I tried a different style today, that’s why it looks a bit different and rough.
On a day when most of my city is still snowed in, I thought about how we want so badly to control the winter weather, the clouds, the rain and snowfall, the temperature, and we can do none of it.
But what we can control we have such a hard time doing. Kindness and compassion and understanding to our neighbor, assuming the best, helping out, befriending. Those are things that we can control. But do we? Or do we follow the path of least resistence. Now that we need paths shoveled for us, do we know our neighbors enough to ask for help or give it?
If you are in the position where you live with, deal with, suffer with, a person who is deep into addiction, sin, mental illness, depression or any other emotional/psychological/chemical trauma, you should have been able to tell by now that the simplistic anger leading to condemnation has really done nothing to help that person. It may seem like the way to proceed; it’s easy, feels good, feels morally right, but it isn’t and it won’t help that person, or you, in the long run.
Try compassion instead. That doesn’t mean you aren’t strong and it doesn’t mean you don’t hold them accountable. But you do it with love and understanding, not anger and self-righteousness.
Quote by Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887, Congregationalist, clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist,and speaker. Very interesting guy, check his bio out when you get a chance.
Actually, I think winter is when we hope the most. I believe hope (or its absence) is the quintessential element underlying everything within the human condition. What do you think?
A vintage napkin from 10 years ago. Drawn for my daughters and put in their lunches to take to High School.
Seems a bit harsh, but there is a very real regret I know I feel when I think about what I could have done vs what I actually did do over the years. I think there has been a victory or two, so I won’t be ashamed to die. But, just in case anyone is inclined to tell me I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, don’t worry, I am not. I am just saying I sometimes wish I had done more.
Quote By Horace Mann, 1796-1859, American Education Reformer. My eldest daughters’ first school was named Horace Mann Elementary in San Jose, California.
Back in the mid-80s I taught drawing at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California (near Santa Cruz). We had large flat tables in the studio and one day a student, a woman in her 30s, stood up on one of the sitting benches to look straight down at her drawing on the table.
I was standing next to her, but on the floor, looking at her drawing with her. As she looked at her drawing she first raised her arms to stretch then put her hands on her hips. When she did that her blouse came up and showed her midriff and belly button. There, no more than 2 feet away from me, at face level, was a very bright and ornate piece of belly button jewelry.
I had actually never seen a belly button pierced (it was 25 years ago after all), much less a whole piece of jewelry in that location! I exclaimed pretty loudly, ‘WOW, that is amazing! Look at this everybody.’ and of course the students all looked our way. Some had seen that sort of thing, but most had not. It was an attention getter no doubt. She was very proud and happy to show it off.
My how times change. I wonder what would amaze people now, in 2011 (and now 2025) ? What has amazed you recently?
My wife and I had a long discussion today about what we might like to do in the future. We talked about how when we decide to do something new and different we can feel discomfort. Whether it is thinking about traveling somewhere we have never gone, becoming friends with new people, even something as simple as going to a new restaurant or cooking a new meal, it’s easy to feel a bit of discomfort and choose to not go in that new direction so we can avoid that discomforting feeling.
But, in the end, if that becomes your habit, you stay home, meet no one, do nothing and get filled with regret for a life not lived. My wife and I don’t want to do that and so we choose to suffer the discomfort because the pay off is so wonderful. New friends, new experiences and new opportunities to love and care about the people we cross paths with. That is worth it.
Quote author unknown. After I came home from our breakfast together this quote quickly passed in my twitter feed and I knew it was meant to be my quote for the day. I didn’t catch who posted it, but it’s a great quote. The original said ‘resentment’ instead of ‘regret’ but I liked ‘regret’ better so I changed it.
I know what I want, but it is much harder to visualize, categorize and verbalize what it is you need to do away with to get what you want. I think much of this struggle has to do with taking things for granted.
For example, the young woman who wants to pursue her career may not immediately realize that it will also mean leaving the home she is safe in. You would think she would, but she may not even know it until she has moved away to that distant city. It’s then that she realizes she didn’t just remove the annoying, stifling things of home, but also the great things. She might be fine with it, she might decided it was too much to give up and go back to be close to home.
And in truth that is how it should be. You can’t know who you are and what you want, I mean REALLY want, until you do have to live with and feel the absence of what you had to give up. It’s how we grow and find out who we really are and what we really want in life.
Quote by Sidney Howard, 1891-1939, American playwright and screenwriter.
By the way, do you know why playwright has ‘wright’ in it, instead of ‘write’ or ‘right’? It’s because when something is wrought, like wrought iron, it is made by a ‘wright’. Thus, the person who writes a play, is a playwright.
Today is my birthday. Getting old takes so long that I have gotten younger waiting around for it to happen. What’s my secret? Creativity and courage. Those two things, when paid attention to and practiced, bring joy. And joy makes one young.
Quote by Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973, Spanish born artist. (Baptized name – Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso)
Obviously we know how this quote relates to religion, in particular Christianity. But it also relates to anyone who bullies another into silence in an argument. Being able to win an argument, something many people think is of paramount virtue, is not really winning if all you actually do is cause the other person to be silent.
When I was married to my first wife I didn’t realize how intimidating and overpowering my way of communicating was. I was from a loud, expressive and quick witted family, and didn’t have any experience to tell me there was anything negative about that. But my wife didn’t come from that same background. Her family’s way was soft, non-confrontational, non-argumentative. I liked that about her and I was under the impression that our marriage was successful because we didn’t argue like my parents had.
But I was mistaken. The reason we didn’t argue was because my wife was intimidated. I wasn’t a belligerent, abusive man. But I could be loud and defensive and I could argue until the cows came home. Combine that with her quiet style and other elements of her personality and upbringing and what actually happened was she simply became silent. Not converted, just silent. I wasn’t always like that, I have many cards still stashed away from her telling me how much she appreciated my listening and caring. But the truth is it doesn’t take much to intimidate, less than we are even aware of at times.
20 years after we got married we got divorced, in large part due to her having built up many, many years of silent resentment and regret. I know I have many of those same traits, and I am not apologizing for who I am but I have worked to be more discerning of when to be those things and when not to.
The goal for any of us who are like that is to have more control and more wisdom in knowing when we are trying to ‘convert’ rather than ‘converse’.
I work from home and I like quiet there because I like to think. After all, it’s pretty much what being the Napkin Dad is all about. When my wife stays home from work, or my daughter is home from school, they often will have a TV show on during the day that they like. I have to focus that out to focus in on other things. That can be hard to do. I don’t mind it because it isn’t frequent and I think it’s perfectly fine for them to enjoy their down time watching ‘The Price is Right’. but if they aren’t home I don’t have the TV on, or music for that matter (most of the time). I have a hard enough time focusing without those distractions.
How can you become self-aware if you are always surrounded by others’ clamor. You need to face your own clamor of silence, your own thoughts, feelings, meanings, desires, failures, and confusions. You can’t do that if you don’t allow yourself quiet. Not emptiness, since you are surely not empty when you are quiet, you are just with yourself and have to face yourself.
It’s not that you have to be with yourself all the time, always evaluating, always wondering. Often I think there is a sowing and harvesting aspect to self-awareness. You read, reflect, ponder, evaluate. All those are sowing seeds of self-awareness. Then you go out and act, be. That is the harvesting. You don’t need to think about who you are during that time, you just are.
Allow yourself time to be alone with yourself. It might be scary but it’s how you will grow.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Rabindranath Tagore, 1861-1941, Bangladeshi poet and writer
