Tag Archives: good cheer

Alacrity

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alacrity: (n) brisk and cheerful readiness: e.g. she accepted the invitation with alacrity.

I think the greatest debate in the human family is this: to understand that there is a difference between what we think should be and what we are actually stuck with.

Lots of folks spend a lot of their quality time complaining about the injustice, unfairness and inequity of what has been perpetrated against their circumstances, only to discover that “raging against the machine” does not seem to turn off the engine.

It’s really a simple principle.

If you decide to manufacture good cheer as a reaction to everything that happens in your life, at least you buy time to receive the opportunity to rectify the violation.

Sometimes it seems like Mother Nature and humanity have joined together to piss us off just enough to have us impudently stomp our feet and run from the room without ever contributing our talent or faithfulness. Yes, it is possible to be rendered ineffective, not because we lack ability, but because we cannot maintain stability.

Alacrity–it’s a decision:

  • I would rather be at peace with myself than right.
  • I would rather produce a sense of humor and cheer than be acknowledged.
  • I would rather reflect on better ideas than park my soul in the middle of a busy freeway, inviting others to bang into me.

Is it easy to do? I guarantee you–it is no more difficult than finding yourself fighting with others for the rights to your life, which they have already decided not to grant you.

It’s a great word–because it is the belief that as long as we’re pursuing a sense that is common and a joy that is needful, to fake it is truly to make it.

The play-acting is well worth the effort.

 

Afloat

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Afloat: (adv) floating in water, not sinking

There is one great advantage to being a fat dude (other than the joy you achieve in chomping your way to the status quo…) When I go into the deep end of a pool, I am able to stand without needing to tread water … and float.

Matter of fact, one day I was doing just that and a guy swimming nearby me paused and stared at me in a combination of wonder and horror, and finally worked up the courage to ask, “How are you doing that?”

Feeling a bit of mischief in my heart, I replied, “Sometimes I get tired of walking on top of the water and I ease down to rest.”

The humor escaped him.

The reason I stay afloat is because I have enough lard stored in my tissue  that it creates a buoyancy which lifts me up in the current. Now, I am not suggesting that this is adequate motivation for risking the perils of obesity. But there is something wonderful about finding a way to be afloat without having to constantly struggle.

Matter of fact, I’ve tried to duplicate the sensation in other areas of my life:

  • With my family. I have raised my sons, and now it’s up to them to figure out what parts of what I shared were valuable and what was crap. I should relax.
  • With the people I meet. I can’t judge them, change them or ignore them. So instead, I will play a game and find ways love them.
  • With my finance. Great ideas offer the possibility of work, which if performed excellently, normally renders financial gain.
  • And with my art. Write it, sing it, share it, live it, believe it and leave the rest to the whim of God.

The best way to “stay afloat” is to be chubby with good cheer, instead of lean and mean … with despair.

 

Aflame

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Aflame: (adv.) in flames; burning

I really don’t sit around and question if there was a Snow White and if she befriended seven short chaps with various personality quirks. I try to have enough sense to catch the essence of the story–the meaning of the tale–without having to verify the veracity of the characters involved.

I bring this up today because I was thinking of a story from the Good Book about a burning bush. According to the folk-lore, Moses saw one in the wilderness which also talked to him, relating the details of a mission and a great odyssey. I suppose if you are intent on proving that everything must have actually happened in order to acquire wisdom from it, you are probably so jaded that you mock this situation as completely implausible, and therefore worthless.

But since I tend to believe that the stories told in the Good Book were related to give us a quick snapshot of the heart and mind of God, I am able to read them without cynically rejecting them, because I deem some factoid to be ridiculous.

What strikes me about this story of the burning bush is that when God decides to speak to one of His children, He feels no compulsion to kill even a random bush to achieve His conversation. For that’s what it says: the bush was on fire but was not consumed.

I like that.

After all, in our day and age, it seems that people are unable to achieve the sensation of being “aflame with desire” without burning out.

Can we not agree that passion is passion–whether it’s emotional passion creating empathy, spiritual passion that generates compassion, mental passion, which pursues knowledge, or physical passion, which activates a lust for romance?

In all of these cases, if we learn from the story of Moses and the burning bush, we must realize that our Creator never intended us to burn out just because we’re aflame.

What I have become in the nature of things, through the pursuit of happiness and in the acquisition of multiplying my talents, is a crock pot instead of a barbecue pit.

In all areas of my life, I burn. I’m aflame. Whether I’m going to the grocery store or writing this essay to you, there is a heat and a passion that is involved and at work. But it’s a slow cooker.

  • I never take myself too seriously.
  • I never purge my soul with incrimination.
  • And I refuse to chase dreams without possessing good cheer.

I want to be a bush that burns without being consumed. I want to be aflame–to give off light and share my warmth without threatening others with fiery consequences.

There is much to learn from stories, whether they be from the Good Book, Mother Goose or Stephen King. And here’s my thought:  if we want to understand the heart of God, we will learn how to play with fire … without getting burned.

　

Ado

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

 

Ado: (n) trouble or difficulty: e.g. she had much ado to keep up with him.

Everybody’s familiar with “Much Ado About Nothing.” It’s a clever Shakespearean phrase. But what IS “ado” and what is “nothing?”

There are two flaws in human beings that were placed there by the Creator as a means of keeping us in just enough dissatisfaction to be aware that we REQUIRE good cheer. That’s the “ado” part.

Human beings are completely capable, in the midst of a blessed life, of not only finding the fly in the ointment, but also being completely possessed with the notion that there are MORE flies than ointment.

“Ado”–a sense of discontent that rattles us even in the midst of joyous discovery and revelry. After all, even when people extol the great fun of drinking alcohol, when you actually get around those who are partaking, the brief season of levity is often followed by depressing reflections on their own inadequacies.

“Ado” is that part of us that just can’t settle on our lot without feeling nasty or bratty. So therefore we begin to focus on “nothing.”

  • We find reasons to disagree with each other instead of establishing commonalities.
  • We start political parties to counteract the political party that disappointed us on Tuesday, which had so greatly impressed us on Saturday.
  • We insist we are worshipping God and praising Him while our prayers are a laundry list of bitchiness.

Once you convince yourself that there is “ado,” then “nothing” becomes something. Things that would not normally throw us upset us or even concern us become stumbling blocks to good emotional and mental health.

So this is why I believe that true spirituality is the promotion of good cheer as opposed to “kneeling and appealing.” And what IS good cheer?

Good cheer is accepting what’s been provided, and beginning to divvy it up–and because you take the time to enjoy what’s available, you look up from your task and suddenly discover there’s more.

I’ve never seen anyone happy until they started pretending they were happy.

I know we’re afraid of pretending, but let’s be honest–some of the most joyous times in our lives were when we were six years old and made believe that we were Superman.

Much Ado About Nothing–“ado” is when I convince myself that I’ve been cheated, and “nothing” is the mythical evidence I bring to support my claim.

We are a funny creation, are we not?

Adjust

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Adjust (v): alter or move slightly in order to achieve the desired fit, appearance or result

“Adjust” is to “evolve” what “wisdom” is to “intelligence.”

In other words, if you’re waiting for our species to evolve to more enlightened places or to grow gills so we can swim in the ocean, it is likely you won’t be around for the experience.

So I don’t know why people even TALK about evolution. After all, the best we can do is adjust. Not evolve.

Having been a fat man all my life, I find that it’s impossible for me to evolve into a slender fellow. I work very hard to make sure that my children are not carrying the destructive tendency of obesity, but for me, everything is about adjusting.

  • Adjusting my food choices.
  • Adjusting my calorie intake.
  • Adjusting some exercise into the mix.
  • And also adjusting an awareness of my mortality so I can keep a sense of humor about my prospects.

So while the rest of the world discusses the theory of evolution (which none of us actually can see unfold within our own lifetime) what we should be fostering is the art of adjusting.

What have I adjusted to in my lifetime?

In my lifetime, blacks and whites have become equal. They weren’t before.

In my lifetime, women have been allowed to discuss their rights without ridicule.

In my lifetime, we have made adjustments in medicine, to learn how to control conditions that used to kill people in a very few short years.

In my lifetime, gas has gone from 39 cents to $3.90 cents a gallon.

You see, not ALL adjustments are pretty, nor are all of them proven to be historically necessary. But we do the best we can.

And hopefully, if we continue to believe in free will, creativity and keep a sense of good cheer about ourselves and others, our adjustments may just take us to the passage that will not only help us understand ourselves … but begin to embrace the heart of God.

Acute

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Acute: (adj.) relating to a bad, difficult or unwelcome situation present or experienced to a severe degree: e.g. an acute housing shortage

Even though as a chauvinist nation, we refer to them as “drama queens,” there are certainly plenty of kings to go around, not to mention princes and princesses.

It seems to be fashionable–yes, that’s the word I would use–almost a cloak we wear, of feeling that we become more important by overstating our difficulties and over-emphasizing our struggles.

By no means am I suggesting that we should walk around in pain without seeking solace. I am not trying to insinuate that becoming a “John Wayne” type of character, with a bullet lodged in your shoulder as you continue to fight the Indians, is what is required in order to fall into the category of brave.

I just don’t think that everything that happens to us is cataclysmic or even necessarily worthy of a posting on Facebook.

In my own life, I fear that lamentation is a sad seeking in my soul–feeling sorry for myself instead of searching for resolution. For there are many problems people consider to be acute, which to me, sound not only solvable, but really, not even that difficult.

But if you play down somebody’s dilemma or try to eliminate their suffering with a quick fix, you will often be met with great resentment and anger.

So what is the best way to survive trials and tribulations without becoming whiny? There you go. There’s the quandary.

Because as much as we WANT to empathize with other human beings, we also want them to prove that they are part of our species by displaying a backbone and walking upright. See what I mean?

So I’ve come up with a little three-step process, which I think helps to keep me from becoming Billy Brat, who believes he’s being bullied by the earth around him.

1. Don’t think about your problems too long before you speak them out loud. I’ve never had a difficulty that lived in my brain which didn’t double in size every hour.

2. Be aware that there’s nothing new which hasn’t been experienced by somebody, so the solution may be embarrassingly easy. Of course we want to contend that our particular cross is unbearable, but usually it’s just a couple of sticks of wood.

3. Be prepared to have good cheer. Whether you end up laughing at your problem, giggling at the simplicity of the solution, or just LOL-ing at yourself for being so worried–humor is the only door of escape from stupidity.

I don’t think any of our problems are as acute as we think they are.

Maybe it’s because none of us are as cute as we think we are.

Abiogenesis

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abiogenesis: adv. technical term for spontaneous generation.

My dear God. IS there spontaneous generation?? I was completely unaware.

I looked up the definition for spontaneous generation, just in case. This demanded that I escape the Ab’s and jump all the way to the S’s. (Please know that I repented of this indiscretion.)

I giggled when I read the definition of spontaneous generation. It is the contention that life can be sprung from inanimate objects. The classic case of this, of course, is the idea once believed, that if you throw a bunch of trash out in your yard, the putrid materials will transform themselves into flies.

Of course, anybody who travels, speaks, thinks, writes or shares with the American people knows that it is often difficult to find life in the midst of those who HAVE a heartbeat.

I suppose there’s a certain charm to spontaneous generation. If you really think life can come from non-living pieces of this and that, you don’t necessarily have to believe you need to do anything with your own personal living and breathing protoplasm.

“God will take care of it. If He can make flies out of stinky, He can make geniuses out of public high schools…”

Actually, one of the more discouraging things to do is to sit on the bench at the mall and watch the mass of humanity pass by, pursuing the pleasant task of buying and owning, but still morose, self-absorbed and in many cases, nearly catatonic.

Maybe there is spontaneous generation. Maybe it happens when you keep a good sense of humor in the presence of very mediocre possibilities, knowing that life is fickle and unpredictable, and in no time at all, prospects could improve.

Spontaneous generation-–abiogenesis: some sort of idea that you can actually say “let there be light” and it will appear.

Who do you think you are? God?