May
04
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This idea is important for parents, grandparents or anyone working or living with people substantially younger than they are.
As is obvious to people who have read the Napkin Story I tried to impart all sorts of substantial ideas to my daughters over the years. But those ideas aren’t like food. Put in front of them and eaten immediately. They are more like a seed that is planted. It needs to germinate and grow at its own pace, depending on the soil, weather and other plants it encounters, not what the parent plant encountered. Just as in evolution there is variation and mutation over the generations so to with ideas and thoughts.
The key for the older person is to show respect for the thoughts and ideas the younger people have. Even if they sound similar to your ideas it is essential for the growth of the next generation that you accept that their ideas are their own, new and fresh, for the world they live in. If you do that you empower them to continue thinking and exploring and you give them the right example for how they should respond to the next generation when they are your age, many years from now.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Alexander Pope, 1688-1744, British author and wit. By the way, you think you have good excuses to not produce good work? Pope contract spinal tuberculosis as a child and had stunted growth as a result. He also had severe headaches, spasmodic fits and respiratory problems. He eventually had to wear an iron corset to simply sit upright.
Thanks to one of my favorite quote books for that information, Geary’s Guide to the World’s Great Aphorists.
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Greetings to yesterday’s visitors from Qatar, Chili, Israel, France, Germany, India, Canada, and the UK! Hope to see you again soon.
Feb
23
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When I would send my kids out the door to school, I would often say ‘Make good friends and keep good friends’. It became my sign off for the morning. I love the simplicity of it and it encapsulates exactly what a successful day is like. You go about your business with the idea in mind that you are looking to care for someone. You don’t know when that will be, or what form it will take. It might not be something you even realize is ‘care’. You might just laugh heartily with someone over something silly. But to that person, the laughing was such good medicine, so unexpected, that you became a friend without even knowing it. You might listen to a fear that is just one sentence in a long monolog, but you pick up on it and reassure the person later in the day.
Friendship is about awareness and attention for another. The new friends bring that excitement that makes us young, nerves, telling stories, allowing yourself to be seen anew, perhaps reinventing yourself just a little bit for the new audience.
The old friends give us the comfort and assurance that come from us knowing that they know all about us, they know our flaws, our shortcomings, our eccentricities, and they are still with us, they still find value in us, they still love us.
In both ways, the essential nutrient of friendship is resupplied to our souls.
