by Marty Coleman | Apr 13, 2010 | Hans Kudszus |
People often cannot allow themselves to think certain things. It might be an idea, ‘God exists’, or maybe ‘God does not exist’. It might be about a relationship, ‘I am going to leave him’. It might be about your career, ‘I am going to change careers and move to another town’. It might be about fitness, ‘I am going to run a marathon’.
Those things are all too big, too far advanced for you to wrap your head around. You can’t think them, you won’t think them. And if you do, you quickly follow it with, ‘no, that’s insane’ or something equally dismissive. But the idea remains, tucked in the back of a drawer in your mind.
Eventually one or more of those ideas might actually sound not so insane. You might think them achievable and bring them back out into the sunlight of contemplation. What matured, you or the idea? The idea never changed. The idea that I could run a marathon is the same idea now, less than 2 weeks away from me actually running my first, as it was a year ago when it was in my ‘insane idea’ drawer!
What insane idea do you have that you need to take another look at?
“Ideas do not mature; only our courage to think them does.” – Hans Kudszus, 1901-1977, German aphorist
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 12, 2010 | Marty Coleman |
I started out doing these drawings for my teenage daughters many years ago. Because of that I have a number of teenagers who follow the blog. Some even have their own blogs. It’s great to see their perceptions as they grow.
Today I read a post where the young person had come to a realization that she needed to bring positive people into her life, people who look at the world and see the good. She isn’t unaware of the hardships, the disappointments and the pain of life. But she sees no value in surrounding herself with people who ONLY see that. Who have created a world for themselves where that is all they pay attention to. Their attitude has created their negative world.
She is leaving that behind and finding people who are inclined towards the good in life. I am proud of her for coming to that understanding. It will likely be something she will have to remind herself of again and again through life. But how cool is it to see someone understand that early on.
Inspiration by ‘Thoughts of a Contemplative Daughter‘ blog.
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 10, 2010 | George Bernard Shaw |
A vintage napkin from 2002, put in my daughters’ lunches.
This quote is often used by politicians and radio/ TV talk show hosts to explain why they don’t like arguing. This is usually said right before they start to argue.
Drawing and two sentences passing for a commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily.
“I learned long ago never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” – George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish playright
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 7, 2010 | Louisa May Alcott |
Think of every accomplishment you have ever had in your life. I am talking to you, the teenager who is 15, the mother or father of said teenager, age 40 something, or the grand and great grandparents of all the aforementioned humans, age 60-100 something. What do all your accomplishments have in common? I am going to hazard a guess that each and every one was preceded by learning something. Learning, then practicing your learning in real life. That is how you can be confident in facing the storms that will come your way.
What are you facing right now, today? Is it out of this category? It is not. All of life is either learning something or practicing what you have learned. It doesn’t matter if it is your 1st love, 5th divorce, 10th job, 50th anniversary, 100th birthday or final illness. There is something to learn and something to practice. If not for yourself, then for those you love.
Drawing and commentary @ Marty Coleman
Quote by Louisa May Alcott, 1832-1888, American novelist. Interesting to note that she was tutored early in her life by Henry David Thoreau and had writing lessons from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Margaret Fuller. She published her first book of stories at age 17.
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 6, 2010 | Jeremy Taylor |
A vintage napkin from 2001. You know, I have been drawing napkins for over 12 years now! Had a few years break in there there but I started in 1998.
This is hard to accept, isn’t it. I am not sure I do accept it. Or maybe I accept it in most OTHER people, but not me. I mean, come on. My conscience is tied to what others might think of me?
An easy test might be, what would you do if those people weren’t around to judge you (or at least you are anticipating that they are judging you). I am not talking about bad things, I am talking about judgements within civil society. For example, if you are around vegetarians all the time, you might feel your conscience telling you not to eat meat at a restaurant you all go to together, that it is bad to do so. But what if you are on vacation and they aren’t with you? Would your conscience be telling you the exact same thing or would it tell you something slightly (or not so slightly) different?
That’s really the question, isn’t it. It’s knowing oneself, what is conscience, what is getting along, what is an absolute boundary, no matter what. It’s something to think about.
“Conscience is, in most people, an anticipation of the opinion of others.” – Jeremy Taylor, 1613-1667, English Clergyman
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 5, 2010 | Thomas Fuller |
When I was in high school my buddies and I weren’t the most ‘popular’ guys. But we were probably the funniest. And one of the ways we were very funny was to make fun of other people. We were very good at it. What we lacked in ‘physically beat you up’ ability, we made up for in ‘verbally beat you up’ ability. It was fun and it was oh so easy.
Part of the reason I was good at it was that my mother was good at it. She was very funny. She laughed easily at all sort of things. But in particular she loved to skewer people who were up on their high horse about something, or just because they had the money to show off how high their horse was. I liked that about her, it kept her down to earth in my mind.
But as time went on, I started to notice that this humor was keeping her from meeting people, was keeping her from having friends because she wasn’t just poking fun, she was also doing a bit of judging without knowing the people. She was making assumptions based on their wealth or clothes or country club. She retained her humor all her life, but as life took it’s toll on her she had less time to judge and more time to just enjoy people. I liked seeing that.
At the same time I started to see the same thing with me and my friends. We were losing out on knowing and becoming friends with people because we were too busy judging them. As one would hope, that adolescent judgment mellowed out as we aged and it wasn’t our only way of being funny as we got older.
When I had kids of my own I really wanted to make sure they found ways to have fun, be funny, even poke fun, without cutting off good people just because they were different, just because they may have ‘appeared’ to be a fool. I wasn’t always good at leading by example in this because I still can make fun of people pretty easily.
The truth is, maybe those other people you are laughing at are fools in certain areas. I know my share to this day (and they know me), but you run the risk of losing out on knowing the other parts of them as well. And that could, in the end, quite easily make you the lonely fool, right?
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“To make a trade of laughing at a fool is the highway to become one.” – Thomas Fuller, 1608-1661, English churchman and historian
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 3, 2010 | Marty Coleman, Travel |
I have a friend somewhere in the world, not sure where, named Agnes. She has traveled the globe, sat with prestigious, inspiring people, experienced life in ways most of us do not. She is in deep, deep love with her husband, with whom she experiences many of these things. Those are her dreams, to travel with him.
He now is struggling with a pretty serious illness and that travel isn’t something they can undertake for a while. She wishes she could, she yearns for it. But though those are her big dreams, they aren’t her only dreams. She makes smaller dreams a reality for herself and her husband in tender, kind and intimate gestures.
She tells the world about these things, along with her larger dreams, in her blog. I read it and it reminds me again and again how much I love knowing people like that are in the world. I don’t really need to ever meet her or her husband, though what a pleasure it would be, I have no doubt. All I really need to be inspired is to know the two of them exist.
Read her latest entry about her manifestation of a little dream at the end of the night and then go and see if you can’t find the same fulfillment in the magic of your own small world.
Dream on, Agnes, and thank you.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“There’s not much to do but bury a person when the last of their dreams are dead.” – Agnes
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 2, 2010 | Are You Drunk? - 2010, George Jean Nathan |
Have you ever been abstaining (or don’t ever drink) and found yourself at a bar or a gathering where everyone is drinking a LOT, getting drunk, loud, funny and interesting (or so they think)? If you are not drinking these people are the first two, drunk and loud, and for about 10 minutes, the third and fourth, funny and interesting. But after that they are just the first two. That grows old of course so you have three choices, drink the magic elixir that will make these people funny and interesting again, torture yourself by staying amidst them or go home (or the Waffle House).
I quit drinking a year before I left my job at a restaurant and bar I had been working at for over a decade. Until I stopped I would hang out after work and be one of the drunk, loud, funny and interesting ones. After I stopped I found that while I loved these people just as much as before, I no longer was seeing the ‘funny and interesting’ as I had before. My wife and kids became more interesting (which they should have been all along obviously, but hey, I was an idiot, ok?) and I liked going home at the end of work.
One point to remember in case you are in an alcohol dilemma, what you do now doesn’t just have consequences with a hangover. This is especially true of men, who may have to deal with women who might just happen to have memories longer than a comet’s tail. Be mindful that it, perhaps, is all being recorded in their brain for remembering a LONG time later. I am just sayin….
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“I drink to make other people interesting.” – George Jean Nathan, 1882-1958, American drama critic and editor
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 1, 2010 | Ann Landers, Are You Drunk? - 2010, Family History |
I stopped drinking when I was 38 years old, in 1993. I did not have the luxury of ignorance as I went about drinking during the years prior to that. My mother and father were both very heavy drinkers. My mother had to be felled by a brain hemorrhage (I found her virtually unconscious on the stairs and took her to the hospital), endure 6 months in the hospital recovering THEN 3 months more in an alcohol rehab facility before she gained sobriety. She was sober for 15 years until she died in 1988.
My father, from a long line of fighting Irish who drank, was more functional than my mother was, but no less the drinker. He stopped drinking as well. He went back and forth for a while, but eventually quit. He did drink in his later years, but never at the same level as before. He is still alive and kicking at age 91.
Our family was torn apart by alcohol in a terrible way. The arguments, disruptions, fear, embarrassment, danger and anger were ever present. Luckily the years of sobriety on the part of my mother really did much to heal the family and make the bad times part of our history, instead of our present. My younger sister in particular was substantially better off to have her later years (9-18) at home be with sober parents.
After many years where I didn’t really need to face it because my drinking seemed to be more moderate than theirs, I finally came to a point where I could see myself going down that same path. I had a number of nasty and sad incidences of my own making that made me realize this. I quit cold turkey on May 29th, 1993. Through no effort of my own, and for which I am very grateful, the desire left me and I haven’t had or wanted a drink for the last 17 years. I did go to one AA meeting, stand up and say ‘Hello, my name is Marty and I am an alcoholic’. I didn’t go back, though I left the door open that I would if I felt the need.
I only ever missed one thing, and that was as a waiter I would often be privileged to open and pour wine brought in by a particular customer, sometimes even the winemaker himself. I missed the social and sensual fun of doing that and being allowed to have a taste myself, as a courtesy. But beyond that, I never felt it’s loss to my life.
I never thought I drank to drown my sorrow. I felt I drank to allow for opportunities to arise. When you are drinking there is this small voice that says ‘maybe something fun will happen while I am here, drinking.’ ‘Maybe a pretty woman will think I am witty and funny’. ‘Maybe a bunch of us will get into some really outrageous activity’. For the most part it was about keeping alive the hope of something exciting happening. At least that is how I have thought about it so far. There were all sorts of underlying reasons as well, I am sure.
What I found once I quit was that I was better off not pursuing those adventures since they almost never really came to pass, and when they did, they more often got me into trouble in the end, not into the fun I was seeking.
It also came down to this: Who do I want to be? Do I want to be remembered as a drunk? Do I want my contributions to my world to be stunted because I was addicted to something? Do I want to be disappoint and hurt those I love and who love me? The answers to all of them were ‘no’.
I can tell you that 17 years later I haven’t woken up one single morning feeling I have missed anything by not drinking, nor have I felt I would have been more help to anyone had I drank the night before. I know I have dealt with the events of my life (kids, marriage, divorce, moving, unemployment, deaths in the family, etc) much better without the drink!
What is your story in this area? How have you dealt with it?
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“People who drink to drown their sorrows should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.” – Ann Landers (Eppie Lederer), 1918-2002, American advice columnist
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 31, 2010 | Are You Drunk? - 2010, Richard Braunstein |
I stopped drinking in 1993, 17 years ago. I went to a bar last night, not something I do very often, as in virtually never. It’s not that I mind bars, or am tempted to drink. I just have very little reason to go to one.
Last night I had a good reason. My daughter invited me to be on her ‘Trivia Night’ team that this bar, the Sound Pony in Tulsa, hosts every week. It started at 10pm. That’s about the time we are watching the news and getting ready for bed. But I love trivia and she really wanted me to play because she thought we would win for sure if I was on the team. Ego stroking will make me do many things.
So, we got our team name ‘My Grandfather Was President of Encyclopedia Brittanica’ and set off to destroy the competition. I didn’t think much of the really loud, really drunk team next to us, led by 2 sisters who were feeling no pain. We had to switch answers to grade them, just like in elementary school and after 4 out of 5 rounds, we were tied with our boisterous new BFFs to our right. My reputation was at stake!
There is a physical challenge part each week, and last night it was, surprise, surprise…an easter egg hunt out back. My daughter and her friend did the hunt and came back with 8 eggs. Our sisterly competition came back with 7. After the music segment, which we tied again, the totals were counted and….VOILA, we won! By how much? By 1/2 a point…the value of one egg.
So, the moral of this story is that it’s harder to find eggs when you are really drunk so you shouldn’t drink. Well ok, that’s not the moral. But it’s probably true.
The real moral of the story is I am very glad I quit drinking 17 years ago and going to a bar makes me feel like I haven’t missed a thing. This blog was going to be about why I stopped drinking, but that is now for another day, maybe tomorrow.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“The hard part about being a bartender is figuring out who is drunk and who is just stupid.” – Richard Braunstein
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