Editor:
Some of the greatest examples of genius today are the chosen few in society we deem so or who we have chosen to lead.
Out of the entire mass of the human population, though, there’s sometimes a person who can excel in this way and exceed expectations of even the most notable of people, who appear to have it all figured out.
I met one of these people recently when I noticed him picking up cigarette butts out of ash trays to later break open and roll up for smoking.
He had a bag of empties he was carrying with him and after I found out he doesn’t drink or use drugs we began to talk about the environment.
He explained to me how he sees the problem of global warming being no more complicated than the solution for it.
He then went on to connect the dots from what people have to say, whose opinions on the subject are respected today and to back in time many years.
He told me how the current president of the U.S. believes the storms we’ve been experiencing are going to get bigger and last longer.
How the president before him had said America is addicted to oil and how a former first lady, many years ago, had made the claim that the best way to deal with the problem of addiction is to just say no.
He then explained to me what the most important thing he learned about loss is — that denial can be used as a tool, or a weapon, whether on a personal level or in society as a whole.
Then he told me the most interesting thing I’ve ever heard in my life about a famous physicist who recently said the brain is no more than a machine and about another scientist, who’s working on a theory that might prove the behaviour of denial, may explain why we haven’t been able to find life on other planets.
That’s when he said the problem of global warming, or its solution, is only a matter of choice and it’s up to each and every one of us to determine what our future is.
Then, he just walked away.
Garth Verghaeghe
Williams Lake