On parades, status, and the only noticing worth wanting
July 15, 2026
So… I want to tell you about the time I stood at a parade and shouted a man’s name like a fool, and he didn’t even look at me.
A few years ago I went to a Pride parade here in Vancouver. I wore a bright orange shirt, stood near the back of the crowd, took it all in. And at some point the front of the parade came by — and leading it, as the marshal, was the Prime Minister himself. Justin Trudeau. Right there, in the flesh, waving.
And I did what any reasonable sixty-something Korean-Canadian minister would do. I got excited. I started waving both arms. And, I am not proud of this, I started shouting his name to get his attention. Justin! Justin!
I felt exactly like Zacchaeus — that little tax collector in the old story who couldn’t see over the crowd, so he climbed a tree just to catch a glimpse of someone important passing by. That was me. A small man at the back, craning and waving, hoping the great figure would pick my face out of the crowd.
He did not.
He waved — generally, to everyone, in that practiced way famous people wave at no one in particular. And he sailed right past. And that was that.
I went home a little deflated, if I’m honest. I just wanted him to notice me.
I’ve laughed about that afternoon many times since. But it has also made me wonder about the whole performance. The waving, the shouting, the running to the front of the parade.
Because we are all, every one of us, in the business of being noticed.
We boast. We brag, gently, in the ways that are allowed. We want to be seen with the right people, standing under the right flag, on the right side of things. Lately I’ve watched my fellow Canadians get wonderfully worked up about it. Patriotism roaring back since the trouble with the neighbours down south. I saw a woman in a liquor store inspecting every bottle to make sure none of it was American, then marching up to demand why the store still carried the stuff. I drove past a house with a hand-painted sign in the garden: Make America the 11th Province. I admired the ambition.
And I get it. I’m a proud Canadian myself; though my patriotism mostly comes out once a year, on Canada Day, and possibly a second day if the Oilers ever win the Cup.
But the parade got me asking an honest question. What do I actually want to be noticed for ? And by whom ?
Because I am an immigrant, and I know this game in my bones. Status was everything in the old country; the right car, the right address, the right label. My brothers all drive a Mercedes. I keep threatening to buy a used one for under five thousand dollars, just to belong at the family dinner. We spend our lives waving at the front of the parade, hoping the right people will glance our way and confirm that we matter.
And the parade keeps sailing past. It always does. The wave is general. The great figures do not, in the end, see you — specifically, by name, the way you ache to be seen.
Here’s the part of the Zacchaeus story I always forget, though. The little man up the tree, doing the undignified thing to get noticed; somebody stopped for him. Looked up. Called him by his name. Of all the people in that crowd, the one who got truly seen was the small, anxious, over-eager one at the edge.
I don’t need Justin Trudeau to notice me. I worked that out at the parade. It stung for an afternoon, and then I let it go.
But to be actually known, by name, by someone whose attention isn’t a practiced wave but a full stop, that’s the only noticing I’ve ever really been shouting for.
And the strange thing, the thing I keep having to relearn at the back of every crowd, is that it was never the shouting that got me seen.
Richard
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Prior Newsletters from Slow Wisdom :
I Told My Church I Ate Grasshoppers … July 7th
Thankful For The Hospital Food … July 1st
My Goal Was To Finish and Not Die … June 24th
The Wedding Afro … June 17th