Commitment and the Senator

I, so far,
am blogging today
am very well fed
haven't touched my taxes
made 50 calls this week
ate less cheese
told my family I loved them
drank plenty of water
exercised regularly, but not frequently
am forgiving, but have not forgiven
laugh every hour
and i don't know how to measure the progress of the world

I should add,
to pay off my debts
to foster abundance
to always put my own misfortunes in perspective
to spread joy
and to honour my commitments.

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Thursday I met with a Canadian Senator. When I found out this was going to happen, I was shaking in my boots. A business associate had set up the meeting, and when he said Senator I had really just assumed that he would take care of meeting with her and getting her on board for this documentary project. We are really asking a lot of her - we want her and her family to be in a documentary about their experience as refugees. It's a big commitment to open up your family to being on television.

So he's in Vancouver this week and on Tuesday he said "Can you meet with the Senator?"

By yesterday morning, I felt strangely calm about the whole thing. I went up to North York to meet her at a high school, walked into the cafeteria by accident (it smelled good), then made my way to the library. The school's students had organized an International Conference on Human rights. The gymnasium was packed with close to a thousand students from four surrounding high schools. The students were all there voluntarily. Although I'm sure some of them just went for the prospect of skipping two days of class and getting free muffins and coffee (I never got coffee in high school!), the crowd seemed very engaged. They were there to talk about how to make the world a better place.

Organized by the kids? I was astounded. Where does all this enthusiasm and energy go when you become an adult? Into your career, into your family? Do you just forget about what's on the news? Does it just become entertainment, a bother?

At 10:30, a small, unassuming 60ish woman, who I took to be the Senator's assistant, walked up to me and said, "Hi, I'm M---. Thanks for coming down."

I was taken aback. Wasn't she doing me a favour by sitting with me in her only break, after getting up at 5AM to drive 4 hours to Toronto from Ottawa, then speaking for 90 minutes straight?

We met for a full half-hour and she agreed right off the bat to be in the film. In fact, she made it clear that the meeting was just a formality. She was in as soon as she received the e-mail from my partner. I guess she just wanted to meet and make sure I'm not a scammer.

She's doing it because she wants to make the world a better place. That's why I'm doing it too. And that I want to make a film.

It's good to know that you can still want to make the world a better place when you're George Bush's age.

This is exciting news!

Back to logging and capturing, logging and capturing.