Postcards from the Funny Farm

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“We are all time travelers moving at the speed of exactly 60 minutes per hour.”
-Spider Robinson

Some of us are traveling in limousines, others are at the freeway on-ramp with cardboard signs. Regardless of the means, we are going from a point a to a point b every day of our lives. It is easy to look at other peoples work and art in life as nonsensical and bad. Have you ever seen a car with a million poorly placed stickers on it and gone: “Why? It is such a nice car.” That is their art and you should respect it. Once we were down at the beach years ago and I was making sand castles with my niece. I saw the remnants of a sand castle with sticks like towers and assumed the creator was long gone. It was in a good spot so I swept it away as if it never existed. I think the creator must have been mentally ill because she came screaming at me and my young niece as if we were the devil for destroying her sand castle. We got through the scene some how and relocated. Luckily it didn’t seem to affect my niece much but I thought about it for weeks after. I really felt bad about it.

The sand castle wasn’t the real lesson here. For me, it was a lesson about other people and respecting the art they create along the journey. My recommendation is to be very slow to criticize the art that people make whether it is their bumper stickers, their sand castles, or … the way they do simple things in life. It never hurts to give compliments, you can find one for anything. Another way to grow in this area: do a listening experiment.  I hope the sand castle incident will have the same effect on you as it had on me and make you less reckless with other people’s art and hence other people’s emotions.

Your answer to that question may be the reason you’re not getting what you want.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

-Dale Carnegie

Of all his quotes, this one is the best in my opinion. It’s like the old adage your mother and father said when you were young: “If you want to have a friend, you have to be a friend.” Ah if it were only so simple to put into practice. Here’s a gem of knowledge I’ve picked up: aspirers to greatness, get out your pens.

When fettered by the pressures of the day, there is a way out. Well, I’ll call it a way through since “way out” connotes quitting. Instead of focusing on your pressures and concerns, tell yourself on the way to work or whatever it is you are doing: “I will try and help others first today.” You will find this to be a transformative experience that will open your mind more to those around you. As a result, you will be more accepting and your troubles will likely become easier to deal with. I wouldn’t recommend this unless I had tried it. And as always, I write it here in part to remind myself to use it. Try thinking of others above yourself tomorrow and see what happens. I think you’ll be pleased and surprised.

Below is yet another post about having an open mind:
I had a professor of a writing class in college who told us she knew a famous actress. I would tell you who if I could recall but at the time I didn’t know them since they were a very old actress and the name didn’t imprint in my memory as a result. At any rate, this professor of mine, who was getting to the retiring age herself, mentioned to us that the woman had such grace and elegance in the way she ran her affairs. My teacher took care of her library for her and cleaned the house a bit while in college which was nearby. Because I really respected this teacher as a confident writer, I was all ears when she told this story. One day she asked the woman how she lived with such grace, happiness, and success and was now aging the same way and the woman said this simple mantra:

Accept everything.

Let’s look at that wisdom three ways. It could mean:

1. Don’t shut any person or idea out. Let it run completely through your mind and stand or fall on it’s own merits. This is a tough one to universalize. It is more like an inner mantra that can’t be directly applied to some concrete issues. Still, I like the idea of accepting everything in this respect.
2. Don’t be too good for any offer that comes your way. When you get work accept it. If you get a job for $8 do it like it was a job for 80K. I really like this idea.
3. And finally, be gracious. This is by far the best way I can think of to interpret it.

We had to write something on those 2 words when she shared them and I don’t have the paper I wrote at the time. I do carry them with me and I say them often. She was Canadian, I’m starting to think they know something we don’t up there.I’d like to know what they mean to you, any takers? Don’t be shy, just throw one out there.

While I’m on the subject of acceptance: If you are not content to accept your weight, a good resource may be weight loss pills.  Thanks for your support of Postcards from the Funny Farm.