When you are ‘torn up’ about something in life, what is it that really is torn? It’s your mind. For example, I have a friend who has fallen in love with a married man. Her mind and heart are torn. She thinks everything of this man and so she is willing to do everything for him, including risking destroying herself.
Your Focus is your Reality
What you focus on in life is what is real, even when it’s not. Spending your life focused on the existence of Bigfoot doesn’t make Bigfoot real. It makes your pursuit of him real.
Believing Untruth
Believing money will do everything for you in life doesn’t mean it’s true (it’s not). It means you will do everything (and anything) for money without regard for your own (and others) health, safety and well-being.
The questions you have to ask are:
Why do I think it’s true even though it’s proven to be false?
What do I gain from believing it?
Answer those and you are on your way to a more balanced way of thinking about money (or anything else for that matter).
I have often times in my life had a twitch or some other ailment that just won’t go away. I then, finally, go to the Dr. to see if it’s eyelid cancer or just a twitch. So, the medicine man (or woman) looks me in the eye and says, ‘It’s just a twitch.’ There isn’t anything for them to do about it so they just send me on my way. They did nothing to help stop the twitching at all and yet, the twitching is gone by the time I get to the car. What’s that all about?
Maybe it was the doctor mollifying me, or entertaining me with an intellectual explanation, or distracting me like a person getting scared when they have the hiccups. Whatever the reason, their technique often works. No medicine, but a healing technique nonetheless, right?
Has this happened to you? You know, where you go from Dr. to Dr. and nothing helps, then it just ups and heals itself out of the blue? It’s such a mystery when that happens, isn’t it. But I have to admit I like it!
Question: Where did the saying, ‘Fit as a Fiddle’come from?
Answer: It first appeared in 1616 in ‘Englishmen for My Money’ by William Haughton, “This is excellent, i’faith; as fit as a fiddle” Fit meant appropriate, as in fitting or proper, as a fiddle fits perfectly with a fiddler’s pose. It did not originally refer to one’s fitness, that came much later.
Don’t quote me, but it’s day #2 of ‘The Great Quotists’ series at the NDD Next up is François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name, Voltaire.
Voltaire is the wit of France. Born into the enlightenment era he skewered royalty, religion, pretension, society, and politics with a sharpness of tongue that no other could match.
But he was much more than just a sarcastic wit. He was an amateur scientist, working to discover the elements of fire. He was one of the first to write history in a modern way, paying attention to culture and society as much as military and political events. He was a crusader for the separation of church and state and religious freedom. He wrote more than 20,000 letters and 2,000 books and pamphlets.
Another example of a man who had humor until the end, his famous last words were, “Now, now, my good man, this is not the time for making enemies.” in response to a priest asking him to renounce Satan.
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
You can get all 5 stupidity napkins on Coffee Cups and you should!
When you think about it, well-mannered stupid people do tend to make it to the top and rule the world. But I plan a coup soon of well-mannered smart people and will need your help! Are you with me?
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman of The Napkin Dad Daily
Quote by Voltaire. If you don’t know who he is, you aren’t paying attention!
Welcome to Stupidity, my first series of 2011! In honor of all you returning to work after the holidays, I thought you might need some classic quote therapy to help you navigate among your co-workers.
Over the holidays our extended family took a long walk along the Arkansas River. We took our 2 dogs with us. We passed a jungle gym play area with a curvy slide and I thought it would be fun to slide wiggle dog down it. I attempted said maneuver but wiggle dog wasn’t happy with this idea and instead of going down the curvy slide, jumped over the edge of it down to the sand below. Wiggle dog got up, favoring one paw. I was worried she had broken something. But she was alright.
My wife and daughter (and others) saw stupidity in action. They weren’t happy to see it. I apologized to wiggle dog. I apologized to my wife and daughter. I went over to the men in the group and said ‘men sometimes do stupid things’. They all nodded.
Moral of the story, don’t do stupid things, especially to someone else!
We are moving from Disease Week’ to ‘Aging Week’! Being around my father this week (he broke his hip and I have been helping to care for him) has made me think a lot about aging, growing old, not growing old, etc.
I think this quote is true, that virtue is sometimes (not always) a function of no energy or drive to do the unvirtuous thing. Not nearly as noble, but in reality I think laziness is as much a reason for virtue to increase and ‘sin’ to decrease as most other reasons I have heard over the years.
What is an absurdity? It is something that is not believable IF you are paying attention and thinking it through. You have to purposely ignore evidence that is easily in reach and you have to have a pre-existing (even if unconscious) desire to believe the absurdity for it to persuade you.
How does it lead to atrocities? If you believe, as people of many races have over the centuries, that people of other races are not fully human, then denying them rights (or killing them) is easily rationalized.
If you believe, as people of many religions have over the centuries, that people of other religions are eternally damned, then treating them as less than human (or killing them) is easily rationalized.
If you believe, as people of many political persuasions have over the centuries, that those who don’t believe in the same way of governing as you do are evil and corrupt, then keeping them from being politically involved (or killing them) is easily rationalized.
If you believe, as people of both genders have over the centuries, that women are less intelligent and able than men, then oppressing them (or killing them) is easily rationalized.
Where did those actions come from over the centuries? From believing absurdities.
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” – Francois-Marie Arouet (Voltaire)
How does one get common sense? While there are plenty of mysteries associated with it, one thing we know for certain. We have to teach the beginnings of it to our kids. It may seem like people should just know it, but in truth almost everything has to be learned, nothing is just intrinsically known. I know, I know, some things might be, ok, fine. But really, one of the reasons common sense is argued about is because people haven’t all been taught the same thing at the same time.
So, one of the greatest things you can do for your kids, nephews, nieces, grandkids, whoever, is to take the time to explain things that, in your mind, should be obvious, understanding that it isn’t obvious to that child. Whether it is pans that are hot, looking both ways at stop signs, or not eating yellow snow, it all needs to be explained.
“It is hard to free fools from the chains they revere.” – Voltaire
I am usually a pretty encouraging person, and I will always lean towards the assumption that people want to become better, want to improve their lives, their mind, their behavior. But sometimes you come across people who you realize, though they consciously think they want to change, really have no interest in it at all. They are wrapped up in their chains of whatever and hate with a passion the idea of having those chains taken away. After all, who would they be, without those chains?
You might think I am talking about addicts here, people who can’t give up cigarettes or alcohol, etc. And yes, of course those of us who deal with that have our chains. But, I am thinking of a different sort of chain. The chain based, not on reality, what really is, but on self, what THEY think really is. The person who isn’t interested in learning, isn’t interested in finding out truth, but is interested only in defending their foolishness, prejudices, superstitions and magical thinking. Absurd, self-absorbed rationalizations are the chains.
We all have our blind spots I know, but sometimes I come across a person who has more blind spots than seeing spots and I come to find out they put those blind spots there on purpose! That get’s old and it becomes hard to continue to encourage in that case.
