Pep talk...

Great light last night on the train ride home from downtown. I ended up taking a few pictures. The one above got a question online which I figured I'd answer here.

The caption I wrote to go with the above shot ran something like, "I imagine you're not in a hurry to live here so, the question is, what are you doing about it?"

The comment I got wondered 'who' I was writing that caption for.

Me.

And maybe you.

See, the thought behind the caption is, I don't think many people start out in life thinking "You know what, when I grow up what I really want, is to live in the projects by the train tracks..." Yet, there they were (the projects, with people living in them) flashing past as my train roared by.

Who are those people? How did they end up there? What could they have changed in their life, thoughts, and actions, to maybe re-route their destiny so that it didn't make a stop in the projects?

Now, keep in mind, I have a good friend who has spent much of her working life engaged in helping homeless men in downtown Toronto. I'll never forget her searing comment to me one time that many of those men didn't have the same choices I had (the choices I assume can be anyones for the taking at any time) because they weren't *raised* in a way that gave them the means to even think in terms of choice, work-ethic, and hustle, like I have been raised/trained to think.

(I still haven't fully come to terms with her comment, many years later)

Certainly, I take her point and recognize that she's an expert in that area, whereas I'm a 'neo-yuppie' on the train headed back to my 'mansion' (when you compare it to the alternative) in the suburbs, from a day mastering the teaser trailer for my latest feature-length project at one of the city's swankiest post-houses. Who am *I* to comment on (or comment in such a way that it can be misconstrued as ridicule) the plight of people stuck in the projects?

Well, here we get to the heart of it.

I'm a believer.

In Jesus.

And the story of Jesus is a story of redemption.

And, see, if the story of Jesus is a 'true' story then that means, given my theological leanings, that there's really no such thing as a life so impossibly dark that new life can't spring froth from within it--or put in the language of the original concept--everyone can move out of the projects if they *choose* to move out of the projects.

"But they don't have a choice..." I hear her saying.

Really? They *really* don't have a choice? I'm not saying I *know* that they do, but I am saying that I believe it's possible that they can.

I mean, if I just decided to let the weight of life, of sorrow, of disappointment, of wrong choices (made by me and by those who've done things to me) crush me to the point that I stopped 'trying' it's very likely that I could end up living by those tracks.

So, I see those projects, backlit by the fading light of the evening sun, and first, I think to myself "Wow, great shot!" then I think to myself "Gee, you know, I'm two or three steps from living there, and I really don't want to live there and, come to think of it, I bet nobody wants to live there..."

So I take a picture, and post a caption asking myself (and maybe you) what you're doing about it...

T