My son, another dog lover, sent this humorous Toutube vid to me. It is a commercial, but I don’t use the product and am not pushing it. I just think the vid is entertaining and thought you might too.
http://www.youtube.com/user/BenefulBrandDogFood?v=58wi8a3Uz28
Eric Stonestreet and Beneful® Baked Delights™ Celebrate “Hug Your Dog Day”
“…Of the Good in you I can speak, but not of the Evil. For what is Evil but Good–tortured by its own hunger and thirst? When Good is hungry, it seeks food, even in dark caves, and when it thirsts, it drinks even of dead waters.” -Kahlil Gibran
I believe that the above saying is true for most humans, and that the message has value in that it helps us to have some empathy for those who have chosen paths that society has labeled as Evil. The ones labeled as Evil often have tortured souls and the people doing the labeling could easily have done Evil themselves if they had experienced all that the ones they are labeling had experienced.
But I also believe that there is another form of humankind, the ones that have experienced the worst kinds of hell on earth but do not succumb to doing Evil or doing nothing. People whose Spirit is so great that even in the worst situations they help their fellow humans.
Survivors of the Holocaust, wretched prison camps, terrible wars, etc, sometimes describe such great Spirits; those who give thir last morsel of food so that another might live, or risk severe beatings or death to get medicine for another who is sick, or literally give the shirt off their back to save another from brutal cold.
I would love to see monuments built to those Heroes of Humanity. In the meantime, I’m grateful for the stories I hear about them as they warm my heart and fill it with hope.
And as long as their stories keep being told those Heroes will still live in the hearts of all who appreciate such greatness of Spirit, along with the generations of others who are descendants of those saved by such wonderful Spirits–literally a living legacy that may endure and grow for centuries.
One of the sayings that I keep as an affirmation is: “A man isn’t finished when he loses. A man is finished when he quits.” I change it in my mind to “person” rather than “man” as I believe it applies equally to both genders.
I believe the saying is true in many situations and in the way the message was likely intended: Hang in there. Keep trying. Never give up.
But this post is about a slant on the saying that I hadn’t thought of until a few years ago: Sometimes quitting is the right answer. Sometimes a job, relationship, or situation is so awfule that even after doing everything that one can to make it work, the only remaining sane option is to quit. I have been in jobs, relationships, and businesses like that.
I had a business that I’d started in 1988 that had quite a number of exceptionally rewarding years. But it was a hyper-cyclical business. Despite having hundreds of Clients, literally business could drop 95% in a month and stay at heavily reduced levels for years (such as during the dot com bust). It was either feast or famine. During the famine years I kept perservering, and that served me well during normal business cycles, but during the dot com bust and Great Recession–very atypcial business cycles–perserverence became very harmful to our financial situation. So harmful in fact that when the economy began to improve I was so mired in debt from trying to keep the bussiness alive that even average years no longer produced sufficient revenue to keep the business going.
I’d been foolish to hang on so long. Like I said in earlier posts, I’m a slow learner! The flip side of the positive trait of perserverence, when taken to an extreme, is sometimes merely ego- or habit-driven stubborness. I eventually wised up and closed the business.
That decision to quit provided the closure that I needed to begin healing financially and to move on to founding my current far-less-cyclical and much more enjoyable investment management business in 2003.
So, while I believe that in most situations quitting should be a last resort, I no longer automatically rule it out as an option.
I love the beautiful photograph and believe the world will be a better place when the concepts of “them and us”, and national and race boundaries gradually fade away and are replced by enduring ideas and principles that unite humankind while respecting human dignity. I like to envision what the world would look like when the emphasis of humankind is on being KIND. Thank you GYA for this post.
I have received a number of great compliments from many of you lately and appreciate every single one of them. A lot. Thank you for taking time out of your day to brighten mine.
But there is another side of me that I want you to know. The small and petty side. The weak and selfish, impatient, disappointed, and angry side. The Stinking Thinking, Woe-Is-Me, nothing-is-good-enough side. I too often have an awful case of Baditude. I just made that word up (at least I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before), but it pretty accurately describes a side of me that wants to scowl and frown in the face of incredible blessings. A side that makes me not even want to be with me in those moments.
A side that my friends and family love me in spite of–and for which I’m eternally grateful. But a side that blog readers who’ve never met me–which is nearly all of you–may never see if I don’t share it with you too. I’m not sure as to all the reasons why this is important to me but I know that it is.
Perhaps it is partly because I’d feel like a phony if I was liked for only the best parts of me. Perhaps it is like a bazillionaire who seeks love but is never quite sure if the people in his life are there because of his or her wealth or because of who he or she truly is.
And while part of me says I shouldn’t care what others think, the truth is that I do. I care a lot. But I’d much rather risk having people dislike me for who I truly am than to have them like only a false vision of me.
The truth is that I’m humble, but I’m also arrogant and sometimes even vain. That I’m a hero and a coward. I have both great and petty thoughts. I sometimes think I’ve got life well in hand and sometimes think that I don’t have a clue. I’m generous and selfish. Wise and foolish. Proud and ashamed. I write to give and to get.
This hasn’t been an easy post for me to write, but it is perhaps one of the ones most important for me to have written.
Thank you for reading it.
Some of you may have noticed that my avatar has changed. It is now a photo of Rusty a bear with a lot of personality that is made out of carved redwood and sits in my small redwood grove and fern garden to welcome visotrs. My kids knew that I loved carved redwood bears and knew that I would be especially fond of this one. They bought it for my birthday. It is one of my favorite gifts that I’ve ever received.
I love his friendly smile and “Aw, Shucks!” pose.
I don’t recall seeing this saying before but it has instantly become one of my favorites. I saw it from Gina V’s wonderful blog Professions for P.E.A.C.E Thank you, Gina for sharing it!
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Russ Towne's A Grateful Man 