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When I was a kid I scooped ice cream at my mother’s shop in Ottawa’s Byward market. As a result, I was fortunate to get to know a lot of people from different walks of life and I think it played a big part in shaping me into who I am today. Yesterday I was bartending at @grand_pizzeria and I saw an old friend from those years trudging down the sidewalk. Dirty, ripped clothing. Down and out. Lost. In a world of his own creation. I gazed through the dining room to the intersection where he now stood and in the foreground a memory of the two of us sitting in the very space I was now looking through, eating lunch together, some 30 years ago, in what was then ‘Oregano’s’. Not sure what to make of all that. It certainly makes me grateful for all my good fortune, as well as my mental and physical health but it also makes me terribly sad. Life can be beautiful but at the same time brutal. Obviously a lot factors dictate where we end up in life. Some of us never had a chance while others have too many. All we can really do for each other is to be present and real. To look each other in the eye and show that warmth, love and acceptance. Share the burden of heartache and pain as well as the beauty of joy and wonder. We must shoulder it all together, good and bad, because in the end we are a part of each other. Being cruel to someone else is also being cruel to yourself. #alwaysbekind #vanlife
