It's warm enough to think.

Lindsay and I climb down the bluffs at the bottom of Coronation Drive until we're standing on a beach of sand frozen into a form of concrete. The winter storms have lifted up a number of tree trunks from the depths of the lake and have stranded them along its length as far as the eye can see, like abandoned landing craft from "D" Day.

Lindsay loves the beach. She takes off across the hardened sand reveling in the freedom of movement, the joy of working muscles. Excited beyond reason by the sights and smells and sounds.

But my way is blocked. The beach is narrow here and some of the massive trees have barred my passing. To get around, I either have to climb over their slimy hulks or walk knee deep into the frigid waters of the lake.

Instead I sit.

This winter has taken its toll on me in more ways than one. For years I've been able to use these walks with my dog as exercise. I tell people that Lindsay is my Personal Fitness Instructor. She won't let me forget when the time for a walk comes along. She may not be able to read a clock but she knows when its time for a run.

Or used to.

This year our runs have been fragmented by the weather. Icy roads too slippery for walking, great storms dumping snow too deep for passage, temperatures dropping below the level skin freezes. Thick cloud cover deepening the dark of our mornings and nights. I've cut her walks short or have abandoned them altogether.

And its taken its toll on me. My blood pressure is up, my weight is up and the test results from my latest physical aren't even back yet. I've had the benefit of a body that refuses to gain weight no matter how much, or what, I eat. I seldom get ill and if I do it never lasts much more than a day.

So, of course I've abused it. Like being given a Ferrari and never changing the oil or taking it in for a tune up. I've been negligent.

So I can't blame everything on the weather, although that is what Canadians do. Our national pass time. Americans blame politicians, we blame the weather.

But I have to own my own neglect. I have a lot of learning to do about how to eat right. And I have to get back to exercising. My wife and I have parents in the same retirement home and I think about my last visit. I've always thought about them living in the past, but now realize they are the future that awaits me.

Which will come sooner rather than later, if I don't start to make some changes.

So I get up off the log and climb over it, which proves not to be an easy task. Lindsay is far up the beach, dancing in a swirl of seagulls. I begin to run, burdened by winter coat, heavy boots and sand the consistency of cement. I have none of her grace, none of her freedom of movement, none of her joy.

My running is not at all a pretty sight. But its a start.

Every year at this time we meet in mortal combat. Titans clashing and there will be blood lost, almost always my own.

He is devilishly clever and has an array of fiendish devices at his disposal. He seeks my weakest points with the unerring accuracy of Lindsay hunting squirrels.

Within minutes he has me naked and at his mercy, fingers probing deep within body cavities where no other man would dare to go. He has neither compassion nor modesty nor shame.

Oh, but he does have rare power, this one. He has the power over life and death itself. He seeks my vulnerability, probing, prodding with a terrifyingly calm dispassion, seeking for that one defenseless area that will mean my death.

Not an inch of my body misses his evil probing, including stabbing deep within me until I bleed.

I bleed, my very life's blood leaving my body.

But I have prepared for this battle for days. I have put aside my generally negligent lifestyle and have eaten my vegetables and have taken my daily multivitamin and have consumed my water. I have put aside Tim Horton's coffee (sob) for healthier beverages that will strengthen me for this life and death competition. I have exercised. I am prepared. I am The Man.

Do your best you swine, but I am ready and sweet victory will be mine.

I can see the defeat in his eyes as he rips off this gloves and tosses them angrily into the garbage. He knows I have won and his shoulders tremble with defeat. Or are they trembling with fiendish glee?

For he has saved something in reserve, this foul cad, this monster, this disgrace to humanity.

"Anexplorer, you are ten pounds heavier than last year and your blood pressure is up. I'm going to place you on a diet and I'd like you to make it your goal to loose 20 pounds before I see you again next year."

I am stunned. I am speechless. No, these are not words I want to hear. I look at the diet. It is filled with recommendations for all the foods I have been eating in preparation for todays contest. It is one thing to eat this way for a week, but to do it for a year!

Nooooooooo!

He isn't smiling, there is not the least trace of glee in his eyes. But I know, deep in his evil heart he dances the Irish jig. This time he has won.

"And the test results from your blood and urine samples should be back next week. Please book an appointment with the receptionist for us to review the results."

Having defeated me in physical combat, he is now looking forward to crushing me with his science.

I leave, a humbler man.

With a diet in his hand.

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ...

Amazed to find herself alive, Harvard Neuroanatomist Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank.

Today's video from TED (the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference) is one of the most moving experiences you will have this week (honestly it is). What she discovered about how our brains work, will amaze you.

Caution, it is twelve minutes in length, so don't begin unless you have the time available. If you don't have the time, please return when you do, this brilliant video contains contains some of the most powerful and important information you have ever heard. I promise, this is one video you will be thinking about and urging friends to watch for weeks to come.

Yes I have a personality, and now I can prove it. I recently took a personality test over at Whispered Promise's blog.

Here are the results:

"Anexplorer, Here is what they say about your result. Life as an INFJ (Introvert, Intuitive, Feeler, Judger)

"People of this type tend to be: creative, original, and independent; thoughtful, warm, and sensitive; global thinkers with great passion for their unique vision; cautious, deliberate, and planful; organized, productive, and decisive; reserved and polite. The most important thing to INFJs is their ideas, and being faithful to their vision"



The test is obviously based on the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory which comes out of a Jungian perspective on Psychology. The Myers-Briggs is a standard (and standardized) topology that is now used extensively by HR departments around the world.

The test I took at Whispered's site wasn't the Myers-Briggs (it was a lot shorter) but I have taken the Briggs before and the results from Whispered's site were identical to my score on the longer inventory.



The thing about Personality is that it is considered relatively stable once you become an adult. It was 14 years ago that I took the Myers-Briggs and my test results now are the same as back then.

However, the latest edition of Psychology Today has an article from a Positive Psychology perspective claiming Personality can be changed and that what we regard as personality is really just a set of habits. Optimism, for example, would be considered a personality trait and a relatively unchanging aspect of your personality. Indeed, tests in Great Britain showed that Pessimists who win the lottery spend a brief time as optimists but within 6 months have returned to being pessimists.

But according to the article there are some personality traits that are quite amenable to change, among them the "optimism" I was just talking about. Others are courage, joy and (my wife will be relieved to know) passion. By adopting the positive habits that foster these experiences, over time they become second nature.

One of the interesting things about the results in Whispered's Comments section was that all of us who fessed up our scores, without exception, were Introverts. Since only about a third of the general population are Introverts, this raises the question, is blogging where Introverts go to express themselves? Or were the number of people taking the test just not large enough to be a representative sample?



For a link to Whispered's blog and an opportunity to take the test your self, Click Here

Or you can take the longer version of the test and compare your results (72 questions) Here

They are not meant to be encountered in their hundreds. Nature intended them to be parceled out among us, secure in the bosom of their family, playing their appointed role in the running of the home and the raising of the children.

They are the keepers of the family history, the family traditions, the family's darkest secrets.

They are the menders of the torn clothes and bumped heads, the solace for wounded souls and the moral check on our wilder intentions. They are the embodiment of the previous generation against whom we test our metal and our ideas. Against whom we rebel. And love.

The encounter with them is intended to be personal and individual. Meaningful in other words.

But today is Easter and Linda and I are spending the day at our respective parent's retirement home. Just us and a hundred or two other people's grandparents. With their decayed bodies, their wrinkled faces, their limited senses, their diapers and wheel chairs and walkers. All telling each other the same stale stores over and over again on an endless loop, when they can talk at all.

At one time the impact was overwhelming on me. I would encounter them in their vast hordes as if viewing creatures from some other planet, with its unusual smells, slurred talk, limited mobility,
restricted communication, unpredictable requests. Its ugliness. Its landscape foreign and more than a little threatening.

But I'm used to it now. Comfortable with it, in fact. Although still able to be surprised. Today after the Easter meal, the dining room only half filled because so many families have remembered and taken their grandparents and great-grandparents out for the day, the home has arranged its usual Sunday afternoon entertainment.

Today its Martin Wall and I am expecting wave after wave of song from World Wars one and two. The great hall of the retirement home is only half filled and its a tough gig to play. Many of the audience are asleep, heavily medicated or distracted by pain or lack of hearing or sight.

But Wall proves not to be a singer. Instead he is an unusually talented musician. He blends Tchaikovsky with Gershwin, Beatles with Simon and Garfunkel, bounces from electronic key board to grand piano. He doesn't play down to them. Instead he raises them up.

He launches into the theme from Monty Python and the crowd is clapping in time. No one is sleeping now. No one is in pain. No one is elderly or infirm. Suddenly they are young again. And happy.

It is Easter and time for renewal. They have all survived another winter, this crowd of tough survivors, these wounded heroes in the battle against age, that implacable enemy.

For an hour the world is set right and the future holds promise of joy. Or at least just promise.

There is magic in music and we felt its power today.