“Be ashamed to die before you have won some victory for humanity.” – Horace Mann
No pressure……
Define ‘victory for humanity’. Does supporting the livelihood of the local donut shop owner count?
When I was younger I use to think changing the world, showing my ‘important’ art all over would be my victory. Then I had a family and I realized raising my kids right was the best and truest victory I could be part of. So, if my kids are reading this, thanks for helping me get that little victory!
Not that I plan to die anytime soon. I have to wreak havoc with grandkids and great grandkids before I do that!
“Busy souls have no time to be busybodies.” – Anonymous
This is drawn in honor of a friend of mine, a real Baroness from a Barony far away.
The most recent story is of her finding a way to turn two gossiping, malevolent souls away from the empty pleasure towards the true pleasure. The true pleasure is, of course, to talk about others with the intent of understanding and helping instead of diminishing and debilitating.
To do this she uses a pretty hammer that can nail a balloon to a cross without the balloon knowing it’s been deflated and reblown as a good heart.
Of course, she knows she will have to use her pretty hammer again and again, alongside her sardonic screwdriver, sassy saw, artsy awl and crazy crowbar to work these balloons into her vision of good and God but she will do it and say ‘That was fun’.
She is crazy, over the top and the best thing to happen to her island nation since the explorer first arrived.
“You can live to 100 if you give up all the things that make you want to live to 100.” – Woody Allen
I really think many people, especially in the USA where I live, are so worried about living a long life that they focus exclusively on how to stay alive instead of WHY to stay alive!
I remember starting to go to the gym in about 2000 or so. I had just got divorced and wanted to get out and do something. I felt fat, paunchy and out of shape.
Going there made me think about what the purpose was behind being fit. What was I being fit for? To live a long life? No. It was, and is, to live a good life. To be good to people, help them, care for them, build them up, teach them, learn from them and give to them. At the root, it was so I could love.
You can’t love if you are dead, you can’t love very well if you are sick or incapacitated. You also can’t love if all you are doing is paying attention to staying alive. So, it is good to stay in shape, but it is more important to know WHY you are staying in shape.
“Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.” – Frederick Chopin
Simplicity isn’t just about the art having simplicity, it is about your mind having simplicity. It means you have a mind dedicated to essence of creating, not the complexity of finding a ‘style’. It means a mind focused, a mind free and a mind pure.
My favorite artist is Henri Matisse. His radical and expressive color work (Le Fauves) is beautiful. His Moroccan period is sensual. but it is his simplest of line drawings, his simplest of paper collages done at the end of his life that excite me the most. Why? Because all the ingredients of 60 years of being an artist had been distilled into an simple, glorious dish. A dish a younger Matisse could not have understood or wanted to pursue. He was like a master chef who learns what doesn’t need to be in the dish.
“Love your enemies, just in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards.” – R. A. Dickson
Of course, you will then have a new set of friends that will, in turn, turn into bastards. But at least you will have known that already since that is why they were your enemies in the first place!
By the way, that is the first time I have ever used ‘turn turn’ in a sentence. Though I have sung ‘turn turn turn’ before.
“Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” – Voltaire
That’s all, just remember to sing. It makes the rowing easier. However, if you sing any Barry Manilow songs sharks will come around your boat and eat you.
“What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot grasp the fact that a human foot is more noble than a shoe and a the human skin is more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed.” – Michelangelo
It is human to decorate oneself, but humanity starts without decoration and that is often forgotten. The puritan impulse that still flows through America and elsewhere looks for something wrong with the unadorned and naked. We do it without being conscious of it, like a remnant racist not being aware of their own prejudice.
A huge industry has made many people a lot of money building on this. I am not talking about pornography, which at least has some semblance of honesty about it. At least you know what they are trying to evoke in a person. I am not defending porn, just stating that we know what it is and what it is trying to do.
I am talking about marketing and advertising. That is the industry that plays us like a fiddle. That is the industry that tells you to look for the skin and in the next breath tells you to cover it up.
What Michelangelo knew was that for all the finery Florence and Rome in the Renaissance could display to the world, it could not outshine the beauty he found in the human body. And considering the fact that his nude sculpture, ‘David’ is probably the single most popular object of any sort from that era, his statement has been proven true.
Sometimes bowling just takes priority, ya know? I am sure it is only a one day thing, he’s old and the ball gets too heavy for his wrists. Expect him back tomorrow, unless he declares it Annual Napkin God Cricket Day, in which case it could be days!
“I like to pay taxes. With them I buy civilization.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
Honestly, I have never understood why so many people get so angry about paying taxes. I think it sometimes shows a lack of gratitude for the country we live in (USA).
If you get angry about paying taxes, explain it to me, ok? But, don’t get all angry about it!
“Any married man should forget his mistakes. No reason to have two people remembering the same thing.” – Duane Dewel
I am lucky to have a bad memory for certain things, it helps me avoid anger, resentment, bitterness, the ‘what ifs’ and all sorts of other things. But it also keeps me from having great memories of some of my kids childhood special moments or special moments with my wife. I like the first part since it keeps me happier. I don’t like the second part because remembering those things would make me happier still.
It also keeps me from remembering the things that other people found hurtful or angered them for some reason. Where I have violated or done someone wrong. They remember it, but I don’t. I mean, sometimes I do, but it is in a back closet and I forget about it most of the time. Sometimes it was such a small thing in my mind that I never would consider someone else would remember it, much less remember it myself.
It is good for me to realize that my wife remembers things and it affects her emotionally. I don’t need to have the same emotion and I don’t have to have the memory as close to the surface as she does. But I do need to know that it is in her memory bank and it matters.
I can’t take that memory away from her, I can’t let it go for her. My job is just to be smart enough to know that just because I forget things, doesn’t mean they didn’t happen and doesn’t mean they didn’t have consequences.
This quote engendered a lot of debate when I first drew the napkin back in 2000. My daughters and friends all got into thinking this through. Is it really true? I tend to think it is.
The key is to take the question far enough back from the anger.
For example, Here is a statement; ‘I am angry because my husband didn’t come home on time.’ How is that rooted in fear? Well, perhaps the wife is worried (fear) that something happened to him, an accident. Perhaps she is anxious (fear) that he is having an affair. Perhaps she is upset because some dinner plans are now delayed. Because they are delayed she fears that the people they have made the dinner plans will be angry themselves, or inconvenienced or…..
You get the point. so, as an exercise do this. Think about what last made you angry. And step it back until you can find the root of fear that led to the anger. It might take one step, it might take 20, who knows. Maybe you won’t find it, but I bet you will.
Share with us if you come up with any interesting revelations about this.
“If ants are such busy workers, how come they have time to go to all the picnics?” – Marie Dressler
We all know the answer to this. It’s because they are on a working vacation! It’s their version of a conference in Maui or Nassau. They bring home lots of swag, probably a story about how co-worker Betty fell in the beer can and the boss suffocated in between the layers of a ham sandwich. Most importantly they brought home the bacon for the family.
“It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.” – Seneca
Our fear of the difficult is the difficulty. I know it is with me. I spend this non-thinking time bouncing around doing this and that until I finally realize I am avoiding some task because I am worried it will be too difficult. EVEN IF I have done incredibly more complex tasks in that same arena of effort before.
So, why am I thinking I can’t do this new, simpler task? Because I am not sure how I did the first one. I look at some of my old animation projects, my old drawings and paintings and I say ‘I wonder who did that, that’s pretty incredible!’. Then I remember I did it and think ‘sheesh, I don’t know how I did that, I wonder if I could do it again’.
The truth is though that I always have been able to do it again, to rise to the occasion, to move beyond my doubts and achieve what I want to achieve. You can too, you just need to take the step onto the tightrope. Without that first step, you can’t go anywhere.
“Illness is the most heeded of Doctors: to goodness and wisdom we only make promises; pain we obey.” – Marcel Proust
This is in honor of my brother-in-law, Tom, who had a ruptured appendix on the ski slopes of Colorado yesterday. He couldn’t make it down the hill on his own after a fall, the pain being too severe at that point.
He spent two hours in surgery and they believe his is going to make a full recovery, but not before a big scare, lots of pain and a 5-7 day stay in the hospital.
This quote is true, but the further truth is that those promises to goodness and wisdom are often only made when we are in the middle of that severe pain we have to obey!
A big shout out to Bruce Hansen, undergoing chemo for cancer in Boston. His cancer is in his neck, which is in Boston along with the rest of him and his wife Heidi. If you know him, wish him well. If you don’t, wish someone else well.
“Creativity is a learning process where the teacher and pupil are within the same individual.” – Arthur Koestler
If you aren’t willing to teach yourself then you are at the mercy of what other people want to teach you, what they think is important. If you teach yourself you are in charge.
Take charge. Be your own student and your own teacher. That way you will always be getting a new degree!
“Coincidences Are Spiritual Puns.” – G. K . Chesterton
But they make me smile more than verbal puns.
By the way, the best explanation for coincidences ever rendered by the mind of man is found in the movie ‘Repo Man’. Check out the ‘Plate of Shrimp’ scene to be taught by the master.
If you watch the scene, remember from here on out you will be compelled to use the phrase ‘plate of shrimp’ whenever such a thing happens.
You are now being returned to your broadcast channel…
“We only confess our little faults to persuade people that we have no large ones.” – Francois de La Rochefoucauld French author & moralist (1613 – 1680)
I got busted stealing 5 cents worth of bubble gum when I was 14 years old. I got pulled into the back of ‘Stoler’s Five and Dime’ by Mr. Stoler. In the time it took me to walk back there I had already figured out what I was going to say, that it was my very first time EVER to steal anything and I would never do it again…yada yada yada. My second thought was that that was way to obvious and I am sure every other kid who ever got caught by Mr. Stoler said the same thing. So, sure enough the very first question he asked was ‘Have you ever stolen before?’. I answered ‘Yes’. That was the truth. He then asked, ‘Have you ever stolen from this store before?’. I answered ‘No’. That was a lie.
The police were called and I was brought down to the police station, no joke. The policeman gave me the stink eye and made me feel I would be selling pencils on the street corner the rest of my life, my sin had been so great. He also said Mr. Stoler ALWAYS prosecutes. Gulp!
They called my father who came down and got me. When he arrived the police brought us into a room and sat us down. He said that Mr. Stoler was NOT going to press charges after all. My father asked why and the policeman said it was because I was the very first kid Mr. Stoler had ever caught who admitted to having stolen before. Wow, my instincts were right! I had made the right choice.
However, I don’t know if the next answer was the right choice or not, to lie about stealing from his store. But I do know that admitting to the ‘little’ fault of stealing before probably persuaded him I didn’t have a ‘larger’ one of stealing from him.
My father, on the way home jokingly said ‘You know, if you were going to get caught stealing something, couldn’t you have chosen something that was worth stealing, like a TV or something?’
I did buy a TV once that was a real steal, but that was the last thing I ever stole.
“The pursuit of happiness is no laughing matter.” – Anonymous
This is an oxymoron in action but is it true? Do we have to be serious about our pursuit of happiness? Who is happier in life, the true pursuer who is deliberate about it all, or the happy-go-lucky sort who doesn’t have a care in the world?
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Hey all you Napkin Kin! Just wanted to let you know you are in good company recently. Over the past week The Napkin Dad Daily has been visited by people from 122 cities in 26 different countries on every continent. Well, ok, not Antartica, but they visited before I think!
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“It is much easier to repent of sins we have committed than to repent of those we intend to commit.” – Josh Billings
Just think how much easier life would be if we could learn to do this! Of course, it might not be as much fun either, but it certainly would lessen the grief we go through.
“A penny will hide the biggest star in the universe if you hold it close enough to your eye.” – Samuel Grafton
The item of smallest value, of no consequence, something you will not bend over to pick up, can still end up blinding you to the largest, most magnificent of thoughts if it is taking up your mind space.
I am guilty of this all the time, of letting myself get distracted simply because the big picture is obscured, not immediately in front of me. Instead there are time wasters, irrelevant emails, excessive TV, trivia, chatter and a million other things that take the attention away from what my end goal really is.
I don’t mean to say any of those things are wrong, just that they need to be kept in their place and in their time.
What pennies are obscuring your view of the heavens?
p.s. Thanks to Stephen Covey for his list of ‘not important/not urgent’ activities as discussed in ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’.
“I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of it.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
“May our eyes be no keener when we look upon the faults of others than when we survey our own.” – Anonymous
I have discovered that in many, including myself, the eyesight can sometimes be just as keen when looking upon my own shortcomings as upon others. But that is only half the equation. There is more arithmetic to do.
What is keener though is my understanding. I understand what I do and why better than I understand another.
And, finally, based on that understanding, I am willing to forgive myself more readily than another doing the same thing. If I could have 1/10 the forgiveness for other’s flaws and failures as I am for myself, I would living out this dictum in a much truer fashion.
The first part of the equation is perception, the second part is understanding and the third is forgiveness.
It’s when they are added together that you become a person who is fair about all three and end up with a fair judgment of both yourself and the other.
“You make the world a better place by making yourself a better person.” – Sorrell
Becoming who you want to be is a deliberate act. It does not happen by accident and it does not happen just because you want to be a certain way. It comes about because you practice being that way. It is no different than exercise or practicing an instrument or a technique. You don’t become kinder, more loving, more empathetic, merciful, understanding, helpful, strong, patient, or compassionate unless you ACT those things out in real life.
