Is there a God we should fear? Why is that? What is up with the scripture quote ‘The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom?
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“They that worship God from fear would worship the Devil if he appeared.” – Thomas Fuller
The difference of course is that a rock doesn’t complain, it just takes it and becomes whatever it becomes. A human, on the other hand, tries to avoid the trials. A diamond also can’t revert back to being a rock, but humans can revert back to being ‘imperfect’.
How do you act on what you have learned about yourself? The answer to that question is the key to you being polished or not.
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, not a man perfected without trials.” – Chinese proverb
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
The question of who we esteem, and who we disdain, is something that is almost always taught by example from parents and others in power. What are you teaching, and more importantly, why are you teaching it? If you are still quite young the question is, what are you being taught? Do you believe it?
“The surest way to corrupt a young person is to teach him to esteem more highly those who think alike than those who think differently.” – Frederich Nietzsche
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
I know it sounds like a cliche from ‘7 habits’, but it is a truth. There is another truth as well that might say you should not settle for trying to figure out what there is to like about a crappy situation but instead have some incentive and energy towards changing your circumstances. In other words, maybe it is that unhappiness that some of us have that actually is the catalyst for change and growth that is needed, individually and in a group.
“The secret of happiness is not in doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.” – James Barrie
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
It is good to be prepared in case opportunity comes along, that is the well understood maxim. But, it is equally important that you think through how to create opportunities that would not exist otherwise. That might be getting the courage to meet or write those who could help you. It might be seeing a need and filling it in someone’s, or some enterprise’s life. But no matter what direction the opportunity resides in, it takes courage and confidence, above all else, to go in that direction. And courage and confidence do not exist without belief in one’s self and one’s vision and abilities. Do you have that?
“A wise person will make more opportunities than they find.” – Francis Bacon
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
In honor of the Oscars tomorrow night and the millions of opinions that will be expressed about dresses and decisions I give you this quote. Do you think it is true?
“Public opinion is just what people think other people are thinking.” – Anonymous
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
The difference between success and failure in many cases isn’t talent, it’s persistence. How has your persistence paid off?
“In the confrontation ‘tween stream and rock, the stream always wins, not through strength, but through persistence.” – Buddha
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
This is a tough one. How do we know we are misunderstanding something? What it really comes down to is the actions we take based on that misunderstanding. The recent movie ‘Atonement’ seems to have touched on this idea.
“There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood” – William James
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
What will outlast you….kids, art, a company, ideas, or something else?
“The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” – William James
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
It seems to be a paradox, but is it really? I think there are many who would benefit from defining God less, not more.
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“It is easy to know God so long as you do not tax yourself with defining him.” – Joseph Joubert
This napkin obviously had something spill on it at the old lunch table. It says ‘The key to failure is trying to please everybody’.
It seems this is a recurring lesson I must learn again and again every couple years or so. As any practicing artist will tell you, it has to be ok in your mind that some, maybe most, people will not like your work or else you will self-destruct in feelings of failure.
Same is true about one’s personality, character, voice, looks, opinions, and emotions. Not everyone will like you is the bottom line. How do you deal with that?
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote by Bill Cosby
For those of you who either had a bummer of a ‘Love Day’ or had a great one but now it is back to the grind, may this quote help you sing rather than pout.
What do you do to get out of the pout?
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues.” – Duke Ellington
For ‘Love Day’ I found a quote that distills it all down to the basics. What are your basics of love?
© 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“Love does not dominate, it cultivates.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
In anticipation of ‘Love Day’ I thought this quote was appropriate. Think about how you make your loved one feel….not about you, but about themselves. If they are pleased with themselves they will be pleased with you.
“If anyone is to remain pleased with you, they should be pleased with themselves whenever they think of you.”
drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote is anonymous
Reading over that quote again I think about how we have institutionalized this idea in Halloween and costume parties. and that is ok, like how an amusement park institutionalizes thrills and fear, don’t you think?
What is sad is when someone creates a daily illusion of being just like someone else (think girls trying to emulate Ms. Hilton, or boys trying to emulate 50 cent, for example) and the result is that everyone else can see the absurdity but they cannot. It can be more subtle of course, even into adulthood.
Drawing © 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“Almost all absurdity of conduct arises from the imitation of those we cannot resemble” – Samuel Johnson
I went to a lecture last night titled “Religion and the Founders: The First Great Battle over Church and State”. This quote by Jefferson was on my mind for today as a result. Do believe what he said is true? What belief of your neighbor would do you harm?
© 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no god.”
Thomas Jefferson
This is the definition of ‘mixed motives’, isn’t it! People are often surprised when I say I had more than one motivation in doing something, that part was selfish, part artistic, part greedy, part altruistic, etc. They aren’t really surprised I had them, just that I admitted to them. How does one hide motives, and for what reason? Why can’t more than one motive live within an action?
© 2022 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“We would often be ashamed of our finest actions if the world understood all the motives which produced them.”
La Rochefoucauld
Have you ever noticed there is a distinction between being ‘self-aware’ and being ‘self-conscious’? I think this quote illustrates the difference between the two. How are you one or the other or both? Or maybe you think this doesn’t have anything to do with that? Give us your ideas.
I know a number of people whose overwhelming sweetness seemed pleasing at first. Over time I saw that sweetness as actually masking an inability to express what they were really feeling and who they really were. As a result I learned they weren’t safe to trust since I never could discern if what they were saying was what they were really thinking and feeling.
How does one become both strong and sweet?
I guess that’s why they call it ‘wishful thinking’, right?
How do your wishes and desires influence what you think is real?
drawing © 2021 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
“Nothing is easier than self-deception. For what each person wishes, that he also believes to be true.”
Demosthenes
The Napkin Dad Daily began as a series of drawings and quotes on napkins that I put in my daughters’ lunches during their middle and high school years, most every day from 1998 -2004.
I started doing the napkins while I was unemployed and making their lunches for school. I did 3 a day, one for each daughter. After many months I felt sort of depressed because, as funny as it sounds, it was the my main creative outlet, the only artwork I was doing at the time, and they were all being thrown away every day. ‘Oh well’ I said, and went about doing them until the end of the year.
My wife at the time was not happy in the marriage (we later divorced) and took the girls to California to visit her family in the summer, and I was not invited. I was home alone on Father’s day when the girls called to tell me they had hid their presents for me around the house. I walked around the house following their hints and found my oldest’s and my youngest’s presents.
My middle daughter directed me to a bottom drawer somewhere and there I found a napkin she had drawn for me.
And below it were all the napkins from the entire year! She had saved every one and given them back to me for Father’s Day. It truly was the best present I ever got, I cried when I found them. She really didn’t, and couldn’t, understand how much it meant to me to have her do that, and to have them still in existence. I continued to draw the napkins for 4 more years, almost every day, until my youngest graduated from High School.
In 2005 I started scanning them little by little and posting them to my flickr.com site, which I had set up for my photographic work but had been posting drawings to as well. The napkins got a great response and I started to consider ways I could get them out to a larger audience. In 2008 I started the blog you see here, the Napkin Dad Daily, and started posting a napkin a day. Eventually I added commentary below some of the napkins, in response to conversations that were going on in the comments, or on flickr.
In November of 2008 I was enthusiastic over the exciting presidential campaign and glad that Obama had won. I went looking through my napkin collection to see if I could find one that would be reflective of my feelings the morning after the election. I could not and so decided to draw a new napkin, the first in almost 4 years at that point. I posted the napkin on my blog and on flickr and had an incredible response. Hundreds of hits and comments came in, as they did on many other images people posted that day.
A few weeks later I got an email from flickr stating that Time Magazine was interested in one of my ‘photos’ for inclusion in an upcoming issue. They said if I was interested to contact Time for further information, which I did. I found out they were interested in using that napkin drawing in their ‘Person of the Year’ issue about the President-elect Barack Obama.
When the issue came out the local media in Tulsa took notice and I started to do some print and TV interviews. In anticipation of that I made my first self-published book, a t-shirt with the Obama napkin on it, and a series of coffee mugs. A number of companies and individuals saw the various segments and articles and as a result drawing, web design and graphic design work has come my way.
A local gallery & coffee house expressed interest in having a show of the napkins. In May of 2009 I opened the show, titled ‘Absorbent Ideas’. It closed in June of 2009.
Marty Coleman
