by Marty Coleman | Dec 16, 2013 | Marty Coleman, The Napkin's Guide to Happy Living |
Take an educated guess as to what day it is? It’s Happy Living Day #4!
On Topic Education
I can explain things pretty well. Much of the time this ability is due to my education. I am relatively educated about art for example and I can explain certain things about it. Most of us can do that in some area. My father could talk forever on all facets of aviation. My sister can talk about genealogy in detail. My wife on the business of electrical and gas utilities, my oldest daughter on neuroscience, my youngest on fashion design.
Off Topic Education
But what about areas that have no connection to anything in your life, what is the value of being educated in those areas? In 2005 Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech at Stanford University. He said something very important about how education really happens.
“Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
Replacing Explain
So, the idea stated by Mr. Jobs above is that ALL of your education matters. It doesn’t matter just for your job, it matters for your happy living. Yes, the more you educate yourself the more you can explain things, explain connections, explain ideas, to others. But it is more than that. Here is what I mean. In the quote above, replace ‘explain’ with ‘understand’. Now replace it with ‘please’. Now replace it with ‘forgive’.
A lifestyle of self-education is a major key to growth, to understanding, to wisdom about yourself. And those things can lead to some level of living happy.
Replacing Yourself
Now go even one step further. Replace ‘yourself’ with ‘others’ – explain others, understand others, please others, forgive others. Commit to self-education throughout your life and it leads not just deeper into yourself, but past yourself to others. And then you will really be living happy.
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Love – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #1
Courage – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #2
Smiling – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #3
Education – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #4
Transformation – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #5
Judging – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #6
Expression – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #7
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Drawing and guide by Marty Coleman, who once took a course on building a stone wall without mortar.
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 14, 2013 | Marty Coleman, The Napkin's Guide to Happy Living |
Smile, it’s Happy Living day #3!
A Short Short Story
She was raised swimming and it made her smile when she was able to afford a pool when she grew up. She loved cats and it made her smile when her cat would come and play with her. It made her smile to drink her favorite coffee when she sat out in the late morning. She was happy living. The End
Holiday Time
The Holiday season is a great time to do create a world that makes you smile. My friend Danielle, the force behind Extraordinarymommy.com, posted this photo the other day. The caption that went with it read, “I have moved my office into the family room… I want to embrace every minute of this view…”
Danielle Smith’s Family Room at Christmas Time
Why was that? Because the view made her smile. Obviously she and her family live a comfortable and well-off life. But that is not the key to the happiness this room gives her. The key is the love that went into it, not the money.
Humble is no Excuse
Very early on in my first marriage, we lived in a 90 year old rental house in downtown San Jose, California. Most of our furniture was old, hand me down furniture. But we still were able to make the space warm, welcoming and pleasing. We had a really old trunk I bought for $3.00 at a garage sale in San Francisco as our coffee table. It had brass hardware on it. I took the hardware off and polished it to a high sheen. It made a big difference in the look of the trunk. It made me happy to put my feet up on it.
We weren’t able to do everything we wanted to the house or have all the furniture we wanted, but what we had we made as beautiful as we could.
Suburbs Are No Excuse
Years later, after we moved to Oklahoma and could afford a nice, big house, my first wife and I divorced. I retained ownership of the house and our daughter’s lived with me during the school year, since their mother had moved out of the school district. During the summer they lived mostly at her house. I took advantage of having them gone most of the summer to paint the inside of the house. I painted it red, gold, and cream. Sound crazy? I loved it. It made me happy.
Our home 1994-2006, Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
I added black spots to my white picket fence so it matched my dalmatian, Oreo. That made me smile and it made the neighborhood kids smile.
Oreo and the Barking Fence
I remodeled my kitchen, taking out a dropped ceiling. After I was almost done I still had some holes in the ceiling where electrical and other things had come through. I decided that instead of fixing the holes in the traditional way I would cover them by hot gluing the ceramics my daughters had created in elementary school onto the ceiling. My kitchen ceiling became a permanent art gallery. That made me smile and it made my daughters smile. No, none fell down.
My Daughters’ Ceramic Gallery
Crazy Artist Type
I know what you are thinking, ‘Marty, that’s fine for you, you are the crazy artist type and can get away with that stuff. But not me.’ You would be surprised what you can do if you decide it’s is worth doing. The idea, no matter what level of creativity you have, is to create a physical world that makes you smile. Do it a bit at a time, as you can afford it and as circumstances allow, and it will add to your happy living. Don’t settle for a world that doesn’t make you smile.
What have you designed or experienced that makes you smile?
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Love – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #1
Courage – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #2
Smiling – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #3
Education – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #4
Transformation – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #5
Judging – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #6
Expression – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #7
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Drawing and Guide by Marty Coleman, who isn’t above framing postcards that make him smile.
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 12, 2013 | Marty Coleman, The Napkin's Guide to Happy Living |
Once again the key to happy living comes from speaking AND doing. It’s great to say you love something, but it’s in the doing that you understand what that really means.
Courage, Creative and Practical
There are at least two elements to this. The first is illustrated in the drawing, finding a creative outlet you love. The second is the day to day life you lead and the practical choices it entails.
Creativity
I’ve mentioned this before but it’s such a fundamental lesson it bears repeating; if you are going to be a consistent creative force in the world you have to love what you do and let the world know it. It might seem obvious but the roadblocks can be high. To give just one example, the woman in the drawing might have a spouse, family, employer or church who does not approve of her doing nude sculpture. But if the nude is what she loves, if it’s what she is creatively moved by, then she has to find a way to make it happen. She has to find the courage to stand up and say, this is what I love to do. She has to do this knowing she will face the anger, misunderstanding or rejection. That is the definition of courage. She does it because creating her art as she pleases makes her happy and that is worth it.
Practical
There are other examples that reside in our daily life. They involve individuality, style and interests. For example, the woman who likes blue eyeshadow but knows people laugh at it and thinks it’s tacky. The man who likes to bird watch even though all his buddies like to hunt and think he is a wuss. The couple who like to take separate vacations even though their families think it means they don’t really love each other. The female bodybuilder with 10 cats whose landlord makes fun of her.
What they all have in common is their pursuit of what makes them happy and their willingness to face disapproval because of it. What are some other examples?
Developing
I first wrote the guide above to say ‘Have the courage…’ but I changed it to ‘Develop the courage…’ because I realized as I wrote it that courage is a muscle. It’s no different than a physical muscle. It needs to be developed through practice and training. One needs to learn what it entails and how to implement it. How to withstand an onslaught. How to respond to an attack. How to make peace with disapproval. It isn’t easy. I like to think I’ve been a courageous artist for 40 years and it still is hard for me to face the disapproval of my wife or family or the art world or society. Trust me, I know. I live in Oklahoma, the land of judgment. I don’t have all the answers but I know one aspect that helps, and that’s to have a sense of humor about it.
Reward
In my years of going through it I discovered something. The happier and more confident I am about my choice and direction, from the beginning, the more those around me bow to it. I don’t mean bow in any sort of grandiose way, I mean that those who see a confident person stepping forward in a creative vision usually respond with respect after a while. Yes, they may push back at first, but if you are consistent and resolute, they see you are not going to be stopped and they let you go. That is where consistent application of your creative vision gains a reward for you. You become known as that person. Your identity is secure and others respect and admire that.
Be courageous, confident and consistent in the choices that make you happy and others will see it and respect it over time.
What examples do you have of courage and creativity?
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Love – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #1
Courage – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #2
Smiling – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #3
Education – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #4
Transformation – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #5
Judging – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #6
Expression – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #7
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Drawing and guide by Marty Coleman, who has been known to draw naked people himself.
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by Marty Coleman | Dec 10, 2013 | Marty Coleman, The Napkin's Guide to Happy Living |
The First Responder
My daughter, Caitlin, was driving from Dallas to Tulsa, coming home for Thanksgiving, a few weeks back. There was a car accident immediately behind her and she stopped to help. She steeled herself to perhaps see something pretty traumatic but luckily the guy wasn’t really badly hurt. She went to her car, got paper towels and other stuff and helped him with his injuries. She didn’t think of her actions as being about love I don’t think. But they were. She could have driven on. She could have just watched from a distance. But she didn’t. She chose to get involved and help him.
Acting
When I first came up with this I had it as ‘Think in terms of love’. But I quickly remembered another important lesson, ‘It’s easier to act your way into another way of feeling than it is to feel your way into another way of acting.’ and realized that many times the action of love has to come before the feeling (or thinking) of love. The action actually leads one closer to the feeling, they compound each other.
Thinking
Even though acting is key, acting without thinking can lead to many missed opportunities. The reason is this; just as a frame around a painting changes the painting itself, how you frame what you experience changes the experience. For example, when you see an activity, let’s say a business trip, as an obligation or duty then there is a certain dread attached to it. But if you think of it as an opportunity to show love, then there is much more excitement and enthusiasm for it.
Love to Whom?
But a business trip? How can I show love on a business trip? It’s actually a great opportunity to evaluate and frame what it is you do, seeing if what you do can be categorized as love, or, if not, can adjust your attitude or actions to be more loving? Think of all the people you meet on a business trip? Flight attendants, fellow flyers, cab drivers, hotel staff, business colleagues, restaurant workers. What better group of people to help you see if how you act (and think) is in terms of love?
Happy Living
The end result of acting and thinking in terms of love is that you feel happy. Happy with yourself, yes. But just as likely you will feel happy about the circumstances you are in as well.
And since it’s impossible to live a happy life all at once, the best we can do is to have happy moments within a life. Have enough of those and at the end you will discover you’ve lived a happy life. And it all starts with love.
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Love – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #1
Courage – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #2
Smiling – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #3
Education – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #4
Transformation – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #5
Judging – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #6
Expression – The Napkin’s Guide to Happy Living #7
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Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Nov 14, 2013 | Marty Coleman |
Lately everyone on Facebook is making a list of ‘things you didn’t know about me’. Someone posts a list and if you ‘like’ the list the list maker messages you and gives you a number. You have to then post that number of things people don’t know about you. This is a take off on that idea. My number is random.
1. You already know I am an artist and have 2 degrees in art.
You don’t know that I had to leave or was kicked out of 2 undergraduate colleges and one graduate college on my way to getting those degrees. One of those events was completely my fault.
2. You already know I was burned on 70% of my body in a boat explosion at age 18.
You don’t know that the resulting legal issues didn’t get resolved for 9 years. I got enough money to pay for most of Grad school.
3. You already know my dad, Skeets Coleman, was a famous aviator.
You don’t know that he paid for me to learn to fly starting at age 13 and I got my pilot’s license right after my 17th birthday. Even though I don’t fly now I always imagine I could land any plane in an emergency.
4. You already know that my Grandfather was a sunday painter and woodworker and taught me all sorts of things about drawing and woodworking when I was very young.
You don’t know that he was President of Encyclopædia Britannica for many years.
5. You already know that I am exhibiting artist.
You don’t know that my first exhibition was of nude figure drawings in the Darien High School library in 1973. I was 18 and a senior. No, I am not joking. It was a different time then.
6. You already know I taught drawing part-time at the college level.
You don’t know that I tried for 8 years to land a full-time teaching job and wasn’t able to. I finally retrained myself on computers, switched career directions and landed a job in Tulsa.
7. You already know I am a running coach.
You don’t know that I didn’t start running seriously until I was 53. I will log just under 1,000 miles this year and will run my 3rd marathon next month. It’s never too late.
8. You already know I love Oreos.
You don’t know that I haven’t eaten one in all of 2013 (so far).
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by Marty Coleman | Sep 13, 2013 | Illustrated Short Stories, Marty Coleman, Travel Napkins |
‘At First’ – A Short, Short Story
Was she the one being counseled or was she the counselor? I couldn’t tell at first.
Were the children hers, or the other woman’s, or maybe they belonged to the man, or all three. I couldn’t tell at first.
At first I thought she would sit still long enough for me to draw her.
At first she didn’t notice me.
Marty Coleman – 9/13/13
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by Marty Coleman | Aug 29, 2013 | Marty Coleman, Plan On It! - 2013 |
This will be spot on for some people, and not for others. I planned it that way.
Sheesh, another drawing of naked people, what’s up with you Marty!? Well, I like naked people. Some of my best friends are naked at least once a day. But beyond that, nakedness is a visual metaphor of our stripped down, exposed self and the cathartic transformation that occurs when we allow it to happen.
Megan LaBonte
Megan
That may be something that happens physically, like it did to Megan, a Photographer friend of mine in Massachusetts, who recently decided to go without makeup now for a number of months. She was petrified by the idea but she did it. She stripped herself clean of the mask and went out into the world not knowing what to expect.
This is what she wrote upon posting this photograph:
Before and after. Realized yesterday I have now been through my first whole season with out make up. What a difference it has made not only in the health of my skin but in my happiness as well. I love waking up each morning and facing the world just as I am, never realized how much I was hiding until I took this mask off. I now will wear it every once in a while to go out but other than that I don’t miss it at all and in fact for such a seemingly little thing it really has made a big impact on my life. I feel free from it and look forward to the next three seasons with an all natural face.
There are a lot of things Megan can’t change about herself. Genetically she is pretty much set and short of plastic surgery she isn’t going to change her natural face much. In other words, she has her spots. But she still could do a lot. In the simple act of not wearing makeup she took away some color, and added texture. She took away strong line and exchanged it for more subtle transformations of tone. In other words, she changed the color of her spots.
Reading her statement, it’s about much more than a physical transformation. It’s about a psychological and emotional transformation. She says she is happier. Happiness is not physical, right? It’s about attitude and emotion. She also said she realized she was hiding much. Was she hiding some hideous deformation on her face with the makeup? No, she was hiding something psychologically deeper. While the transformation was physical on the surface, that mask of makeup represented something much deeper and it was facing those deeper issues that was transformative far more than just going without foundation for a day.
Deeper Planning
Just to clarify, the napkin scene above is not related to Megan. She is just an example from among my friends about a physical transformation and she had a recent illustration I thought captured it well.
The Napkin shows a pretty horrendous family scene. It’s fraught with sexual tension, distress and possible abuse. It’s not hard to make the assumption that the family has highly dysfunctional relationships throughout. Who knows what terrible things have happened to make everyone run away in pain. We know all the children are running out into the world with spots. Spots that came from that home, that set of parents. Spots that hurt, spots that scar, spots that fester.
So, how do we go about transforming in these situations? With courage and a deliberate decision to do it.
For example, I have a family spot called alcoholism. The only way I found to deal with it in my own life was to stop drinking. I turned the scotch colored spot to water colored spot (whatever color that is.) I had to choose to change the color of that spot long ago or lose what mattered to me. The spot is still there, but it is pale now compared to the color I initially inherited.
What about you? Perhaps your spot includes a gravy colored spot called eating. Well, you aren’t going to stop eating. But you can transform the color of that spot to green for more vegetables and less gravy. Perhaps your spot is the green spot of envy. What color could that spot be turned into?
What about other spots you would like to transform? Whatever spots you choose, they won’t fade or change colors on their own You have to decide you want to change them, and yourself. You can do it.
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Drawing, quote, and commentary by Marty Coleman
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 24, 2013 | Marty Coleman, Women vs Men - 2013 |
I got into a long and deep discussion today on FB over a story on ABC News/GMA about girls not being allowed to wear strapless dresses to a middle school prom because they were deemed ‘too distracting’ by the principal of the school. Click on the pic or link to read the story.
Is this an example of a rape culture at work?
There were a lot of points of view, mine primarily being that what is needed is proper training for boys on how to respond to girls, no matter what they are wearing. Limiting girls because boys might be distracted is placing the blame on the girl, just as when someone blames a rape victim because she wore too short a skirt or too dark of eyeshadow. Not only is that not the reason behind rape, even if it were, the solution is to get the boys/men educated and trained about appropriate and moral behavior, not telling women they have to wear clothes that conceal.
That’s my initial take on it, what’s yours?
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Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman
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“Training boys is wiser than limiting girls.”
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by Marty Coleman | Apr 8, 2013 | Marty Coleman, What Science Is - 2013 |
My eldest daughter, pregnant with my first grandchild, is coming to visit this week. She is almost finished getting her Ph.D. in Neuroscience so I thought I would do a few drawings about science this week in honor of her.
Late to the Party
I never had a huge interest in science growing up. But the 20 year influence of my ex-father in law, who was an engineer and had a huge knowledge of many scientific principles and Rebekah starting in on her studies of the brain, I found myself reading more and more books and articles on science over the years.
Leaving the Other Party
It coincided with a great dissatisfaction and frustration with religious stubbornness about science. Evolution, cosmology, climatology, biology, neurology…you name it and it seemed that religion was dragging it’s intellectual heels in accepting what was being learned about life and the universe. The fear that the discoveries of science could steal away power or faith or something else seemed to lead to a desperation of denial that I have found to be unacceptable for me to condone.
When Comfort Leads the Way
I have figured out a bit of the reason why that is. It seems to me that it is due to comfort being more important than truth. You might think it is the opposite, since religion often stands on ‘truth’ as a pillar of the faith. There is talk of sacrifice and bowing the the will of God and all sorts of other supposedly uncomfortable efforts we are told need to be made to get in line with God and his truth. But the truth is that truth is not really pursued. What is pursued is comfort (which can also be seen as peace and happiness). I am not talking about material comfort per se, though that is a big part of American life so is pursued by religious believers just as it is by non-believers. I am talking about comfort of intellect. The religious believer is more concerned with the assurance of happiness and peace than truth. It might not be happiness and peace in this life, but it is critical to believe so one can have peace and happiness in eternal life. Whether or not the theological construct they have believed makes any rational sense, is true, is not nearly as important as if it is just believable enough to allow for a feeling of peace and happiness. In other words, comfort.
When Truth Leads the Way
Here is my feeling about it. Science, in all its messy and human pursuit of truth, actually gives me a much more genuine feeling of peace and happiness than theology does. It does so because I trust it. I don’t mean I trust any one scientific discovery. I mean I trust the process of truth seeking that comes with science. I believe it is moving towards truth and won’t be stopped. Religion and theology meanwhile already has been stopped. It has it’s definitions and it isn’t interested in having those changed. I can’t trust a process that is stopped like that.
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Science Trivia Question of the Day
The fixed point on which a lever moves is called:
- Fulcrum
- Anchor
- Pivot
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote is by Marty Coleman, adapted from one by Le Bon
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 29, 2013 | Marty Coleman, Take Your Medicine! - 2013 |
You are finally finished with your 5 day dosage of ‘Take Your Medicine!’ week.
Trauma
Last summer we watched ‘New York Med’. It followed doctors, nurses, & patients at 3-4 hospitals as they go through various aspects of their lives and medical procedures. I remember one of the Drs. saying that the number one indicator for a successful recovery was the love and support the patient had from family and friends. With no support there was a lower chance of the patient having the physical and mental courage, determination and attitude needed to recover well. People can do it, but support made it much easier.
Drama
Years and years ago a friend of mine had her husband in the hospital for an extended stay. She would visit once or twice a day, but not stay long at all. When I asked why not she said she couldn’t do anything for him so why stay. I asked if just being there helped him? She said she was there twice a day many days and that was enough. I remember having the feeling he was going to have a long recovery.
Karma
However, most of our friends and family aren’t in the hospital, right? But many of them still are hurting or afraid or doubting about something in life. Maybe it’s a break up, a big life transition or something unexpected and frightening happening. Why should our response be any different? It shouldn’t.
We should give physical and verbal support. We should pat them on the back, hug them and kiss them. We should whisper, say and yell if I have to, that we believe in them and that they can make it through whatever the hard thing is they are in the middle of.
And most of all we should do what we can to help them make it happen. but it all starts with just being there.
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Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman, who was the beneficiary of great support in the hospital and is still grateful 40 years later.
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