Feed the belly of the beast or save it all, live on or off the grid, sacrifice it all or spend your time gathering only for yourself. Whatever you do, if you are alive, you have hope. It might be hard, and even worse, it might be too easy, but life is what you have now. Later maybe not, but now yes. Make of it what you can.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
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Of course, you can’t compare it to death, since you don’t know what death is like yet. All you can do is compare your life to other people’s lives. And then you soon find that out the obvious, that it is harder than some, easier than others.
The important question isn’t whether your life is hard or not, it’s what is making it hard.
Is it physically hard, as in poverty, squalor, malnutrition, destitution, abuse, disease?
Is it socially hard as in no friends, no family, no support, no relief, no connections?
Is it intellectually hard as in losing your religion, feeling alone in the uncaring universe, not understanding things being taught to you?
Is it emotionally hard as in feeling unloved, betrayed, misunderstood, alone, depressed?
If ALL those things (and more) are true of your life, then yes – YOUR life is hard. But if just a few of those things are true, then a PART of your life is hard. What about the other part? What can you learn about coping, healing, fixing, understanding the hard parts by looking at the parts that aren’t hard. What are you doing in those areas that make it easy, good, fun? Can you apply that mentality, approach, feeling to the hard parts?
The main thing to remember is that it isn’t ‘life’ that is hard or not. It is YOUR life that is hard or not. That means YOU are the deciding factor.
Drawing by Marty Coleman, the Napkin Dad
Check out my work and merchandise at
http://www.martycoleman.com
and
http://napkindad.blogspot.com
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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.
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That sounds simple enough, just find out why to live. However, what struck me as I
uploaded this just now is that those people who have to struggle desperately with ‘how’
to live (poverty, war, concentration camps, illness) are the ones that usually find out
the ‘why’. Sort of a chicken or the egg type thing I suppose?
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I started drawing the napkins for my daughters in the hopes that they would be stimulated in their minds and hearts to think deeply and well about a range of topics. Now that I draw them for everyone else as well I hope the same.
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