Two Bachelor's Degrees

Some days, my little print shop feels less like a business and more like a place where different lives quietly cross paths.

A customer I have known for some time came in as usual.

He barely speaks. He is one of the most socially anxious people I have ever met. He walked to the public computer and quietly disappeared into his own world online.

A few minutes later, another customer arrived.

She was elegant, warm, and curious.

She asked me to print two professional certificates and wanted to frame them for her future office.

As I read them, I noticed they belonged to a Somatic Sex Educator, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and a Sexological Bodyworker.

For a moment, I found myself thinking less about the word "sex" than about the word "somatic."

The body.

Not simply as biology, but as the place where we experience joy, loneliness, fear, trust, memory, and healing.

While I was preparing the frames, she noticed the books displayed near the counter.

She picked up Nonimportantech.

Instead of asking about printing or publishing, she asked about the stories.

"What is this book about?"

We talked for quite a while.

She seemed genuinely interested, asking thoughtful questions about why I write about ordinary people whose lives often go unnoticed.

After she left, I thought our conversation had ended.

An hour later, she came back.

This time she was carrying another certificate.

A Bachelor of Music.

It had been awarded in October 2005.

The document measured 11.5 by 15 inches—an unusual size.

A custom frame would have taken around ten days and cost considerably more.

Instead, we tried something simple.

We placed the certificate inside a standard 12-by-16-inch black frame.

Then we added a sheet of white paper behind it.

Suddenly, everything looked balanced.

The white space didn't make the certificate feel smaller.

It made it breathe.

As we admired the result, I smiled and told her that I also had a bachelor's degree.

Bachelor of Arts.

Literature.

Mine had been awarded in June 1995.

She laughed, looked toward Nonimportantech, and pointed at the book.

She didn't need to say anything.

I understood.

Twenty years ago, both of us received bachelor's degrees.

She studied music.

I studied literature.

Neither of us could have imagined where life would take us.

In February 2006, I arrived in Montreal as an immigrant.

Life became busy with survival, work, family, and building a small neighborhood business.

Somewhere along the way, my literature degree quietly disappeared from daily conversation.

Or so I thought.

Standing in my own shop, watching someone frame a degree earned two decades earlier, I suddenly realized that my own degree had never disappeared at all.

It simply stopped hanging on a wall.

It became the stories I write.

Perhaps this is what education eventually becomes.

Not a certificate.

Not a title.

Not even a profession.

But a way of looking at people.

One person studies music and eventually helps others reconnect with themselves.

Another studies literature and spends years listening to ordinary lives before turning them into stories.

Our careers may look completely different.

Yet both begin with the same belief:

Every human life deserves to be heard.

Sometimes I think my shop is really a framing shop.

Not because we frame certificates.

Because every day, people walk in carrying small pieces of their lives.

My work is simply to help place those moments inside a frame where their quiet beauty can finally be seen.

That afternoon, I framed her bachelor's degree.

Without realizing it, she reminded me where mine had gone.

It had quietly become a book.