It’s the final day of Dog and Cat week. Enjoy it, it’s what you were meant to do!
That doesn’t mean you feel joy all the time. It simply means you pursue joy and happiness. Don’t be fooled into thinking it’s selfishness. Do it right and you will end up helping your family, friends, co-workers, and complete strangers be happier and have more joy as well.
Drawing by Marty Coleman, who once went to a real bullfight in France.
I am still on the road, but headed to the airport soon to make my way back to Tulsa. I was able to do a photoshoot on the beach on Coronado Island with an old friend and her husband yesterday. It got me thinking about friendship.
When my kids left the house for school every day my recurring farewell was, ‘Make good friends and keep good friends.’ One of my favorite things in the world is having old friends. My second favorite thing is making new ones knowing that if I treat them right and pay attention to them when I can, they will soon become old friends as well. That might take years, it might take a few days, like it did with some of the people I met at the recent BlogWorld conference I attended.
I look forward to many of them becoming old friends.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
When I come across people who have no doubt about something and combine that with a belief that ‘change’ is a sign of giving in, of weakness, I know I am in for a rough time in any conversation regarding opinions or beliefs.
Here is why. The person is not going to be listening to ideas for their own value but only as attacks to be repelled. They often will think that merely listening to an idea is tantamount to having to take it as their own. They don’t have the willingness to consider an idea because they don’t realize they can listen, evaluate and reject or accept.
Every idea is a threat because they do not actually have a well-defined strength of belief. The facade is so strong exactly because the inside is so vulnerable.
I love this quote because it is so absurd as to be ridiculous. But not if you look into genetics and biology. Those who study in those areas will tell you that 1, many ridiculous ideas have turned out to be true, and 2, this idea isn’t so ridiculous.
The key to us not believing it is rooted in our arrogance of consciousness. We think because we are conscious we are the deciders (to quote a famous unpresident). What we don’t easily recognize is the genetic desire of smaller particles, less developed ‘us’ to want to survive, to want to exist and to want to propagate.
How does this apply to our daily life? After all, it isn’t something we have much control over, right? Right, we don’t. But we do have a lot of control over our consciousness. We can expand it to understand more of the forces working in and around us. It won’t explain it all, it won’t tell us all the details. But it will enlarge our awareness of how humanity, the earth and the universe works.
So, in the end, this is a simple plea to not be afraid of science, to not be afraid of learning more than you now know. You don’t need to worry about whether you are smart enough to get a Ph.D. All you have to do is read an article on something, watch a TV show about something.
Ignorance is not bliss, it is danger.
“A hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.” – Samuel Butler
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“Any class is all right if it will only let others be so.” – Samuel Butler
Of course, the issue is, will each class let others from the lesser classes come into theirs! But the general idea, to let other people be who they want to be and not bother them is, of course, valid. It is amazing how many individuals, fathers, mothers, governments, churches, etc. have so much invested in making sure as many people as possible are like them.
“A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.” – Samuel Butler
I remember hearing this idea for the first time and being so struck by the truth and simplicity of it. To define something is to capture it, just like an animal in the zoo. And humans can view it, examine it and admire it when it is captured. But that idea is also now imprisoned and it becomes easy for a person to think that what they see is all that the idea is. It becomes easy for the idea to no longer be able to grow or expand, especially when the idea is codified, like in the Quran or Bible or other sacred texts.
