Sit Down Comedy … August 30th, 2019

Jonathots Daily Blog

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The eyes pop open and the feet are heading toward the floor—it’s the beginning of another day. Right there, in this pivoting moment, you get the message.

A feeling sweeps over your body, informing you where you are and threatening to control your whole living space.

Stop rushing.

With your still feet on the floor, ask yourself a question—out loud, if you’re alone:

How do I feel?

Don’t be surprised if the answer comes back, “Shitty.” Or maybe, “Great.” It could be, “I’m not sure.”

Unfortunately, many people believe it is wrong to run your life by how you feel.

Since educational systems are very similar for all of us, our religions don’t differ that much and our politics bluster controversy but don’t render anything unique, what ends up setting us apart are feelings.

Please do not think you can control your existence through “mind over matter.”

You aren’t a goddamn Ninja and you certainly don’t have a sword.

The best and the worst you’ve got are your emotions. Therefore, speak the question, “How do I feel?” Make it your morning drill.

Then, when you get the answer, ask a second question:

Why do I feel this way?

Sometimes it’s because you watched a scary movie before you went to bed, or you have to pay a bill or take a test. Or maybe you spent your nighttime hours eating like a four-year-old in a candy store.

You will be surprised that the physical, psychological and even spiritual can often hijack your feelings. Identify the reasons.

This is what I refer to as a S.O.D.—a sense of dread.

Something is going to come up that you don’t want to come up and you’re frightened about how it’s going to come down.

It won’t be resolved by a good breakfast. You can’t get the shower hot enough. Playing music in the background has limited possibilities.

Make note:

You aren’t living a life—you are learning to masterfully maneuver your emotions.

And by maneuver, I mean find them, identify their source and open yourself up to other people. Yes, never be afraid, when you emerge from your room in the morning, and someone asks you how you feel, to speak the truth out loud.

“Physically I’m pretty good, mentally I’m a little scattered and for some reason I’m a little nervous.”

This statement is for your benefit–because we gain power and healing as human beings when we confess who we are openly.

So let’s review:

First question: How do I feel?

Second question: Why do I feel this way?

Confession: Based upon what I know thus far, these are my beginning sensations today.

Candidly, if you try to ignore your starting feeling, you will fail the day. On the other hand, if you identify the feeling, you will receive a much greater sense of well-being. Once you know how you really feel, have figured out the source of it, and you’ve confessed it out loud—either to yourself or someone else—then you’re ready for the door.

Sometimes it’s a door in, and sometimes a door out.

But many of us ruin our morning, still bleary-eyed and uncertain. We’re not maneuvering our emotions, and we miss the door. But if you know how you feel and you’ve identified where it came from and you’ve confessed your profile, then you’ll see the door in or the door out.

It’s probably one of the most exciting things—and one of the most unexplainable happenings in our lives.

A way is made for us if we are ready to see the door.

Then, once you see the it and you have yourself primed, enter the door. Change, adapt, include, evolve. When you do these things, you find yourself in greater unity with the world around you instead of going into situations kicking and screaming, blaming others and eventually laying it at the doorstep of God.

So find the door in or out, then change—happy that you’ve alerted yourself. And finally you end the day grateful.

There is a much better chance that you will wake up the next morning feeling better if you end your day grateful.

It’s not luck. It’s not chaos. And by the way, God does not have a wonderful plan for your life.

This is your space and your doing. If you want to do it with power, begin each day with, “How do I feel and why do I feel that way?”

Then confess, look for the door in or out, change, and move toward the solution.

And finish it off by giving a big chuckle in gratitude.

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PoHymn: A Rustling in the Stagnant … January 14, 2015

 Jonathots Daily Blog

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As Thyself

I want to be seen and heard

I bet you do, too

I want to be forgiven

Look at you–nodding your head

I want to laugh at my mistakes

Can we chuckle together?

I want to discover ways we are similar

Do you agree?

I want to learn to do better

Do you think about your better?

I want to consider the lily without being flowery

Noses to roses

I want my belief to show on my face

Shall we declare a war on frowns?

I want to be simple

Come, untangle the web

I do love you as I love myself

I just don’t love myself very well

I do believe in heaven

The kind that chases away the hell

I shall pursue mercy

So it’s easier for you to grant me the same

While I am learning to live to give

I have decided to give to live

For it doesn’t take the whole world

To change the earth, you see

Just a heart that includes one other

Beating inside you and me.

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For Bidding… October 7, 2013

Jonathots Daily Blog

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The Good Book tain’t good unless it makes good things happen when people are thrown together.

A few days ago, after one of my shows, I was getting ready to pack up my books when a teenage boy inched his way to my side. Apparently he had stood around for a good half-hour while people talked to me, looking for a chance to have a private moment.

He wasted no time.

“There’s a girl I like. How can I ask her out on a date?”

I paused for a moment, trying to make sure I didn’t come across surprised, alarmed OR amused. I guess he chose to ask me the question because he knew I wouldn’t be around tomorrow to tease him about it. Or he thought I might be one of those “cool adults” who would give him a real answer instead of one that’s canned, sealed and labeled “for grown-up consumption.”

My answer was simple. I told the young man to figure out what he liked,  take the things that came to his mind and start doing them for the girl he was interested in.

He thought that was really nifty. (Forgive me. I guess “nifty” is no longer used. Let us just say he was impressed.)

His last words were: “I can do that. Because it’s about me.”

As he raced away, I had to chuckle. You see, all I had given him in the way of advice was a remake on the Golden Rule—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

But you see, it worked, was valuable and was understandable to him because it’s true.

We spend entirely too much time talking about the Good Book as if it’s suspended in mid-air, on gossamer wings, with the supernatural breath of the divine Creator.

Shoot. If it doesn’t work on earth, it sucks.

You see, it’s easy to go from something that is “for bidding” to something that can become “forbidding.”

The gospel that was put together as a means of inviting all of humanity to discover its better side and therefore generate salvation in our souls can just as easily be turned into a message of hatred, prejudice, incrimination and selfishness.

So let me give you a clue:

• I don’t recommend agnosticism. It turns you into a jaded grouch, critical of human life while devoid of any eternal possibility.
• I don’t recommend religion. It keeps you panting for heaven while simultaneously missing buckets of opportunity on earth.

Here’s what I’ve discovered: if you find something that works in everyday life, it won’t take you too long to discover that this same idea is in the Good Book.

Don’t try to go to the Good Book to explain everything you see in life. Get rid of your fear of living and in so doing, discover the three or four things that universally work. Then go read your Good Book and be delighted when you find out that God thought it up millions of years ago.

No wonder that book itself tells us that everything written within its pages can be boiled down to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

It is “for bidding” others, welcoming them to your life, removing the anger of “forbidding” personal contact.

And when all the chickens come to roost, you find out, like this young man will certainly discover, that the Golden Rule even works with dating.

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Just Talk… March 9, 2013

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At 9:15 A.M. yesterday, I found myself tooling through the grocery store in search of those final ingredients that escaped my initial purchasing from earlier in the week. One of the things I was looking for was an inexpensive package of shrimp which I could add to a can of New England Clam Chowder, transforming it from a poor bowl of soup to go along with a tuna sandwich, into a meal fit for a Gloucester fisherman.

So I eyeballed the frozen foods and headed in that direction, discovering an older woman unpacking boxes nearby. She seemed a bit bedraggled by her task.

This is where I am probably weird. Maybe it’s that I’m arrogant–but I just don’t believe there’s any power in seeing someone under the weather or depressed and leaving them alone, hoping they’ll work it out by having an inspiring evening of prime time television. So I ventured a bit of conversation.

“How are you?” I asked

“Fine,” she replied, making her one-syllable answer sound even shorter.

You see, that in itself was a noble effort. But I didn’t leave it alone. “Are you sure you’re fine?” I chuckled.

She looked up from her mountain of boxes and gave me a small smile. She launched. Yes–she started to talk. In the two-and-a-half-minute conversation, I learned her entire financial situation, her frustrations with Medicare, her worries over the President and Congress, and the fact that her husband’s pension doesn’t cover much of anything.

Now, I will admit to you that there IS difficulty in finding a way to extricate yourself from the flood of words that proceed from people once the “dammit” is broken. But it’s worth it.

Because when I came around about five minutes, I paused to take a look her way.  Her pace had quickened and she was humming a bit to herself.

You see, it’s not that I am such a good Joe for talking with people. The point I’m trying to make is that we have become a nation instructed to listen and watch as OTHER people talk, giving us no outlet for our feelings, frustrations and especially, our ideas.

So when you see folks trudging along, there are three dark clouds that encircle them:

1. “Nothing matters”
2. “No one cares”
3. “Never mind”

You may think this is no big deal, and often it isn’t–until you accidentally cross one of these storm clouds with all of this negative energy bottled up inside.

When we are not allowed to talk, we become creatures of silent defeat–and depending on the mental health status of the defeated one, it can lead to anything from reclusion to stepping into the marketplace with a semiautomatic rifle and opening up fire.

Just talk.

It has to be more than a tweet. Our new social media forces us to be brief and clever, instead of forthcoming and honest. Matter of fact, I would suggest that the church become a forerunner fo this great idea. Instead of projecting images on the wall that people sing and recite, cueing them on when to stand and clap, let’s have an hour sometime during the week when human beings can talk and share their hearts.

As the old verse says, we certainly ARE “saved by the word of our testimony.”

My words may encourage you, but it is your own words that motivate you.

The Bible may offer a great sense of comfort, but it is your interpretation and re-speaking of truth that makes it a reality.

There may be nothing greater that we can do for each other than overcoming the silent defeat that settles into the human soul because we don’t get the chance to talk about our feelings, and we begin to insist that nothing matters, no one cares and never mind.

I left a woman singing a song. That’s pretty good for this fat boy. And until we realize that watching and listening is no any replacement for feeling and sharing, we will have a country that is saturated with a sense of desperation–exhausted before it even begins to work.

Just talk. Just share. And make sure that any sensations of sadness have a chance to escape before you become convinced that we were meant to be lonely.

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