Comment

Comment: (n) a verbal or written remark expressing an opinion or reaction.

Having abandoned journalism, many forms of etiquette, courtesy and basic grammar, the Internet continues to pass along ideas from people who refuse to accept the fact that others have a creative bend and require consideration.

Somewhere in the past two decades we have lost the true definition of commenting. Let me begin by telling you what it is not.

A comment is not you offering an opinion. In other words, if someone writes an article stating that the President of the United States is a great historical figure filled with virtue, a comment would be on the writer’s approach, delivery, information and process in drawing conclusions. A comment is not jotting down, “Idiot, moron, and son-of-a-bitch” with multiple exclamation points. (A single exclamation point is supposed to express great passion. When I see two, I perceive stupidity.)

Commenting is letting folks know how what they had to share, think, or even a meal you prepared was received. It is not replacing their input with your dogma–feeling as if this resolves the issue for all time.

Often my children recommend a movie to me. If I watch it, I offer the following comment:

“I can see why you liked it. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for this movie on the night I watched it, but I did not garner the usual impact or inspiration that I normally enjoy from a flick. It is certainly the kind that I normally do pursue, but this particular one left me cold. Maybe it’s because I don’t understand what the writer and director were trying to communicate.”

This is commenting–a blend of honesty and humility allowing the person who has shared to leave the house without fear of being gunned down by a maniac.

I welcome comments.

I make errors.

But I do not give you permission to ravage my material simply because it busted out the walls of your mental one-room sublet.

 

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Commend

Commend: (v) to praise formally or officially.

A face that is not tired of still trying to offer a smile.

A childlike silliness, even when you aren’t with children.

A hope that opportunity will provide finance.

A notion that even though people try to be different, it’s more fun to discover how we’re the same.

Being satisfied with beans and wieners.

Trying a new recipe, blowing it, but still eating a little.

Having it cross your mind to say “I love you” and doing it instead of choking it back.

Noticing someone who’s lonely and simply touching their shoulder as you go by.

Giving a dollar–or maybe two–to the homeless without wondering what they’re going to do with it.

Choosing to take action instead of just praying.

Listening instead of quoting a scripture.

Laughing when it’s time to stop crying.

Giving without thinking.

Caring without worrying.

Living fully without requiring a heavenly reward.

These are some things I commend.

 

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Commemorate

Commemorate: (v) to recall and show respect for someone or something

Mediocre is always so busy dragging down excellence that it doesn’t have the time to lift up inferior.

Because of this, mediocre keeps sinking deeper and deeper into the sag of inferiority, desperately trying to change the rules of operation and the requirements for the rewards provided.

We have a system of entertainment and information that streams in our country, which feels the need to commemorate events by finding the heroes, the standouts and those who fared well, interview them, extol them and then, within short weeks, dig up dirt on them to prove there was really nothing exceptional about them in the first place.

Why? Because without this kind of reporting, Ma and Pa Kettle, sitting at home, start getting depressed–thinking less of themselves because they don’t measure up.

After all, the problem of going to a nude beach is that you’re fully aware that everyone is stuck with an eyeful of you.

How do we commemorate the attributes, the virtues, the kindness and the intelligence that sets the human race on fire with an explosion of knowledge and unveiling of great cures and advances?

Well, we certainly can’t do it if we spend all of our time mocking initiative and making it seem that those who portray a classy morality are really just stuck in the past.

These are the three great things we should commemorate if we expect to shine:

  1. Empathy

Any time someone feels for someone else, it is miraculous.

  1. Research

Stop settling for the status quo, and find a better way to accomplish things.

  1. Humility

The only way to achieve the first two is to be humble enough to know when you’ve made a mistake so you can change it quickly and improve your cause.

May we step out of our doldrums of self-satisfaction and begin to commemorate–and therefore imitate–those who are actually doing matters better than us?

 

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Commandment

Commandment: (n) a divine rule, especially one of the Ten Commandments

Sometimes it baffles me.

If God is our Creator, and He knows that we have a strong streak of asshole right in the middle of our attitude, why would He think presenting us with Ten Commandments was a cherry idea?

I’m not saying He should have made it “suggestions” or “insights,” but if you tell anybody that sprouts human skin that there’s something they must do to acquire approval, they will not only do the opposite, but will also insist that you applaud them for doing it.

So I’ve never been clear on what a Commandment does.

For instance, I never understood why a bunch of old people in Dixie want to put the Ten Commandments out on the front lawns of courthouses all over the county. What do they expect? Do they think children are going to walk up, read them and say, “My God, if I knew what ‘bear false witness’ meant, I might consider it…”

And also–those Commandments have not done a lot to prevent screwing, stealing and murder.

What is the correct approach?

After all, we have another old saying, which concludes that merely leading a horse to water does not guarantee that it will drink, let alone bathe.

So how do we impact ourselves, other people and the world around us with great ideas?

Everyone knows the answer to this:

Just do them yourself until you start a fad and sell t-shirts.

 

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Comma

Comma: (n) a punctuation mark (,) indicating a pause between parts of a sentence

Belligerent.

Yes, downright sour-tongued and steamed.

That is how I would characterize one of the publishers I forwarded my material to when I was a very young man, believing that merely jotting
something down on a pad of paper and sending it off was the doorway to the bestsellers list.

Within a few weeks, I received a letter from a copywriter, who was evidently greatly offended. She had deemed me to be ignorant, backwoods and perhaps even insolent because of my overuse of commas.

I was young.

I liked a good comma.

Maybe I overdid my commas and had to sleep them off the next morning–but that’s the way we are during our growing up years. Because the commas are so available, and no one puts restrictions on them, and the rules for using them are ambiguous, if not incoherent, I stuck in a comma every few words, just to ensure that I knew they existed.

There was some awareness on my part of where a comma might need to go.

But it took me a long time to realize that periods are stop signs and commas are speed bumps. And unless you want your reader to purposely drive fifteen miles per hour, bouncing up and down every 150 feet, you should use the comma sparingly.

Because after I was thoroughly rebuked by this dear woman, I realized that sometimes small-minded, officious, self-righteous paragraph-pushers can still make a good point.

So, as you can see, I am nearly, completely, totally, and thoroughly, cured.

 

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Comity

Comity: (n) courtesy and considerate behavior toward others.

In the pursuit of peace on Earth, goodwill toward men–certainly an angelic venture–we must never contend that stereotypes about race,
 nationality and culture are false.

They are not.

Matter of fact, many folks who would launch into pursuing tolerance become weary in well-doing by hanging around the folks they’re trying to love, but realizing that many of the prejudices spoken end up being true.

It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s about color, culture, gender or sexual orientation–too much time spent with any one category can turn you into a cynic and a bomb-shelter-bigot.

Open-mindedness is not about facts–it is about mercy.

For instance, using the term “terrible twos” is not prejudicial against human beings who have only lived for twenty-four months. It’s actually a rather astute, but negative, assessment of children of that age. Why? Because we have to work real hard to find one who isn’t–two and terrible, that is.

Equality is not about proving that there is no foolishness within the human race. Equality is blinding yourself to the stupidities in order to elevate your brothers and sisters to the position they were granted by their Creator.

Comity is that moment when we turn our heads away when we see the village idiot sprawled on the ground, so that we can give him a moment to get to his feet…and then view him again as an equal.

 

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Comic

Comic: (n) a comedian, especially a professional one

There is no error in comedy.

It is always appropriate.

It is always needed.

And the more serious we think matters are, the greater the requirement is to sprinkle the wit of a comic. Otherwise, we start believing that we are inter-related
with the Divine.

There is “The Divine Comedy”–and that would be the realization that as mere mortals, the best we can do is keep good cheer about what certainly can be a bumpy ride on this roller coaster of life.

The first person to crack a joke is often the blessed soul who exposes light at the end of the tunnel.

The first individual to discover a comic twist receives all the hugs when the rescue is complete.

We need more comics.

We need more people who realize that life on Earth cannot be that important–when we’ve been put in charge of it.

 

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Comfortable

Comfortable: (adj) clothes or furnishing providing physical ease and relaxation.

I didn’t become a writer because I favor timeclocks. Deadlines were always dead to me.

I avoid them.

It happened to me this morning. I got up in the middle of the night and enjoyed a creative time of scrawling and bawling. I often do that.

The sheer beauty of God’s Universe and the joy I have in emoting about it sometimes turns me into a silly little girl who just found out that the boy she likes
 didn’t check the right box on the note she sent asking if he liked her.

So when I awoke again, at what would be considered a normal “getting up time,” I was not comfortable with such an explosion of energy.

Guilt slipped in.

I thought to myself, I’ve got to get busy–write my blogs and post my articles, prepare my podcast. Hardboil my eggs.

My God, without all of these responsibilities, who am I? I become just some sort of guy walking around, breathing air, enjoying life as it happens, appearing to be without reasonable constraints.

I rolled over.

Sure…my blogs are getting posted later today. I assume this will merely create intrigue rather than disapproval. And if there are people out there waiting for them, they shall have the pleasure of perusing them in the afternoon.

It is important on our journey to be comfortable. You can tell when you’re around someone who is festering a gut-full of tension, because all you have to do is suggest the idea of pursuing comfort in your adult life, and they will quickly explain why this is impossible, irrational and a sign of having a “Peter Pan Syndrome.”

Peter Pan wanted to stay young.

I don’t need to be young. I can get old…

Just as long as you let me be comfortable.

 

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Comeuppance

Comeuppance: (n) a punishment or fate that someone deserves.

Sometimes I’m convinced that there are no history books. Matter of fact, I’ve gone on the Internet to make sure they still sell them.

Sure enough, there they are.

So my second supposition is that they just must not be very popular.

Because it does not take too long when perusing a history book, to realize that if you’re going to cheat, lie, steal, abuse or kill, you’re going to get your comeuppance.

You may do it for a while, with authority, seemingly uncontested.

But there is always someone, or sometimes it’s a whole clump of people, who will rise up and stop the foolishness before the human race ends up in the ground with its bones being eventually studied by some other species in ten thousand years.

You just can’t pursue evil and succeed.

That’s enough reason right there to at least consider the option of good.

Yet all of our entertainment, our politics, and even our religions are so power-hungry that they present the illusion that evil might just have a bad enough day to have a good day, and beat the crap out of righteousness.

It doesn’t seem to bother people that it’s never happened.

After all, Adolph Hitler, who thought his Third Reich was going to last a thousand years, fell a bit short. Thirteen years were all he got.

Oh, yes–he destroyed a lot of people along the way and maybe he should have been stopped earlier, but you will notice, he’s not around to take interviews on the subject.

It’s something I need to remind myself of from time to time. I can go ahead and tell that little white lie, and maybe even think I got by with it.

But after a while, the feeling of self-confidence about being nasty catches up with me.

And I do get my comeuppance.

Even worse than that, I end up looking like a fool to have pursued such a retarded, unfulfilling and doomed process.

 

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Come-on

Come-on: (n) a gesture or remark that is intended to attract someone sexually.

Is it just sexually?

When I consider the Internet, I realize there are “come-ons” at every turn.

Of course, some of them can be sexual exploitation, but there is also a great deal of flattery that is thrown around in an attempt to gain a dollar bill.

The problem with every come-on is flattery.

If you’re speaking sexually, it’s highly unlikely you’ll garner the attention, and therefore the pleasure of a partner, by highlighting flaws. No, you have to make it
clear that you are Anthony and she is Cleopatra, or if that reference is too old, you have to pretend that she is Kim Kardashian to your Kanye. (Perhaps by the time this is released to the public, that reference may also be erroneous.)

But also, in business there is the notion that money exists separate from talent, and can be extracted by making people with no ability think for a brief moment that they can be something they never will be.

So rather than becoming a nation which makes products, we have become a nation intent on making ourselves, personally, a product.

Each individual wants to be a brand. So we are susceptible to all sorts of build-up and promotion which causes us to think that if we simply punch this button, in no time at all we will have “thousands of hits and millions of followers.”

It’s a come-on.

For instance, who doesn’t want to “make America great again?” But truthfully, who wants to do anything personally to achieve it?

We think it’s all about plans, maneuvers and business dealings and we’ll pick up a fatter check. It’s a come-on. And it seems to work.

There is an old saying: “There is a way that seems right unto a man, but the end of it is destruction.”

There is also a well-traveled axiom in the business world: If people are interested in what you do, they show up with the money. They don’t ask you for it.

You can take a lot of sadness out of your life by refusing to be tempted by come-ons.

Find your heart, discover your motivation, practice your talent, put it out to the nearest market. See what happens.

 

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