It’s about time day #3 of Medicine Week showed up!
Redeeming Reasons
Why do we want to be healthy and live a long life? It seems pretty obvious, right? I mean, who doesn’t want both those things. But have you ever really stopped to ask yourself what you are doing with the health and years you have? Are you redeeming them for something or are they both just for their own sake?
Layers of Reasons
I understand health for it’s own sake. After all, being healthy feels better than not. Being fit feels better than not. We don’t really have to defend our desire to be healthy beyond that, do we. It’s its own reason. But is it the only reason? Is it the ultimate reason?
I remember when I got divorced and started going to the gym to get back in shape. I looked around and wondered, what are all these people going to be doing with all this fitness they have? Then of course I had to turn the question back to myself. What was I going to do with it all? Obviously I was getting in shape to be more attractive to the opposite sex, since I planned on dating.
My Ultimate Reason
But besides getting a mate, I thought farther down the line, what other reasons were there? I wanted to be in shape for that mate into the future, for my kids into the future so I could travel to visit and support them, so I could teach people, so I could help others, so I could be of service to whomever would need something from me, so I could enjoy life and sha
So ultimately, for me, it then and now comes down to one essential thing. I want to be in good health so I can love the best I can. That is the whole of it. That’s why I want to live a long life as well.
_______________
Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman, who is fit as a fiddle. But how fit is a fiddle anyway?
A kid won’t usually say being sick sucks. they more often will say it’s no fun. Why is it no fun? Because they are used to having fun and aren’t now. They have something to compare it to. What about us adults? If you don’t have fun in your life, then being sick isn’t that different than not being sick.
Copping an Attitude
Obviously, it’s not easy to have fun when you are sick or taking serious medicine. Even the most fun people can get way down due to an illness. But they don’t stay down for long. Even in the hospital they will find a way to have fun, maybe by being sassy with the nurses or cracking some jokes with their grandkids. But at the root they do so by realizing the fun is in the attitude, even in the midst of the sickness. And guess what? It’s pretty well proven that that attitude in turn actually helps the person get healthier. But if you can’t have fun when you are healthy, you certainly won’t be able to when you are sick.
______________
Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman
______________
Answer to yesterday’s photo question:
Yesterday I posted about speaking at Social Media Tulsa and included 2 photos, one a camera phone pic, the other a DSLR photo and asked which one was which. Here are the two photos and the answer.
The top photograph was taken with my iPhone, the bottom with my Panasonic G1 camera. I did the same minimal manipulation on both. The iPhone image I converted to sepia and slightly adjusted the brightness and contrast using the Photoshop Express App in the phone. It took about 2 minutes to take, process and post. The G1 image I did the exact same thing, but did it on my Mac Pro desktop after downloading from my camera.
I am going to be giving the Keynote address at the Southern Region 4H Volunteer Forum in Little Rock, Arkansas tomorrow. I wanted to have a napkin specifically for 4H but was having a hard time visualizing it. Luckily, as I was writing the commentary for a napkin I was drawing earlier this week I came up with this quote. It started me thinking about what I know of the 4H Organization and how it all seems to be about helping young people become who they want to become.
It’s a tricky thing, this becoming. We are constantly becoming something new in mind and in body, even us old people. But it is especially true of young people. They are going through a tsunami of becoming as they grow. Our job as parents, as volunteers, as teachers, as mentors, is to figure out the best ways to help these young people navigate through this tsunami of change.
I love the simplicity of the 4H idea: Becoming takes place in four arenas of life; Head, Hand, Heart and Health. That is what it’s all about.
The Balancing Act
It acknowledges that our thinking, working, caring, and fitness all need to develop in balance with one another. It’s not enough just to be a model of bodybuilder perfection or look great in a bikini if you aren’t able to think critically about the world. It’s not enough to be a theoretical genius in neuroscience if you fail to love your neighbor. It’s not enough to be always working, earning all the money in the world, if you ignore your health.
Leading the Way
They all work must in concert with one another if we want to be the person we really want to be. And as any kid will tell you, they are watching our example much more than our words. So if we want our youth to be balanced, guess what? We have to lead the way.
I spoke at Blog World NY last week. I spoke on ‘Content Procrastination’ but my takeaways from the conference were mostly about Social Media. I am coming up with some ‘secrets’ I learned there. They are secrets because I am making them up now, as I go. They are not from any particular presentation or interaction.
Tradition
I often find myself wanting traditional media to pay attention to me. I like reporters, anchors, journalists, videographers, photographers and I like when they want to tell my stories. But it is important form me to remember I am also the media. I am the social media. So are you. The traditional media look to us in social media to help them just as we want them to help us.
Social
The reason it is important to realize this is power. Because traditional media has been around, is established and has clout in terms of information distribution and status, we think it is equal to ‘making it’. We get attention from traditional media and we have arrived. In some ways that is true. But when you think of it, social media is the media that goes viral, not traditional.
All
In other words, don’t be fooled into thinking you need traditional media to validate who you are. It helps, but there are all sorts of ways to get your company, ideas, books, merchandise, self, vision out there in the world.
Use them all, alert the Social Media!
____________________
Drawing by Marty Coleman, who drinks social media with cream and sugar.
Why do we think skin equals sin? Why is the exposing of skin seen as dirty? Obviously in breastfeeding a mother shows her breast. If she is in public she might cover her breast with a blanket. But it’s also possible that she might choose not to cover, maybe because the child gets fussy under the blanket, maybe because she likes to watch her child nurse, maybe she likes the feel of the open air. Whatever her reason and whatever her choice there will be someone who feels it’s wrong, dirty or rude for her to nurse in public, no matter what.
It’s Your Fault
This gets to the heart of a persistent idea. It’s the idea that the woman is to blame for the actions of the man. It usually boils down to one thing, she showed too much skin. Whose fault is it if a man reacts rudely, even violently to a woman showing ‘too much skin’? In this persistent idea it is the woman’s fault. Why? Because you can’t expect a man to be able to control himself in the face of that much skin showing.
Self-Control
I, as a man, am offended by this the same way a woman would (and should) be offended by a comment saying a woman can’t control her emotions so she can’t be trusted in important roles in public life. The same is true with the ‘skin’ argument for men. It is not the case that men can’t handle it. It is the case that when men SAY they can’t handle it they are using it as an excuse for their own bad behavior. They are rationalizing their inability to have some self-control by blaming it on others. It’s not the ‘other’ who is to blame. It is the man.
It may be another week but it’s still the perfect day to continue my perfection series.
Do you know anyone who is perfect? See, proves my point. All perfect people are alone. And all who pretend to be perfect, they end up alone too. Maybe not physically alone, but emotionally and socially they quite likely will be. This will be especially true if they combine their perfection with judgment.
But wasn’t Jesus perfect? Personally I don’t think he was. I think he had imperfect reactions at times. For example, I think he was often annoyed and impatient with his followers (including his mother) instead of being understanding and patient. Realistically, I think he might have been grumpy and short with people if he was too hungry. He seems to have been harsh and a bit mean to whole groups of religious folks (the pharisees come to mind). He certainly was inconsiderate to his parents when he stayed behind in the temple when he should have been with them on the journey home. I think of Jesus as one who moved towards perfection much faster and with more courage than others (especially me) but I don’t think he was perfect.
Are you perfect? Or perhaps you just play a perfect person in real life? Either way you are probably much more alone than you wish to be. It’s not fun being #1 and alone. I bet you will find a lot of loving people ready to support and help you when you allow your honest, imperfect self to show through.
_________________________________________
Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman, who humbly submits that he has perfected the art of being imperfect.
In my non-Napkin Dad life I also consult, design and develop websites and blogs at times. I have recently been contracted to redesign and expand a style, fashion, and shopping blog and it has been great fun. It included a number of long conversations with the client about how to get just the right mix of elements into the website. That in turn got me thinking about what style really consists of and I came up with the Five I’s. I think I will spend some time digressing about the I’s eventually but before I do I would love to hear your understanding of the I’s as they apply in your own and other’s styles in fashion and other areas. Or add in new I’s or whatever other alphabet letter fits!
In addition, Let me know what you think style is, where it comes from, how you know it when you see it, and how it differs from fashion, trends, fads, etc.
Drawing, quote and commentary by Marty Coleman, who got 3 new hats this winter.
Think of all that has happened in the last year. I started speaking at conferences for the first time, three of them to be exact. Over a year ago I submitted a proposal for an exhibition of my photo-collages but hadn’t heard back anything by 1/1/11. Now I am 4 days away from the exhibition’s opening night (Living Arts of Tulsa, Friday, January 6th, 6-9pm). I had one daughter living in Tulsa and one in Seattle. Now I have one in parts unknown and one in Berkeley, CA. Those are just a few things among many. Two of those events I made happen by putting myself out there. My daughter’s life events I had very little control over, watching mainly from the sidelines.
What about you? What happened this year? What happen that you had some control over? What happened you had very little control over?
Stuff is going to happen to you in the next year. Stuff you can’t control and have no say in. But there will be plenty of things that will happen ONLY if you decide to make them happen. Are you going to push to make things happen, believing they can happen if you set your mind to it or are you going to let opportunities pass by, believing you are not able or being fearful of possible bad outcomes?
Will you look back on 1/1/13 and feel you did what you could?
Drawing, commentary and quote by Marty Coleman, a man who likes the funny stuff.
I had a friend in college who was a great keyboard player. His specialty was church organ music. He even had a real organ in his little apartment. He LOVED to play the organ and wanted to be a professional organist for a church. It was his ideal.
But his father wanted him to be a banker. So, he worked in a bank as a teller. That was his father’s path for him and he didn’t have the guts, at that point anyway, to confront his father, OR himself, and take the path he really wanted to take.
He wasn’t living his ideal, he was living an ordeal.
Tell us the story of your ideal and your ordeal. If you have achieved or are on the path to your ideal, tell us how you made that change. If you haven’t made it but want to, tell us what you think might be stopping you. Your stories will help others so don’t be shy to tell them.
Drawing, commentary AND quote by Marty Coleman, a man who lets his fingernails grow too long.
