Category: Encourage

Fine smoke and grand mirrors

At some point you either succumb to hopelessness or you stamp your foot, shake your head and your booty, and cry, “Enough!” A person gets tired of felling tired and worn down by the various and sundry injustices of the world. Tyrants petty and large loom over the landscape wreaking sundry havoc, life in general is unfair and often harsh, and oh bother, Eeyore, just trouble and bother, eh?

People are shouting and whispering in your ear, “Stand up! Get off the mat and fight,” and though you are content to lie on the mat and rest, at some point yes, you have to get up. You make your way through the unfairness and the injustice and you make a life despite all that dross and detritus. All you have been given to work with are your life and your body, and it has to be enough. And come to think, all anyone is given is a life and a body, and it IS enough. You may not see it as you lie there, feeling defeated, but God, the universe and everything everywhere all at once have given you the tools to make a life, and so off we go — Off we go on the adventure of a lifetime, because a lifetime IS an adventure, don’t you know.

Perhaps this little pep talk is brought to you by Humbug Incorporated, and I am trying to conjure a miracle out of smoke and mirrors, but even the humbug has to rise off the mat, doesn’t he? Somebody has to make the smoke, and someone has to invent a mirror, and it may not be what you want it to be, but it’s fine smoke and a grand set of mirrors, and if you work hard enough, someday it just may become what you want it to be after all.

What’s that you’re saying? I’m full of excrement? Did you know everybody poops? You’ll find excrement deep inside all of us. What’s your point? We can focus on the waste product or we can focus on the building blocks. Every moment of every day presents a choice: Wallow in the excrement or rise above. Once choice may be easier than the other, but the more challenging choice is more likely to bring contentment.

Time to rise above? It shouldn’t even be a question. Choose to rise every time and oh, the heights you will reach.

Laugh hard, run fast, be kind

I am not a lifetime fan of Doctor Who — Matt Smith was chasing dinosaurs on a spaceship when it finally clicked — but of all the moments I have experienced in my limited experience, my favorite moment is Peter Capaldi’s last moments as the 12th doctor.

“Never be cruel, never be cowardly, and never ever eat pears! Remember, hate is always foolish and love is always wise …

“Laugh hard. Run fast. Be kind.”

What a wonderful set of last words. What a wonderful way to live. Well, except that I really like pears.

It may not be easy for me. Red is still in the hospital and fighting to live — although she is better than she was a month ago. I have become a septuagenarian and running can be a bit of a challenge.

But I can laugh hard sometimes, I can be kind almost always, and I can run fast if I really have to — at least for a few seconds.

So let my goal for the coming weeks and months be to laugh hard, run fast, and be kind above all. (“How hard could it be?”)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think for breakfast I’ll have that can of pears from the pantry.

7 things I’ve learned along the way 

Seven things I’ve learned along the way to posting 1,000 consecutive daily blog posts, of which, in case you were not counting, this is the 1,000th:

1. I can do it, one day at a time.

2. A person tends to repeat herself from time to time over 1,000 days, sometimes intentionally, sometimes not.

3. The universe in general doesn’t give a flying flamingo about you — but some people do, and they make all the difference. Thank you for that.

4. Theodore Sturgeon said 90% of everything is crap, but if you look carefully, you’ll find much more than 10% of what you’ve done was worth the effort — and so, perhaps, 90% of Sturgeon’s assertion is crap.

5. A person who sets out to do something, a little bit at a time, can exceed his own expectations many times over. After all, my intention was to post every day for three months, 92 days in all. Nine hundred and eight days after that, here we are.

6. There is a force that hates success. Is it Satan? The Dip? The Resistance? I lean toward calling it Satan, because such evil lurks there. As the last 10-20 days loomed, the distractions that kept me from sitting down to write, from writing, from even thinking about writing, became close to overwhelming. Even as I write this 1,000th piece, I have not yet finished numbers 997, 998, or 999, and so I continue to stagger toward the finish line. (Yes, yesterday’s post was the actual 1,000th daily post, but I presented it 999th — kind of like the second Star Trek pilot was presented third, or the first Firefly pilot was aired last.)

But know this:

7. I am just a more or less ordinary human being, with aches and pains and big dreams and big shortcomings — so, if I can accomplish something, one day at a time, SO CAN YOU.

You are a work of art

I walk down the long corridor between the hospital and the Cancer Center, where my darling Red has been transferred, turn a corner, and find an art gallery in the hallway.

“You are a work of art,” says the first sign that greets the eye, and we are, aren’t we? Every day, every moment, we are considering what image to paint for our friends and colleagues, what words we will use, in order to create — a thing of beauty? something tremendously useful? something to amuse and/or entertain? a highway? a perfect set of braces? the correct mix of potent chemicals to drive away a deadly disease?

The first few times I walked down this corridor, I was deep in my own thoughts and fears and questions. Today, I’m going to try to remember to stop and look at the paintings and photos on the wall. Artists created those visions, and another artist or artists chose and arranged them. They want me to see them, and I need to see them.

Red received her first chemotherapy treatment this week at the center 138 miles from our home. I have tried to visit every other day, sometimes it’s three days between. Day job responsibilities and the limits of my own body stand in the way. She is fighting a scourge that baffled our local doctors for nearly three months before they sent us here. I believe in the folks here, and in the prayers of friends and family, and I believe in Red, the toughest cookie I have ever known.

She is a work of art, and a treasure.

Zuzu’s petals

Sometimes just a phrase is all you need. For me, the other day, it was “Zuzu’s petals.”

If you love It’s a Wonderful Life as I do, you know what I’m talking about. George Bailey’s little daughter is upset because some petals had fallen off the flower she brought home from school, and he pretends to reattach them while tucking them in his pocket.

When Clarence the angel grants George his “wish” to have never been born, one of the consequences is that Zuzu’s petals aren’t in his pocket anymore, because if he was never born then neither was his daughter. 

What happens next makes George want to live again, and when he’s trying to figure out if he’s really back, he reaches desperately into his pockets.

“Zuzu’s petals!” he cries. “THERE THEY ARE! BERT — WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT? MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!”

Oh, damn, I’m choking up again as I write this. 

George Bailey never existed, and neither did Zuzu or her petals, but these imaginary people, and their trials and tribulations, affect us as profoundly as the real-life experiences we go through all the time. Sometimes they help us process reality in ways that reality can’t offer.

Zuzu’s petals represent all the things and all the people I’ve lost over the years. Some of them I’ve found again, and some of them are indeed lost forever. Lost or found, they bring tears to the eyes and a lump to the ol’ throat, grief and joy in equal measure.

They make me want to cry out, with George Bailey, “Help me, Clarence, please. Please! I wanna live again. I wanna live!”

ten times fast

I pick up the pen — the mightier-than-sword pen — to skewer someone or something, and all I can think is what a silly word skewer is.

I mean, say it over and over a few times: Skewer. Skewer. Skewer. Skewer. 

I swear, by the 10th time you say it, you’ll be giggling.

This is a nutty world, and sometimes life turns you upside down. Just when you think it can’t get worse, life hauls you up and lays you lower.

And what you do then — listen very carefully now —

What you do then — you are paying attention, right?

When life knocks you down —

You just stand right back up, look life square in the face —

and skewer it.

Double down on being human

The phrase jumped out at me as Joanna Penn talked about the leaps in artificial intelligence during her podcast about writing and book publishing, The Creative Penn.

Penn, who writes thrillers as J.F. Penn and nonfiction as Joanna, is diving into the world of AI, using it as a tool as she develops her plots and characters and worlds. She is doing the writing but bounces her ideas off ChatGPT to refine them.

She’s having fun with the possibilities of this once-science-fictiony tool, not interested in the idea that AI theoretically could write her novel for her in a few seconds. After all, where would be the fun in that?

As for competing with the lowlifes who may want to make a profit by having AI generate a ton of books, Penn isn’t worried about that either. The key to competing against artificial intelligence, Penn says, is to “double down on being human.”

That sounds like good advice in many aspects of life. Up against a machine? Double down on being human. Surrounded by political goons who treat their enemies as sub-human? Double down on being human. Tired of this sterile world devoid of emotion? Double down on being human.

Double down on being human. Yep, that’s a good start, thinks I.