From the Caribbean Sea to Machu Picchu in Peru, and from birds to flowers and butterflies, Reflections and Treasured Wonders offers a collection of images gathered from around the world.
Laurent Grenier, poet and thinker. His best work: "A Reason for Living."
Background
Information
Born in 1957 of Canadian parents, I have lived most of my life in Ottawa. In 1974 – I was an athletic teenager then, with dreams to match – I became paralyzed due to a diving accident. Everything that had given meaning to my life was now impossible, a thing of the past confined to memories. Depression took hold of me and did not release its grip for many years until I grew so disgusted with this constraint and put up such a struggle that I broke free from it. Before that turning point, I had written some gloomy poems that fed on this depression and relieved it somewhat, not enough. I needed a reason for living that was not limited to the satisfaction I could derive from writing well about suffering and death, the latter regarded as the ultimate escape, away from this suffering. I needed wisdom, an outlook on life that would be favorable to happiness. And this need turned my vocation as a poet into a vocation as a thinker with a positive message to convey, one that could enlighten and cheer readers, rather than oppress them with gloom.
In my effort toward wisdom, I have studied and reflected on many subjects: microphysics and astrophysics, and the natural sciences in between, plus psychology, among other social sciences, and philosophy, especially ethics and metaphysics, besides epistemology. Christianity and other great religions have also been my objects of study and reflection. They and the said subjects have served as the catalysts that have helped me grow intellectually and spiritually into a better – wiser and happier – man.
Accomplishments
During my writing career, I have published a poetry book at Ottawa University Press, a long poem in a poetry anthology of Ontarian poets, and various articles in art and philosophical magazines. I have also written some philosophical essays and a compendium of physiology and nutrition, still unpublished.
(November 2004) "A Reason for Living" is one of the highlighted titles by Independent Publisher online, who "recognize[s] the latest and greatest in independent publishing. ... These books are honored each month for exhibiting superior levels of creativity, originality, high standards of design and superior production quality."