening, but eventually a neighbour in a haz-mat suit appears at the door. They learn that “dirty bombs” have been dropped all over the U.S. including one that is very close to them.

The scenario is played for both comedy and drama, which really mix quite well here. All the characters are simultaneously trying to cope with their imminent death while still caught up in all the personal dramas that they are involved in. There is a funny scene in which the couple who is perennially late for all the brunches shows up outside the barricaded house and tries to convince their friends, who clearly think they had this coming, to unseal the door and let them in. They really should learn to arrive on time.  The final scene of the movie when all of the characters realize that death is inevitable, is about as humorous as you could possibly imagine it to be under the circumstances. We now pause for an intermission and popcorn break.

A Timely Post (ho-ho-ho oh no)

Often when people write about depression, they rely heavily on metaphor to describe the phenomena.  This, I've found, isn't entirely satisfying because you don't alwaysshare the writer's feelings about whatever they are comparing to.  For example, Winston Churchill talked about the "black dog" of depression that stalked him through life.  Personally, I like dogs of all colours and they cheer me up quite a bit.  I'd be inclined to turn around and scratch behind its ears, myself.  I liken depression more like sinking in quicksand. You can either let it happen or struggle against it, but you will still end up paralyzed and suffocated.  But who knows, there may be people out there who find quicksand comforting and womb-like.  Like a warm bath, it is...  So, putting metaphor aside, I will write about some of the thought patterns that I experience.  This is by no means a comprehensive list!

"I've made a mess of everything" - I get like this when, while depressed, I fail to do something that I meant to.  It starts with beating myself up over the one thing, but often turns into a laundry list of all the similar times I've not done something, followed up by a damaging conclusion about my character.  A recent example: it was a nice day and I "should have" taken my cat Jasper out for a stroll as we hadn't been for a while.  I just didn't feel up to it, so I didn't do it.  I started thinking about all the other times when I hadn't taken him out, and then what a sad and disappointing life he's had because of me and how, in conclusion, I am a selfish, lazy person who should never own a pet and should have let another person buy Jasper because he would have been so much happier if he'd been allowed to roam free.  Jasper, meantime, was siting next to me purring....

"I just can't" - This caused me to miss a LOT of school when I was younger.  Everything kind of lumps together into a gigantic ordeal and can't be seen as a series of small things that actually might be manageable.  Mind you, high school is a bit of an ordeal, isn't it?  A more mundane example.  A few years back when I was depressed, I had run out of food at home.  Every day for maybe three or four days, I would think about ordering pizza. Then I'd picture myself picking up a phone, dialling, telling someone what I want, changing out of my pajamas to answer the door, walking downstairs to get the pizza etc. It was too much in aggregate, if that's the right word, so I would scrounge through the freezer and get some stale bread to make toast, which was just about at the limit of my energy.

"Even if it does get better..." - I know, as anyone does who's ever thought about it, that no emotional state is permanent. The nature of feelings is that they are constantly in flux. So when someone says, as my wonderful doctor used to, that no matter how bad I feel, I know that it won't last forever.  A depressed person will counter, either verbally or mentally, that after the depression abates, whatever more positive state of mind follows will also not last, and that the depression is bound to come back.  Over and over again. Which, when a person is in pain, is not easy to contemplate.  My belief is that this thought pattern leads to suicide more than any other. It can also lead to apathy during therapy and maybe non-compliance with appointment schedules.  And there really isn't any good way to combat it because for most people who have had clinical depression, it is a fact. Unfortunately, it's a fact that gets a lot of airplay when you're depressed.  A few weeks ago, I had a dream where my dream self was in a bad way and was visualizing an endless series of grey days ahead of her without any respite.  I woke up in the middle of the night, and thought, "oh, come on! Isn't it bad enough that I have to think this way all day?  Can't I at least get a break when I sleep?"  Then I feel back asleep and had an absurd Bollywood-like dream in which I didn't even appear.  Thank god for answered prayers!  (Or, as many non-native English speakers say, "Thanks god!" which I find delightfully direct.)

One more.  "This has nothing to do with you" - which is really hard for people around the depressed person to deal with. Depression is a very internal experience.  As opposed to manic states, or schizoid ones, the person with it is not in denial at all, but really can't see how it's anyone else's concern and why do they need to explain themselves to anyone.  I think this is a self-preservation technique, because a depressed person is overwhelmed with how they themselves are feeling, and can't even begin to think about other people. Often suicides will say / write things like "everyone will be better off without me", which is an extension of the same thing, along with the "I've messed everything up" thought.  It's all mix-and-match for us depressive types and you never know what's coming up next.

Let's face it, it's all hard. I probably know some people who have never experienced any sort of emotional trouble in their lives, but in all likelihood, they didn't register on my radar as someone interesting whom I would like to know better. My massage therapist, also lovely and wonderful, would talk about the emotional body as a container, which expands to contain as much feeling as you will let it. When you allow yourself to experience large emotions without reservation, you are increasing your ability to know all emotions more fully. We damaged people, through and not in spite of our flaws, can become something quite wonderful, eventually. As Leonard Cohen says: There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

My oyster

You know how really successful people sometimes say that they put their pants on one leg at a time? The other morning, I was getting dressed using this technique. The only problem was that I put the first leg into the wrong pantleg! You may correctly surmise that I am not a really successful person from this true anecdote. Hey, if I could make stuff up, I'd be an unsuccessful novelist, instead of an unsuccessful blogger whose entire readership can be linked to me through genetic fingerprinting.

People have called me an under-achiever. “You're too smart to be doing that kind of work.” “Why don't you go back to school?” On bad days, I will join this chorus. Why do I a job that I share with some laughably and scarily unimpressive people, whose antics and failings I could put down here, but I would be opening myself up to lawsuits? Trust me, the stories I could tell... So why do I find myself in their company? Am I just lazy?

If I'm going to be absolutely honest, I do have to own up to being less than an energy powerhouse. Once I was even fired from a restaurant I worked at, not for slacking off, but for saying to someone who asked that I would never want to be the manager because it was too much work and I was too lazy. Restauranteurs are among the last supporters of the suppression of workers' rights. Which is one reason I eventually did go back to school to take a course in Child and Youth work. It has solved the problem of unethical employers for the most part. My main motivation, though, was that I wanted to do something of more significance than just preparing that meal that you didn't feel like cooking. I envisioned myself working in the mean streets, in some gritty urban environment, rescuing teens who were battling for their lives against addiction and exploitation. But here I am, many years later, finding my true joy in working with primary school students. Struggles they have in plenty, but a lot of it involves forming their letters and stringing them into words and sentences. So have I succeeded in my career?

I really liked school when I was young. I like the learning part of it anyways, and found it very easy, but I was often overwhelmed by the social situations. I was very shy when I was younger, and I didn't get a lot of positive reinforcement from my teachers. I didn't get a lot of anything, actually. A couple of times people have told me that such and such teacher thought that I was one student in a million or some kind of hyperbolic comment, but they never said it to me. Far less did any teacher I ever had make me feel liked and accepted. They never made me feel special or gifted or like anything at all. If they tried to, they weren't using any language that I was listening to. School was just another place to be unseen by the adults in my life.

The playwright Eve Ensler said “When we give the world what we want most, we save ourselves.” That's what I want to do. EI try to give every child that I work with at least a little part of me, looking right at them, and showing them that I like what I see. I will who catch Zeinab's eye when passing her in the hallway and am rewarded by the appearance of a dimple. I'll look at non-reader Toby's puzzle drawings and hears the stories of the characters he sees in them (“This guy can breathe underwater, but he didn't know he could..this guy is the father and he's sending his son to his room because he failed a test..”). I get it when Hend with a background of family trauma asks me to read Scaredy Squirrel with her for the third time in as many days (“If all else fails, play dead..”) I love it that Amelia's friendship club has rules like “Once you're in Friendship Club, you can never leave Friendship Club” (it's okay because F.C. takes Fridays off) and I spent a whole period once drawing and colouring bamboo shoots for her Panda Folder (that was during her early Panda phase).

I don't know if my students are going to remember me specifically when they get older. I don't really care. When I am with them, I show them that I see them. They are miraculous in their individuality and complexity and I try to make sure that they know it. That's not such a bad way to make a living, is it? 

Happy birthdays to us.

A few years ago (discerning readers who know me well will be able to figure out exactly how many years) I was working with a group of grade one students. Their assignment was to create a dragon with its unique traits, appearance, likes and dislikes and so on. I asked a boy about his dragon, and the first thing he said was that it was 49 years old. “Forty-nine,” I said. “That's exactly how old I am!” Instantly, the entire table dropped their pencils and stared up at me. “You're forty-nine?” said the boy. “I only said that because it was the biggest number I could think of!” I laughed, said, “Oh, there's lots of bigger numbers than that.”

I guess it shouldn't be a surprise how often really young children are shocked by our tremendous years. They often can only count up to twenty, and unless they have grandparents around celebrating birthdays with them don't know anyone who admits to being much over forty. Every one of their own precious years seems to have taken an eon to achieve. So forty-nine, yes, that's huge.

It's huge and it's also wonderful, and it bothers me that this idea gets so little purchase in our culture. When I told the dragon story in the staffroom later, the “biggest number I could think of “ line elicited a gigantic intake of breath, as if I was telling the story to illustrate how cruel children are or something. I think the people listening to me were imagining how they themselves would have felt if a child had said that to them. I'll be fair – for a long time I would have had that kind of reaction to the question “why are you so fat?” Innocently meant, but hard to feel neutral about if it's something that you are ashamed of. I think that a lot of people do feel ashamed of being old and assume that others feel the same way. I don't know how many times I've heard a person make an off the cuff remark to someone like, “oh, but you're older than I am,” only to apologize afterward. Yes, I am older than you. And you are younger than me. What's to apologize for? Age is a fact, not a character flaw.

What really surprises me is that the baby boomers have not embraced this idea yet. Their massive demographic presence has had so many positive effects on our culture. Think of the conversation around creating retirement and nursing homes that are humane and person (rather than institution) centred, the push for more investment in good palliative care, the ubiquity of classic rock stations.... well, maybe not so much that last one.

A quick aside: I hear some of you out there asking yourselves, “Isn't she a baby boomer too?” No, I am actually not. I am a member of Generation X . The term was coined by Douglas Coupland in his book of the same name, where he writes of the struggle that he and his friends had coming of age only to find that all the grown-up jobs were held firmly in the grasp of the baby boomers and that the best they could manage with their B.A.s was a job temping in the companies where they aspired to have real careers. Douglas Coupland is one year younger than I am. Therefore I am, like him, a member of Generation X. You slightly younger folks are free to assume the term Gen. X for yourselves. Whew, I've been wanting to get that off my chest for awhile! Back to my main point.

So the generation that precedes mine has continually set a cultural tone that serves their agenda. Yet our aging boomers are among the worst at really embracing the philosophy that age is a good thing. At best, they will say, getting older isn't the problem, it's looking older, as they sign up for another yoga class, another session with an esthetician. Apparently this is much worse in the U.S. An excellent writer and memoirist whose work I love, Catherine Gildiner tells of going back to that country for her 25^th high school reunion and having more than one tanned, tight-skinned woman pull her aside and ask whether there was such a thing as hair dye in Canada! Seems it didn't occur to them that anyone would willingly allow their gray hair to show. Oh, our American cousins...

One teacher I work with, a baby boomer, explains why she started dying her hair a few years ago. She says that if she shows her gray, her students will see only that and dismiss her as being old and unworthy of attention. Well, I think it's our job to dispel, not acquiesce to, such ideas. Why not present yourself as a wise elder, holder and dispenser of much knowledge? As I often tell my kids, right before they can verbalize their shock at my newly revealed great age (52. And a half) “Just think of how much I've learned in all these years!” Our age should be considered a badge of honour, of courage, an indication of experience lived and wisdom gained. So come on, boomers, don't be scared. It's a number. It's yours. It's okay.

The town that death (or at least dyeing) forgot

This summer I was back in my old home town staying at my brother's place and helping him spruce up the patio. I decided that the white wicker chairs would look sharper if the cushion covers were a dark shade of red instead of the dusty rose that they had always been. No problem – the covers are cotton, a simple run through the washing machine with some Tintex and we're done.

The next time we were at Jean Coutu, I looked around for that little mini-display of fabric dye which every drug store I know has hidden somewhere. It's that “somewhere” which is the biggest challenge in obtaining dye. It doesn't really fit into any standard category of product. It's like shoelaces or lint rollers. Asking for help is always my last resort, even in stores where sales assistants are in abundance. My general strategy in any large store is to look absolutely everywhere until my head is aching and my temper is frayed and then finally track down someone doing price checks and ask where the HELL do you keep the artichokes?? (My other bete noire, categorization-wise). It's implicit in my tone of voice and the fiery look in my eyes that I would like to curse the whole retail industry as I meekly follow the guy in the smock to aisle 4. So at Jean Coutu I finally did deign to ask one of the salesclerks where the fabric dye was kept, only to be told that they don't carry it. (Stay with me, this story has a big payoff at the end.)

All week, the same thing happened. Home Hardware (in my neighbourhood the ultimate source of rainbow hued fabric dye), Canadian Tire, the grocery store, Dollarama, Giant Tiger. At GT I was told that they used to carry it but don't any more. At this point I am beginning to suspect that there is a town by-law that forbids the alteration of fabric colours and speculate as to the rationale of such a law. I know when I lived there in the eighties and was attempting to create a pseudo-punk look, we used to dye things all the time. Ask my cousin about the time she cooked a goose for a big family dinner and realized that she was using the same roast pan in which she had dyed a skirt after the gravy inexplicably came out a shade of sick greasy blue. Maybe that kind of thing created a backlash against colour modification, and the town fathers decided that, damn it, if God had wanted you to wear purple long johns, he'd have made them that way.

Finally my brother and I are at Shopper's and we run into an acquaintance working there who is a virtual oral historian of the availability of fabric dye in this small town. Who used to carry it, when they stopped, and most importantly, which store is the final hold-out in this town-wide prohibition on fabric dye. It's Buckaroo's, just down the street, but unfortunately they closed at 5:00 and we'll have to wait until tomorrow to go. (Hang in, I'm almost done..)

Next afternoon, we go to Buckaroo's. I do my usual aisle-wandering, which in a dollar store is never a bad thing anyways. Finally I go up to the cash and ask the man working there where they keep their fabric dye. He gestures with his head behind where I'm standing, and sure enough, directly across from the cash is that once-familiar looking rack of Tintex fabric dye. As I pick up two boxes of crimson dye and he rings them through, I express my surprise at the odd choice of location, so close to the cashier. He laughs and tells us that they have to keep the dye where they can keep an eye on it because (punchline!) it gets shop-lifted if they don't! Shop-lifted! My mind is a-whirl with conflicting thoughts at this startling piece information. Well, of course it gets shop-lifted! The town has created a virtual black market for the stuff, like blue jeans in Soviet Russia. Then I think, maybe it's the other way around. Maybe all the other retailers were losing money and on the brink of bankruptcy by carrying this valuable commodity and having it walk out the door stuffed down the boot tops of local criminals. Which is chicken, which egg?

All I know is that for the rest of my visit, I was looking askance at anyone wearing an oddly coloured piece of clothing. And that included my bohemian nephew. So where exactly did you buy those red pants, Ryan? 

Novembrance Day

A big buzz-word (buzz-phrase?) in education these days is critical thinking.

The thought is that, with our fast changing world, we currently have no idea what people will be doing for a living 10 -15 years from now, and so it is impossible to prepare our students with the specific skill sets that will fit into an unimaginable job market. We're encouraged instead to help them develop character traits and work habits that can help them adapt to whatever they may end up doing. Collaborative work, inventive problem solving, and critical thinking.

I mention all of this because Remembrance Day is approaching, and I have a feeling that given recent events, this year we will be even more in lock-step than usual. I've already heard predictions that the ceremonies will have “special resonance.” And I am feeling a little queasy.

I work in an elementary school, and I have to say that it is no place for an iconoclast. It's not that I try to be a non-conformist. It's just who I am. Once I went to a workshop on palm-reading, and I was shown the two lines in both of my hands that indicate my innate tendency toward non-conformity. I'll explain it to you as it was said to me. Look at the palm of the hand you use to write with. Check out the edge of your hand between your thumb and index finger. That is where you head line and heart line begin. (Don't ask me which is which, it was just one workshop..) The closer together these two lines are at their beginning, the more of a conformist you are. Mine are a full centimetre apart.

After I'd taken this workshop, I was talking to a friend and we were comparing palms. His head and heart line were completely fused, and although he's an off-centre kind of guy, I have to say that he's also very concerned about what the other off-centred people are up to. He looked at my hand and said, “Maybe if you really concentrate, you can get your two lines to move closer together.” I just looked at him, thinking, why would I want to do that? See, the conformist and the non-conformist will never agree about how the other should want to be.

All this digression to say that I am and always will be a questioner and a seeker. For a time I thought that what I needed was to find a guru, or to have one find me, or at least to discover a complete system of thought that would sort everything out and make me happy, healthy and wise. But the palms don't lie. Unlike my dear friend with the fused lines, that will never be the answer for me. For me, (not to get all zen koan-ish) the answer is the question. The answer is to question. Think, wonder, change your mind, ask again and never never accept what someone else is telling you without doing all of those things. I will never wear something, say something, sing something just because it's what people “do”. If I haven't examined it thoroughly from as many angles as I can, and come up with my own good justifications for doing something, then I am not doing it.

So here we are coming up to Remembrance Day. All ceremony and symbolism. All cliche and cant. We pin those red poppies on all the children and file them into the assembly, where they hear or recite the same lines they always do. Take up our quarrel with the foe. All those who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedoms. And so on.

Well, what's so bad about that? What's wrong with taking a few moments to acknowledge .... acknowledge what, exactly? That some people have a career that sometimes leads to their death and that it's too bad when that happens? Okay, I can go along with that. Here's to the coal miners and the firefighters and the nurses in emergency wards, and airline pilots and flight attendants, and the soldiers too. That's not why we're at this assembly though. We are here because we have been told that there is something intrinsically valuable and honourable about dying “for your country”. Soldiers “answered the call”, and some “paid the ultimate sacrifice” while fighting to “protect our freedoms”.

Yet how often is that actually what they were fighting for? World war one? Korea? Afghanistan? Aren't jingoism, and empire-building ambitions, and xenophobia, and paranoia (not to mention economic and diplomatic expediency) more often the driving force for sending soldiers into another country to fight? And I just don't see these ideas being presented to our young people. There is no discussion, no critical thinking. Just the same message over and over. If we aren't looking, with our students, using all our 20/20 hindsight at our past successes and failures, and teach our children to do the same, what can we expect for the future?

What happens to our society when we don't encourage our children to practice critical thinking, whatever the issue, whatever the discomfort? What kind of citizenry do we get when certain types of rhetoric shut down debate? We will never be able to take a clear-eyed view at our current world conflicts. We will not have the skills to dissect and analyze the stated aims of our national leaders. We will have a state that purportedly acts on our behalf and we will not know how to put the brakes on. We will find ourselves confronted by complex international situations, and we will not have the vocabulary required to express or even understand what we ourselves truly think and believe.

I am intensely aware of and grateful for the many freedoms that we have in our country. However, I think that gratitude is misplaced when it is given to the military. I am thankful for the trade unionists, the civil libertarians, the feminists, the artists and writers who fought for our rights and continue to keep vigilance over them. I will honour the sacrifices made by these people, not by attending public ceremonies, but by remaining committed to my individual responsibility to know what I believe in and why, and always to follow my conscience. With no poppies involved.