Finding meaning in the harshness of life

(Thomas Froese)

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(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, October 11, 2025)

Thanksgiving is a good time to be reminded that some of our coolest connections can be with random people. I had one recently during an unplanned walk at Princess Point. That’s where I met Michael.

I’d stopped to sit in one of those red Muskoka chairs placed by Parks Canada. Several hundred are placed in twos, side-by-side, across our nation in places with a view. It’s where this Forrest Gump moment unfolded.

You know Forrest Gump from the movie of that name, how Forrest sits at a park bench and enthusiastically tells his life story to whoever stops by. Life, he says, is like a box a chocolates because you never know what’s next.

At Princess Point a couple of young ladies first came by, then a middle-aged couple, then a mom with two kids – I took their photo for them – there in the warm air, the herons nearby. Then a man who looked like his life was one long toothache came by. This is Michael.

He took time to get his rucksack off his back, gather himself and stand half-straight while in conversation with himself. Then he slowly took out a large spiraled notebook. It looked weathered, like it might have seen the rain or a puddle, with simple handwriting on its pages.

“Are you a writer?” I asked. Michael said he was. The notebook was his journal for his son, a young teen he hadn’t seen for some time. His son was everything. Eventually, sluggishly, Michael talked about his life. Lost work. Lost relationships. It seemed this man had lost himself.

Before going further let me say that it’s hard to argue with life being like a box of chocolates. But maybe it’s also like an alphabet of grace, one with no vowels, this so we can fill those spaces with our personal experiences and rhythms and sounds and faith and imagination – it was Einstein who said imagination is more important than knowledge – all to find meaning.

I’d read something like this before meeting Michael. And despite all his lostness, this, it seems, is what Michael was doing with that shabby journal for his son: finding meaning in the harshness and mystery of life.

We often think of what we can do for people like Michael. The addicted. The homeless. The bewildered. And thank God we do. People who work with the Michaels of the world, who speak for them, who lighten their loads, who give them a measure of healing, are people to especially thank on this weekend of expressed gratitude.

But when you stop to listen to the story of some stranger, you also receive. Not because your life might be easier than your neighbour’s (but for the grace of God go I) but because you’re reminded that you’re alive, able to get up and put on your pants and shoes and get out into the day to learn that you’re not the center of the universe.

You’re reminded you’re in community, in communion, all of us, lost and found, both, in this world, so messy, together, not unlike treasures in jars of clay, earthen jars that are cracked so your inner light is seen by others. This is the truth of it. We’re a bunch of crackpots.

So, after listening to Michael, I stood, then after asking, hugged him. Our eyes met briefly. And the moment was somehow beautiful and brave and sad and funny all at once.

On the drive home I passed some kids playing ball. I thought of mine, the eldest downtown and starting her nursing career, the boy in aerospace studies in Ottawa, the younger girl a McMaster student living at home.

But it’s the journal that I’m still thinking about. Maybe I will for a while. That old notebook with those hopeless and hope-filled letters has to get into the hands of that boy. With any luck it will. This too will be a moment of thanksgiving.