by Marty Coleman | Jun 30, 2010 | Technology - 2010, Walter Lippman |
Day #3 of Technology Week at The Napkin Dad Daily. By the way, I am up for an award. Check at the end of the blog today for details.
But YOU can still plant flowers if that same steamroller feels like it is running over you!
Machines can perhaps create a desire in you to achieve something. You see a new iPad and think ‘Wow, just imagine what I could do if I had that’. That is desire.
But initiative is something else. It is desire in action. It is doing something with your desire. An iPad, or any other technology, will never be able to give you the initiative. You have to have it, or build it, or borrow it, or fake it, but however you get it, it must, in the end, come from within you.
But if you do find it, in whatever way, then a steamroller is no match for you. Of course, it’s best to avoid known steamrollers (read negative people and situations) but that is not always possible. How you deal with the steamrollers of your life, both intentional from negative people and unintentional from the Universe itself, will be the deciding factor in how far your initiative will travel with you.
The light is green.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steamroller will not plant flowers.” – Walter Lippman, 1889-1974, American writer, political commentator & journalist.
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 29, 2010 | Joseph Campbell, Technology - 2010 |
And for the most part the corporate world isn’t much different. It isn’t spelled out as exactly as it is in computer code, but it’s severity can also be just as strong.
To survive you have to adapt to that world, understand it’s boundaries and rules and play along even when there is an absurdist logic working within the company just as you have to do with a computer and other technology. For the most part, technology or a company will not bow to your individuality, you must bow to it.
That is why I was never all that great in a corporate world or in getting along with that Old Testament dude!
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“A computer is like the old testament God, lots of rules and no mercy.” – Joseph Campbell, 1904-1987, American writer, lecturer and mythologist. I saw Joseph Campbell lecture on James Joyce’s Ulysses back in 1982. I knew nothing about the book but he kept me, and the rest of the audience, enthralled for 2 hours. Now THAT is a good lecturer!
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 28, 2010 | Max Frisch, Technology - 2010 |
My late father-in-law, Dwight Johnson, who I have mentioned a number of times, was a photography buff. He was always taking photos of the family and of stuff. It was to the point where I sometimes felt he wasn’t really experiencing the event or scene, just recording it for future sharing or memories.
Now I am a photographer and have Flickr and Facebook and Twitter and a digital camera and an iPhone. Next thing you know I am seeing things the same way. I am wanting to both experience and record the event and I want to share it.
But I always make a point to experience it first, I want to know what it is I am recording. Last night for example we had incredible thunderstorms coming in from the west at sunset. I had to get out in the backyard and take the pics right then or it was over. I experienced the wind, the humidity, the wildly flying birds being blown about. I experienced the clouds taking shape, the light moving around the edges, the rising mountains and deep crevices of the clouds and the flashes of lightning. In some ways I feel like I experienced it even more intensely because I had my camera in hand. I was anticipating, waiting, watching, feeling changes happen.
But I know it is a different type of experience than simply looking at something. But overall I feel blessed being able to share the visual world I experience with others so I am not sure I would change a thing.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“Technology: the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.” – Max Frisch, 1911,1991, Swiss architect, playwright and novelist
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 27, 2010 | I Draw in Church, Sketchbook History Tour, Tulsa |
It’s ‘I draw in Church Sunday’ here at The Napkin Dad Daily. I draw a lot. In bookstores, trains, plains, waiting rooms, and my favorite place to draw, church.
She sat in front of us on a warm summer day at church. I enjoyed seeing the cosmic message from the pulpit on the skin of a person right in front of me.
Drawn at All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa, Oklahoma. 6/24/07 © Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 22, 2010 | Communications - 2015, George Bernard Shaw |
I was raised in a somewhat loud, somewhat opinionated, somewhat verbose family. With an Irish heritage we blamed it on the Irish ‘gift of gab’. My mother was loud, funny and quick to throw a barb if she saw something pretentious. My father was argumentative and assertive in his voice and style while still being a charmer.
I married into a family in 1979 that was the exact opposite. They were instilled with a quiet and respectful way of talking to each other. Calm, cool, minimal in outward expression. They believed in saying nice things, well mannered things and not raising your voice.
Can you guess where this is going? My way of communicating, which I had always thought was pretty good, turned out to be so strong and aggressive compared to what my wife was used to, that most anything I said with any outward expression was taken as having much more meaning than I meant it to. She heard anger where I thought I was expressing passion. She heard insistence where I thought I was expressing enthusiasm.
In the meanwhile, my wife’s method of communicating, which I am sure she thought was pretty good, turned out to be so quiet, deferential and subtle that sometimes I didn’t even know that she had communicated at all. The passion she felt came out in such a way that it was easy for me to either not hear it, or dismiss it as not being all that important.
As you can imagine it took a long time before we clued into what the other person was really trying to express. We weren’t ever completely understanding about that and it was an underlying issue among larger issues that led to our divorce in 2000, after 20 years of marriage.
The reason I tell this story is to give you insight and an admonition. The insight might seem obvious to some, but we all have blind spots. Remind yourself that each individual hears uniquely, both sounds and meaning behind the sounds. The admonition follows from that. Do not go into any relationship, casual or serious, with the assumption that your way of communicating is the best way. You might have a good way, but chances are so does the other person. You might have blind spots about how you talk, the words you use, the manner in which you deliver them, that others see and don’t necessarily appreciate or understand.
Evaluating yourself to become better includes evaluating your words and their delivery.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” – George Bernard Shaw, 1856-1950, Irish playwright. Just imagine, he was old enough to be aware during the American civil war (1861-1865) and lived to see WWII being fought and resolved (1939-1945). That is an amazing span of life.
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 14, 2010 | Anatole France, Travel |
Summer is wandering time and I have been surrounded by stories of it this week. I am getting antsy for a road trip of some type!
- My traveling daughter, who has traipsed across the west for the last 4 months, came back in town this week and told of some of her adventures off the beaten path.
- A good blogging buddy of mine is on her bazillionth trip to Pakistan and is great at posting photos and telling of the feel of the place.
- A running buddy just returned from an anniversary trip to Paris and posted photos.
- Another daughter went off to the beach in California.
- Another running buddy went off to Canada with his wife (and happened upon an annual nude bike ride! That cracked them up, big time)
We are not sure what our summer adventure will be yet, but I will let you know!
What adventures are you hoping to experience?
Drawing and wanderlust © Marty Coleman
“Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.” – Anatole France, 1844-1924, French writer
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 13, 2010 | I Draw in Church, Sketchbook History Tour |
I love seeing people all in a row with strikingly different hair, skin, fabric and style. Church is perfect for that sort of people watching.
Drawing © Marty Coleman
Drawn 7/12/09, All Souls Unitarian Church, Tulsa, OK
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 10, 2010 | Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, Stupidity - 2001-2011 |
So, for all my intelligent female friends, relatives and readers, please do your best to avoid those stupid men, ok?
And to all the stupid men. I really, really loathe you and wish you would just grow up or ship off to a dumb men island where you can’t hurt anyone.
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman
“An intelligent woman has millions of born enemies…all the stupid men.” – Marie Von Ebner-Eschenbach, 1830-1916, Austrian author
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 9, 2010 | Anonymous, Self |
This is why self-pity has a timer on it. You are allowed just so much time for it, then the alarm goes off and you need to move on.
One thing I was only so-so successful at as a parent of daughters was teaching them certain things they would need to know as they became adults. Things I probably would have been more forceful in making sure a son knew. Things like changing tires, doing home improvement projects, working with power or manual tools. I tried, and I am sure they learned something, but I didn’t do it as much as I think I should have. Maybe they think I did ok in that department, but I know I could have done more.
Not knowing how to do something can lead to a feeling of incompetence and helplessness and not just about the immediate problem. It can infect much more of one’s life. When you don’t know even how to start solving a problem it is easy to devolve into giving up. Giving up is usually infected with paralysis, self-pity and unfairness.
- Why is this happening to me?
- So and so has more money
- So and so doesn’t have to deal with my issues
- I am disabled
- Nobody is nice to me
- I have no friends
- I don’t get treated fairly
- My work is harder than my friend’s work.
- I don’t get to have fun the way I want
- Woe is me
I say WOA to that, even IF it’s all true. It might give you ammunition in your hate for the unfairness of life, but that is all it will give you. Your satisfaction will be in your complaints. Will that really be satisfying? Won’t it be more satisfying to take action and climb the mountain? It might be squishing that spider, or fixing a leaky faucet, or moving on from a really destructive and crappy relationship. But as long as you are wallowing in self-pity, those accomplishments are not nearly as likely to happen.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
“Self-pity makes even the simplest problem almost impossible to solve.” – found via @dtcav on twitter
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by Marty Coleman | Jun 6, 2010 | I Draw in Church, Sketchbook History Tour |
It’s ‘I draw in church’ Sunday. Sometimes I am not drawing a scene or person in church, but an idea that germinated from the sermon. This one had something to do with prayer, but I don’t remember the specifics (it was 19 years ago, give me a break).
Drawn 3/10/91 at Westminster Presbyterian Church, San Jose, California. We went to ‘WesPres’ for almost a decade before we moved to Tulsa in 1994. It had the usual amount of drama, Pastors coming and going, etc. but more importantly it had a fantastic group of friends who supported us and our children and allowed us to support them as well. I look back on those days fondly.
Drawing © Marty Coleman
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