I drew this 16 years ago to put in my daughters’ lunches and I posted the drawing to this blog 10 years ago today. Still true.
I liked using these napkins to spark my daughters’ thinking about various ideas (they were in High School at the time). They would pass the napkin around their lunch table and a conversation would often develop as a result.
Many years later I had friends of my daughters tell me how much they enjoyed having the napkins come out each day and the conversations they would have as a result.
Makes me feel like I did something good.
Here is the original text that went with the post the first time.
So, if this is the case, what are your unbeliefs? And once you tell us that, how did your beliefs, blind or otherwise, create those unbeliefs? Or, maybe you don’t believe this quote about unbelief?
>Here is a vintage napkin from 2004, originally put in my daughter’s high school lunch (yes I made their lunch all the way into high school).
The same could be said of religion (which is a type of opinion when you get right down to it). Other ways of saying it are ‘the proof is in the pudding’ or ‘if you are going to talk the talk, you better walk the walk’.
Whatever the saying, the idea is the same. The only way to prove you really believe what you say you believe is for your actions to consistently (not perfectly, just consistently) reflect your beliefs and opinions.
I am much better at talking about what I believe than I am in backing it up with action. But what I have learned over time is to rein in my words, to keep them closer to what I know I will act on than to just talk about ideas as if I really can act on them all.
That is why I try in my writings here to put in the caveat that I am preaching to myself or that the idea I am presenting is one I haven’t learned very well yet.
It is important to reach farther than you can grasp though, so one should always aspire to greater things than you are sure you can achieve. You just need to keep words and deeds in close contact at all times!
“A Book is a Mirror: If An Ass Peers Into It, You Can’t Expect An Apostle To Look Out.” – Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
I chose this quote not because I believed it, but because I questioned it. I understand the idea, but it does seem to render the book sterile and the reader static. That person who is closed up, shut off, wrapped up in what they already think about life, then yes, the book is unlikely to reflect anything new.
But the person who is open, who is unafraid to be changed for the better by the world, that person isn’t looking in a static mirror, but into a magic mirror. The mirrored book, if it is good, will reflect back a greater person, a wiser person, a more interesting and curious person.
Do you have a book that has done that for you? What is it?
“Unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.”
So, if this is the case, what are your unbeliefs? And once you tell us that, how did your beliefs, blind or otherwise, create those unbeliefs? Or, maybe you don’t believe this quote about unbelief?
