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One Change – Simple actions matter. » Enter to win a free signed Martin Brodeur jersey!

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All you need is trees. Trees are all you need.

Last night I wrote a bit about death. Things were fine then. It was all so abstract and remote.

Then this morning at about 7:30 AM Suzy stepped into the shower and stepped out in excruciating pain. She hadn't pulled a muscle or twisted. Something random had happened. And we spent the whole day in the critical care unit at the Ottawa General Hospital. For a while there this morning we were talking with doctors about colon cancer, heart attack, pulmonary embolism.

We're still not sure what it was. By this time tomorrow we'll know if it's shingles or a pinched nerve.

Tonight I'm thinking: Maybe I should stop saying I'm ready to look death in the face. Or maybe I should staple my eyes open and yell Bring It On.

Why? Because I was two places today where I felt I needed to wash my hands a lot: The hospital, and a political fundraiser.

Maybe I'm not cut out for this new life I've created for myself, but I'd rather spend time with people who are dealing with reality than those who are trying to spin it.

I got home tonight to find Jasper (9) watching the knock-out Canada-Norway hockey match on TV. I looked at him as I loosened my tie (I only wear ties to political events). He was totally engrossed in the game.

"Jasper, would you mind if we had to live in the one-room cabin in PEI?" I asked.

"Nope. That would be great, Dad."

He didn't even look up.
One room. Family. Treehouse. That's fine.

He's nine. He won't even remember this day. My angst. My effort to take us to the next level. This level's fine. And our fall-back is my favorite place on Earth. So I got nuthin' to worry about.

Bring it on.

A tuft of down

I think about death a lot.

I don't know why, really. Life is great. I'm still close to the median age, and I like how Canadian life expectancy is climbing at about the same pace that the earth circles the sun.

It's fair to say that I don't want to die. My biggest fear is leaving my kids prematurely. I picture Jasper and Simon sad, lonely. Suzy would pause and move on. She's like that. This summer I awoke with a start early one dewey Island morning in the loft at Walden and noticed a tuft of downy feather stuck to the skylight above my head. A bird had struck the window so hard it had left its deepest feathers behind. I remember thinking: That's a bad omen. A week later a close colleague suddenly died.

I want to be one of those people who can look death in the face and not blink. I really believe that life can only be fully appreciated by being aware of the permanence and inevitability of death. The thing that sucks is that it is permanent and inevitable. And I didn't fully understand the word 'never' until I came to grips with "I'll never see you again." Or, "I'll never be able to sit and have coffee with you again." Or, worst of all, "I'll never know what you would grow up to be like."

There's a kinship with those gone before when the full depth of this kind of permanence is deeply contemplated. I'm into this now. I'm enjoying it, even though it's really hard. Because deep down I know that I'll be 'never' someday too.

Maybe it's maudlin or grim to sit still to think about this, but it's better than denial. I like to pull the astroturf off the graveside mound, and to do the shoveling myself. I knew I had to be the one to hold Angus to the very end (which was just 4 hours after the beginning), and read to Grandpa until his hand was cold. One of my biggest regrets in life is waiting after I got the call saying Dad had less than a day. I thought I had said goodbye. But when the final news came, my first thought was: "I should have called. Now it's never."

I guess I'm just in a weird mood tonight. I'm meditating again, and after months of frantic distraction there's a lot of clutter to clear before I can restore some sense of balance to my busy brain. So it starts with the big stuff and, moving silently to submission, I open my arms to inevitable. And it's OK.

Sometimes the simple things...

My super team at One Change has been working on a water campaign for about a year. We've got energy nailed (or screwed) with bulbs as the catalyst action. Like the light bulb is to the house, the tire gauge is the car, the simplest first action. The sound the tire gauge makes (Psst!) is the call to action of fuel efficiency. That works well.

But then there's water.

I thought we had the scoop on water a year ago when, with great fanfare, I flew to Alberta to present an idea to the Alberta government. Minister Renner's a great guy, and when I showed him the vinyl toilet tank bag we were promoting as the first action of water conservation, he smiled very politely but said he would be afraid of being known as the sh*t minister when toilets across Alberta overflowed.

That idea got flushed.

Tonight, on a train from Montreal, I pulled out a notebook and turned to my capable colleague Chris and said, "Ok, let's figure this out." Within 30 minutes we came up with a new idea and simple action that will generate an immediate return on investment 4x the cost of the campaign. It's never been done before and it's so simple anyone can do it.

No shit.

Walden

I'm having powerful cabin dreams. Usually this doesn't happen until February/March. I decided years ago that this annual phenomenon indicates that I've been away from Walden for too many months -- that I need to get back to the woods. But this year, the dream is different. I'm moving stuff around. I'm discovering new rooms or whole new floors that I didn't know were there. Sometimes the world around is blanketed by melting snow. Like always, Dad makes an appearance. He's been gone for 9 years but he's there in the woods. Usually he talks to me in the dreams. This year he's just watching as I explore.

Misc observations of an unremarkable evening

Why do new TVs have to sing a little song when you turn them on? Seriously. Who thought that up? Imagine yourself in the board room that the idea was first presented: "Customers will love it, like the TV saying 'Thanks for turning me on!'

It's the fifth anniversary of Project Porchlight today. Five years ago this morning Suzy walked a hand-written application form over to City Hall to register Porchlight as a not-for-profit organization. We debated whether the $90 fee was a good investment ...

Five years later I spent the afternoon on a conference call with a team of communications managers in New Jersey discussing the new fridge campaign. It's funny to hear otherwise very serious and strategic people say Gobble Gobble Gobble over and over.

From the "How did that happen" department: My new neighbour and friend Gareth was over on Sunday. We were standing in the driveway chatting about on-demand hot water and structured insulated panels as the kids played in the street. It's a quiet street, and we're both middle-aged homeowners. We turned to walk toward the house and as we entered the garage he stopped and picked up my grandfather Weale's ring off the ground. I have no idea how it got there, but there it was, sitting on a pile of bright red and browning leaves on the slope toward the drain. Grandpa died in 2000. The ring had been missing for ages. It's nice to have it back.

Under pressure?

Strange things are happening. Again.

Yesterday. I'm driving. It's cold and rainy and dark. At 11AM. And I'm thinking: "We gave away 13,000 digital tire gauges this summer, and now that it's cold and wet, nobody's going to be checking their tire pressure."

So I pull into the parking lot at the Starbucks closest to Jasper's Saturday hockey game. 10 minutes later I'm getting back into the car, lattes in hand, and I notice that four cars over a guy driving an SUV is kneeling by his front tire. Then he attaches a little device the size of a shoe box to his tire, a wire leading into his car. He's pumping up his tires. I find myself standing, watching, in the rain -- my coffee is getting cold. Some random guy just happens to be checking and regulating his tire pressure minutes after I'd concluded that that just wouldn't happen.

Then, two cars over, a guy calls to me. "Hey, see that? Cool, eh?"

"Yeah," I say. "Did he have a flat tire?"

"No. He's just optimizing his tire pressure. Did you know that you can save money and make your car more efficient by keeping your tires properly inflated?"

"Really?" I decided to play dumb. I was actually dumbfounded.

"Yeah! It makes a difference."

I decided to test this a bit.

"Do you have a tire gauge?" I asked.

"Yeah, a digital keychain tire gauge I got this summer at Canadian Tire."

I nearly cried. But I still didn't let on... He continued:

"Keeping your tire pressure up really matters. Now I do it all the time," he said. "And so should you."

I looked into my car where a pile of old Psst! One Change: Fuel campaign posters were mangled and scattered across the back seat.

"Thanks!" I said.

Maybe he thought he'd given me a good tip. What I really got was validation.