Opening Up

Since I can remember, I have done two things that, looking back, were signposts to my future: I asked lots of questions, and I listened. Most of the time, people were delighted that anyone, even a kid, showed any interest in what they were doing. How many Blue Jays fans at the old Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, for example, would ask a hot dog vendor, running up and down the stairs for hours on end in the heat, what their day was like? Or a lone service worker on her dinner break? One evening at the university cafeteria, when I offered such a woman a sympathetic ear, I heard about her disappointment at being overlooked for promotion. “They wouldn’t give me a chance,” she told me sadly.

She couldn’t have been out of her early twenties, but even at that young age she already seemed to have been defeated by the larger world. Her narrative spoke of victimhood — that life happened to her...