In snow and in life, purity is fleeting. It’s there and it’s good, but it doesn’t last. Those who try to remain and appear pure to others in all things, in spite of the truth being different, will start to draw attention to their blemishes.
How do you be who you really are, admitting to yourself your impurities, admitting them to others when appropriate, and still work to attain the good in yourself and in others. Maybe the act of confession is the freeing act that allows you to move towards the good. What do you think?
A shout out to the Napkin Kin in the Massachusetts (USA) towns of Chatham, Brewster, Hyannis, Foxboro, Newton and Allton who visited the blog this week. Thanks for the visit!
I am not a fan of the Tiger Mom (from the recent book ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother’) and her ways. I know American moms and dads are wondering if they are too lenient, and maybe they are at times. But coercing your child into becoming an exact duplicate of you, with no understanding or care about why they are and what ‘genius’ they have is akin to kidnapping.
You kidnap your kid to fulfill your purposes, your needs. After a while, the kid goes along with it and becomes the hostage influenced by his or her captors to have sympathy and regard for the kidnapper. The Stockholm syndrome for families. The child believes the parent (kidnapper) did the right thing because now he or she is good at violin or very interested in science.
I am not dissing helping to direct your child, you can’t help but do that, and you are abrogating your duty if you do not do it to some degree. BUT, if you aren’t paying attention or you don’t care who the child is and is becoming, or you are so insecure you need a little mini-me around to validate yourself, then YOU are the problem, not the child.
Quote by Albert Einstein, 1879-1955, Austrian born Physicist
A thankful shout out to my Napkin Kin in Perth and Adelaide, Australia; Charlie, Margg, Amber, Ebony and others. They are faithful readers and I REALLY appreciate them!
I wrote on top of drawings often in 2004. I was paying a lot of attention to colors and details, listening and absorbing, that I wasn’t going to get in the drawing so I thought writing about those things right on the drawing was an interesting way to do it. I wrote stream of consciousness, not trying to be grammatically correct. Transcript follows each drawing.
The Reading Woman
The reading woman with the nice forehead and small glasses and the wonderful ear and the revolutionary looking boyfriend and the blue t-shirt and the thin hands and fingers contemplating an article on common language while a silly girl laughs in the distance and her purse just sits there looking smart at Barnes & Noble on Prom Night for Chelsea and Carolina at Union High on a cool April night after a week of wicked weather including tornadoes and gardening in Tulsa, OK.
The Classy Student
The classy student studying with grey eye shadow and glimmery lips while her boyfriend, who looks young and too young for her reads a magazine with 3 bug bites on his left ankle in a row looking like a constellation and she uses a blue and red pen and huge earrings, the biggest I have ever seen with her left hand and very small delicate fingers with no polish in Norman, Oklahoma on a summer’s night that threatens to rain while the girls behind her wear red sooner shirts and read and talk about the young star who is too thin and I draw instead of read the manual of the class I am here for while I catch a bright pink purse pass by a tall guy sitting in yellow.
The Chunky Haired Woman
The woman with 10 colored markers and some paper she is highlighting with chunky hair with lots of highlights in it and sun coming through the window highlighting her cheek and shirt that has pink highlights in it among white and big lips with frosted lipstick that is sparkly and has highlights of the same color pink while I wait for the agent to be done so she can give me my new ticket and voucher to take a later flight and still make it into Seattle for the conference that I am going to in July after my Uncle’s funeral yesterday in Ft. Worth that I drove to with Linda the night before and visited with long-lost cousins and Aunt Jean.
The Ugly Woman
The ugly woman with the ugly words coming out of her dark mouth while she stared at nothing with her glaring eyes and heart while all around her love lingered and waited until she finished but she never did on that September night.
The Two Women
The woman with more hair who could do flamenco curls on her jaw if she wanted talking hesitantly to the friend with the thin eyes and arched eyebrows and lower lip that jutted out who was judging her friend’s mascara as too thick and dark (but I liked it) about why her boyfriend won’t commit and not knowing what to do and how she wakes up at night sure that someone is b
reaking in and she wonders if she should get a boob job to be more sexy for him and if that would help and her friend says maybe.
We have one Mr. Eric Burns of Tulsa to thank for my topic today. When I asked on Facebook and Twitter what would be a good topic, he suggested ‘farting in public’. I took it as a challenge and here is the result!
It’s pretty simple really. Compassion is like many other things, you might not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it. And you know it when you are doing it, and when you aren’t.
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?
Can you show yourself compassion, or do you think you don’t deserve it? Why not?
If you are that person, I want to ask, do you ever find yourself able to show self-compassion? If so, when does it occur? How does it come about in your mind? What do you do when you feel it towards yourself? …………………………………………………………………….
Here is the flippy haired girl from 2002. Let’s make up what she was thinking, ok? Vote for your favorite.
I hate church.
I love church.
I hope Mr. soandso isn’t there, he’s creepy.
I need a LOT of coffee today.
I don’t think my deodorant is working.
Why is that guy staring at me?
If my heel breaks like last time I am going to scream!
What is the point of it all?
I can’t remember anything before college.
I wish people could see the real me.
You can vote for one of those or you can make up a new thought and submit it. You can enter as many times as you like. For official rules see the flippy haired girl, wherever you find her. Just ask her ‘what are the official rules?’ and she will tell you. She might tell you to bug off, but she will tell you something.
