by Marty Coleman | Nov 4, 2016 | Promises Promises - 2014-16 |
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Surgery
Today I am going to have surgery to remove a nasty bone spur on my left heel. It’s affecting my Achilles tendon to the point where it’s not just painful to run but is painful all the time. The surgery is major and I will be in a cast for a month and then an extensive period of rehab before I can run again. How long? it depends but 4-6 months is the estimate I have heard.
Hippocratic Oath
Why am I telling you this? Because it’s all about promises and performance. The Dr. promised to do the surgery as best he can when he took his Hippocratic Oath upon graduating from medical school. The nurses did the same when they took their oath and the hospital staff all promise to do their best when they get hired. They all promise.
But none of those promises matter if they don’t deliver in their performance. If the Dr. does the surgery wrong, if I get the wrong procedure done, the wrong amount of drugs, or have bad aftercare, then those promises weren’t worth very much.
My Promise
This is an outpatient procedure. I am in their hands for maybe 6-8 hours. Then I am going home. Of course I will be dependent on Linda, my wife, to fulfill her promise of help. But I when it comes to rehab I will primarily be depending on one and only one person to fulfill their promise, and that is me.
I can promise all my friends, family and all my fellow runners, those I coach and those who coach alongside me this: I promise to do what my physical therapist says. I promise to follow my Dr’s orders. I promise to not take too many drugs (or not enough, depending). I promise.
My Performance
But my promises won’t heal me. They won’t build my muscles. They won’t get me back to running. My performance will. So, I can think about it all I want. I can persuade and convince whoever will listen. But, in the end a promise is only something you depend on in advance of something. The performance is what you depend on in the middle of something. I have to perform to get better. Do I think I can do it? You bet. But have I done it yet? No, I have not.
Your Promise
So, promise you will keep a watch on me. Promise to encourage me if you think I need it. Promise to kick my butt if you think I need that. But mostly promise to bring by cookies if you decide that is a critical necessity.
I promise I will eat them (slowly)!
Drawing and commentary © Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote by James Howell, 1594-1666, Angl0-Welsh writer
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by Marty Coleman | Nov 2, 2016 | George Santayana, Promises Promises - 2014-16 |
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The Orange Promise
The Orange Man promises. The Orange Man knows promising things is easy. He promises to pay people and they believe him. He promises to build things like walls and people believe him. He promises he can fix things for people and they believe him. He promises to make things great and people believe him.
The Orange Promise
The Orange Man doesn’t care about what happens after the promise is made. He doesn’t care because he knows how to blame other people for him breaking promises. He is very good at both breaking promises and blaming others for the breaking. He is good at it because he believes it. He believes nothing is his fault. He believes he has never done anything wrong. He believes he always knows what is right to do, even when he doesn’t know anything about the topic he is dealing with.
The Orange Brain
The Orange Man knows this because he has a good brain. He knows this because he thinks smart things. He knows he doesn’t need to study anything because he is so smart. He knows he doesn’t have to listen to others’ ideas about things because he is smarter than they are. He knows this because he has good DNA. He knows he was born smart, as well as good looking.
The Orange Attraction
The Orange Man knows women find him attractive. He knows they can’t keep their hands off of him because he is the most famous orange man in the world. He knows it is his right to do whatever he wants to whatever woman he wants because he is so smart and so good looking and so rich and so famous. He knows this because he does it and he doesn’t get in trouble.
The Orange Matters
The Orange Man knows he is the only person who matters in the world. He knows this because the only person who matters in the world told him so.
The End
Drawing and commentary © 2016 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote by George Santayana, 1863-1952, Spanish born Philosopher, Essayist and Poet
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by Marty Coleman | Oct 31, 2016 | Promises Promises - 2014-16 |
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What it Doesn’t Say
I had a conversation about this among my live streaming followers as I drew it. Someone said, so you can’t trust anyone’s promises? My response was to point out the wording, “when you MAKE someone promise”. This is about coercing a promise, like coercing a confession. When you do that, you are setting them up to lie to you.
Involuntary Vows
When the vow is voluntary, as it should be in say a wedding, then you should expect they are not under duress or being coerced and will abide by the vow. Of course if it is an arranged marriage against the will of one of those betrothed, or a shotgun wedding due to pregnancy or some other supposed scandal, then it is by it’s very nature coerced and the vow is suspect. That doesn’t mean the person is going to cheat or lie or anything else. It simply means the vow is probably getting in the way of them being honest, not helping them to be.
It’s something to watch out for in our own behavior when we try to get people to be honest with us.
Drawing and commentary © 2016 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote by Molly Ringwald, 1968 – not dead yet, American actress and author (When It Happens To You, 2012)
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by Marty Coleman | Oct 28, 2016 | Promises Promises - 2014-16, Russian Proverbs |
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Promises
It’s so prevalent that it’s become a cliche many times over: Put your money where your mouth is. Put a ring on it. Show me. Prove it. Watch what they do, not what they say. What it means is obvious. Promises mean nothing if you don’t back it up with actions.
Big Talkers
Those are the hard lessons for big talkers to learn. It’s also hard if you are prone to enthusiastic responses to inspirational speeches. I know, because I am both. I have my father’s Irish gift of gab, can propound on any number of things. In the past, I have taken that so far as to say I will or can do something. This is especially flagrant if it was after someone has inspired me to volunteer for something. But I often fell down on the job afterwards, inspired enough to promise something, but not dedicated enough to follow through.
Maturity
Now I am less like that. I am still tempted but years of realizing the difference between promising something and delivering has made me much more cautious about making promises, especially of the grand and exalted kind. Now I really try to work through whether the promise is something I can deliver on AFTER the inspirational moment has passed. It means I promise less, maybe even do less. But it also means what I say I will do I am better at actually doing.
I think we all want to get to that point, right?
Drawing and commentary © 2016 Marty Coleman | napkindad.com
Quote is a Russian proverb
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 18, 2014 | Cyril Connolly, Promises Promises - 2014-16 |
And as I promised, here is the last in the ‘Promises, Promises’ series!
Celebrity
What do many celebrities, whether local fame in a small town or international superstardom, have in common? They burn out and fall from the stars in a flaming display of self-destruction. Why is that? Often times it seems to be promising expectations they can’t live up to. It might be they actually aren’t as talented as everyone thought. It might be they have the talent but don’t put in the work to bring that talent to the level needed. Maybe their talent was only developed in one small area and once used up, there is no where to go.
Success
There are of course stories of wildly successful people who were pushed early on to become something. Think of Serena Williams in tennis, or Tiger Woods in golf. They both had parents who had a huge vision for them, and that vision came true. Both became superstars well beyond the expectations. And they both were touted as examples of how children with talent could be trained and molded successfully so they would be able to sustain themselves and prosper in their field
Failure
But no parent is perfect at child rearing. And now child is perfect either. So far it looks like Serena has navigated successfully through her fame and fortune. I hope that continues. But we all know that Tiger, while living up to athletic expectations, fell from orbit and self-destructed. He is to be admired for fighting back and not giving up. He still is golfing, still winning and still a force to be reckoned with. But the illusion of his exalted character and status in the world fell hard and has not recovered.
High Up
A big part of the force of the explosion and the media clamor over it was due to the height from which he fell. It wasn’t the height of a parent’s hopes for a young child. It wasn’t the height of a young phenom exploding onto the professional scene. It was the height of someone on the verge of being declared the best golfer in history. That is a long way to fall. It was sad to watch the wreck happen in real time. It was made even worse by knowing he brought it on himself.
Do you know someone, or perhaps even are that someone, who has lived that life? Not just in sports, but in any arena of endeavor. What are the lessons you have learned about this as a result?
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Cyril Connelly, English author, 1903-1974
It is not an anomaly that Connelly is the author of this quote. He lived it. Here is a passage from the Wikipedia entry about him.
“Connolly followed this up (his novel ‘The Rock Pool’) with a book of non-fiction, Enemies of Promise (1938), the second half of which is autobiographical. In it he attempted to explain his failure to produce the literary masterpiece that he and others believed he should have been capable of writing.”
I used the title of his book as the title of this post, it was the obvious choice once I read that it was about his own promise issues.
____________________
Those whom the gods would destroy, they first call promising
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 17, 2014 | Anonymous, Promises Promises - 2014-16 |
I promise to deliver #4 in the Promises, Promises series!
Pleasure and Pain
Having chosen my quote for the day I visualized two faces, one while making the baby (making love) and another during childbirth. I was thinking that the face of someone having sex would be happy looking and the childbirth face would be intense and full of pain. But when I went to face research (yes, I did research) I came across a site that had portraits of people right at the moment of orgasm. And guess what? They looked almost exactly like the face of someone giving childbirth. Intense, scrunched up, teeth gritted and looking like they were about to explode, which of course, metaphorically at least, they are in both cases.
Pleasure and pain aren’t that far apart. Whether it’s people eating hot chiles that make the roof of their mouth burn off, or people enjoying going into a polar bear plunge in February, people combine the two. It can be combined in sex, eating, vacationing, relationships, drinking, sports, etc. You name it and you will likely find a co-mingling of pain and pleasure.
Keeping Promises
Promises are the same way. It’s easy to promise something when you are turned on, when you are feeling or pursuing pleasure. That’s why we constantly are telling young women and men to not trust what a person promises when he or she is wanting sex, right? The painful part of a promise is in the delivery, not in the proclamation. If there has been any struggle for myself and most fathers and mothers I know, it’s that. How to deliver on your promise. Your promise to your wife, husband or partner, to your kids, your work, your extended family. As I have gotten older I realize I am much happier and more successful when I simply let my delivery be my promise and forego the grand proclamation, how about you?
________________
Drawing and Commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote is Anonymous
Promises are like babies, easy to make, hard to deliver
________________
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 16, 2014 | Jennifer Donnelly, Promises Promises - 2014-16 |
I promise that this is #3 of my Promises, Promises series.
Do or Die
During my first marriage, I broke promises. Somewhere along the line the combination of me breaking those promises and my wife’s own issues and realizations, led her to file for divorce. She made one statement that has stuck with me all these years. It was the statement that clarified for me how bad she saw her situation. She said, “I feel if I stay, I will die.”
There really wasn’t much arguing to do with a statement like that. She had reached a point, whether I understood it or not, where the promise she made to marry and stay married was going to break her. She needed to save herself and the only way in her mind at that point was to divorce me. I didn’t fight it.
Compassion For Breaking
I am not a fan of divorce. But I understand how it can come to pass when what seemed to be just a small ring around your finger becomes a ball and chain around your neck. I wish rational arguments could sometimes win the day, but I know that the human heart and human needs are such that rationality isn’t what drives us into a marriage and it isn’t what causes us to dissolve a marriage.
All this just to suggest we have some mercy and compassion for those who feel the need to divorce, to break the marital vow before it breaks them. Really, truly listening deep to what is going on inside their heart and mind is the best way to assure you understand.
__________________
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote by Jennifer Donnelly, 1963 – not dead yet, American writer
Jennifer Donnelly
__________________
It’s a bad thing to break a promise, but it’s also bad to let a promise to break you
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 9, 2014 | Arab Proverbs, Promises Promises - 2014-16 |
There is a 100% chance of this drawing being #2 in my Promises series.
Running in the Rain
When I start coaching a new season many of my runners worry about what we do if it rains. I tell them one of my favorite things to do is run in the rain and that we run in it unless lightning is present. They are not at all sure they like the idea.
But when we start out on a long run in stifling, drenching heat and humidity but with ominous clouds promising rain it doesn’t take long for them to be begging for the rain to actually fall. Those days when it does, it’s glorious. We are energized and rejuvenated and happy. We are little kids puddle jumping. But those days when it teases but doesn’t rain, then we are miserable because not only are we still hot and drenched in sweat, but our expectations of a cooling rain are left unfulfilled.
Cloud Promises
Promises are like that cloud threatening to rain. Our expectations go up and our disappoint is all the greater if the promise isn’t kept. It’s often better for the promise to not even appear in advance. You simply act on what you know you have purposed in your heart privately and the cooling and nurturing rain falls. No promise, just action.
_____________________
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote is an Arabian Proverb
______________________
A promise is a cloud, fulfillment is the rain
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by Marty Coleman | Jul 8, 2014 | Promises Promises - 2014-16 |
Hello Napkin Kin!
I am back from an awesome vacation to Colorado to have a family reunion on my wife’s side. I drove back solo (11 hours and 42 minutes) and had some time to think (ya think?!?) One of the things I thought about was promises so I decided to do a little series on them.
Little Things
A few years ago I made a new years resolution that consisted of only four words, ‘Do Every Little Thing’. It was my way of refocusing my attention on big promises I make by making sure I didn’t let the little things fall through the cracks. I knew that if I wanted to fulfill these promises (to myself or others) I needed to take better care of the small things that the big things were made up of.
Promising Small
I actually started doing much better about the small things. I have a long way to go but I think I am much better about doing what I promise I will do. ‘Much better’ doesn’t mean I am great at it, it means I started a long way off and am now better, more consistent than I used to be. I still have a long way to go.
What do you do to help yourself keep your promises?
_________________
Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman
Quote is Anonymous
_________________
Promise little, do much
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