How much does your soul weigh? Your personality? How about your character? Does your Passion weigh anything? What about your intelligence, how heavy is that? Have you ever had your sense of humor weighed at the Doctor’s office? Is there a spot on the medical chart for the weight of your love, commitment, insight, compassion, mercy, tenderness, diligence, patience, opinions, wisdom, spirituality?
Nobody gives a eulogy and talks about a person’s weight. What they will talk about are all those other things mentioned above. Those are the parts of you that will remain.
In the original 2016 post I wrote a longer story about a friend of mine in Russia who got herself in trouble by lying about the scale and the number on it. If you would like to read it, here is the link.
In the Book of Revelation there is a terrible dragon. Here is how it is described: “Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crown on its heads.” Rev. 12:3
Well, this isn’t that dragon. This is Antenna, that dragon’s younger sister. She’s not talked about in the bible, probably to preserve the older one’s evil reputation. Antenna isn’t terrible and evil. She’s just trying to make her way in the world.
Her name is Antenna because she was conceived on an antenna. The antenna didn’t fare too well in that tryst and had to be replaced but it still held fond memories for her mum and dad.
Each head also had her own name; Liza, Milly, Ruth, Martha, Alice, Sarah and Dorcas, which they got after their parents watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers on late night TV.
Antenna had one baby dragon with 3 heads. It was a boy named Laundromat because that is the building on top of which he was conceived. That building fared okay after just a few repairs. The 3 heads were named Babe, Lou and Joe because the father was a big Yankees fan.
Antenna had a hard time early in life because of her older brother’s terrible reputation. She always wanted to defend her brother as just being misunderstood, but it was hard when he basically was responsible for all sorts of cosmic death and destruction wherever he went.
She tried to make up for it by being very nice to everyone she met. That also was not easy since the heads all had their own personalities. Some were quite rude, some were quiet introverts and a couple were just big loudmouths. It was really quite annoying at times but she did the best she could.
She eventually moved to the northern coast of California and lived among the Redwoods where she didn’t look nearly as big and scary to those who came to visit. She worked as a rescue specialist helping to find people lost at sea or in the forest. She retired at age 812 and spent the rest of her years giving tours to Japanese tourists who came to see the big trees and dragon.
Her son Laundromat (Launny for short) became a nano-engineer with a number of high-tech start ups and had 49 patents by the time he was 531.
I drew this and wrote the commentary 8 years ago. It’s even more apropos today.
Well, Aristotle IS one of the fathers of rhetoric so who better to ask a rhetorical question, right?
Death and Maiming
It’s been a tough emotional week for me. Not anything personal in my own life but due to the events in Tucson. I love my country. I have loved it since I was a little kid and learned about George Washington. He was, and still is, in my opinion, the greatest public hero of any age.
I was 8 when JFK was killed. My parents loved him and worked for him. My father even ran for the Senate in 1962, inspired by him.
I was 13 when MLK and RFK were killed. I will never forget walking into a drug store in Darien, Connecticut after MLK was murdered and hearing a man say ‘that N***** deserved it’. I was 13 and as angry as I had ever been at that moment. I didn’t speak up and was ashamed afterwards. Since then I almost always speak up if someone says something grossly offensive.
I was 26 when Reagan was shot. I was not a fan of President Reagan but it had nothing to do with that. I respect my presidents. I start each term with each president filled with hope as if I were a naive young man. Update, 2019 – For the first time ever, I was not able to have that same naive faith after the election of 2016.
I am now 55, will be 56 in a little over a week. It’s weird, it’s almost as if this event in Tucson hurts more than the others. I know Giffords is ‘just’ a congressional representative, not a president or candidate, but it’s almost because of that that it hurts more. She ‘represents’ and it’s as if someone was trying to kill that, not just a person. Add on to that that people who had every reason to believe they were doing something uniquely and gloriously American that day suffered death and injury for no other reason than they wanted to connect to their representative.
The Power of Words
I love rhetoric and the power of words. I love how they can inspire us. I hate how they can turn us on each other. I hate how they can be used by selfish people for selfish ends. I hate how they can mask lies and evil deeds. But I think the power of good in words can overcome that power of evil. And I won’t ever give up believing that, ever.
The napkin above is light, it’s funny, it’s absurd. It’s rhetorical. I had to lighten my emotional load a bit by drawing it. Don’t forget though, that it is not a rhetorical question to ask if we can’t be civil with each other.
I drew this drawing and wrote the commentary 4 years ago today. It references a drawing and short story I published the day before. I republished it a few days ago.
Self-Esteem
I wrote a short story yesterday about a homeless woman and her daughter. The mother was confronted by a woman who judged her negatively without really knowing her. The daughter was upset about the judgment and her mother used the opportunity to explain that the judgment wasn’t based on the lady knowing them. She explained that she judged because she had some hurt in her that she was trying to get out and judging others was her way of doing that. The child was lucky to have a mother to help explain that their self-esteem came from them, not from some random person who did not know them.
Other’s Story About You
I am guessing those of you reading this have been called one of the words in the drawing above. Some are negative and some are positive, but all of them are fables, or stories. That doesn’t mean they may not have some truth in them. Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But at the most they are incomplete statements of who you are and at the least they are outright lies. Wherever they are in the arch of truth, the reason they are spoken has more to do with the person speaking than it has to do with you.
It doesn’t make their story your story.
Your Story About Yourself
When I have a model for one of my art projects I will often ask the following question: ‘What is your favorite facial feature on yourself?’ Many will answer in the following way: “Well, most people say it’s my ‘type in facial feature here’. I, in response, will say, “I am not asking what others think is your best feature, I am asking YOU what you think is.” That gets them thinking and they often, but not always, will change their answer. They might say, “No one ever says this, but I love my nose best because it reminds me of my dad.” or something like that. That to me illustrates the difference between the story you would tell about yourself and the story others may tell about you.
Trust It
Look hard for your own story in the midst of all that outside noise and believe it. Don’t let others’ story about you decide who you are.
I drew this napkin 18 years ago to put in my daughters’ lunches. I published it on this blog 10 years ago today.
A truth to remember for all those in the middle of the Big L, whether Good L or Bad L.
This is why holding on to transient highs and lows as if they are built to last is harmful and self-defeating. I don’t mean you can’t enjoy the Good L that comes along. But you need to live with the understanding it isn’t meant to be permanent, any more than a souffle is. Eat it up when it is ready, take full advantage of the Good L when it is before you. But don’t try to put it in the fridge and eat it tomorrow. Make a new souffle, a new Good L, tomorrow instead.
“The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.” – Bret Harte
