Jonathots Daily Blog
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DUDLEY
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Confessing … May 23rd, 2015
Jonathots Daily Blog
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III.
I confess so I can heal.
If I deny, I remain sick.
My dad liked cashews. Honestly, I think most people like cashews unless they’re cursed with some sort of peanut allergy. Certainly, his chubby eleven-year-old boy loved them.
My father was of an old-world mind, which believed that the patriarch of the family should be given special consideration and gifts greater than his offspring. So whenever we went to a restaurant, I would be allowed to order the chicken in a basket while he munched on T-bone steak.
Likewise, when my dad bought a can of cashews, he opened them, took out a couple and then hid them in the drawer of his desk. He did not offer any to me because they were expensive and I was just a kid.
When I asked him for a cashew, he said, “Little boys eat popcorn. Daddies eat cashews.” (Candidly, popcorn is very good unless you’re aware that cashews are within a three-mile radius.)
So every time my dad walked away from his desk to do an errand I would sneak in and steal from his can.
At first I tried to limit it to one or two cashews and attempted to “nibble” on them to extend the pleasure. Yet I think you will agree that cashews are better consumed in handfuls.
Pretty soon I found myself taking four, five, ten…twenty.
I looked into the can and saw that it was obviously depleted so I shook the can around, trying to plump them up to look like more. Unfortunately, I continued to eat them and “poofing” became impossible.
So I took the can out, dumped the cashews on the desk and stuffed Kleenex in the bottom, then placed the cashews back on top, trying to make it look like a full container.
But my appetite did not subside.
Soon it became obvious that there was Kleenex sticking out from among the cashews, so it became necessary to take a drastic step.
I ate the remaining cashews and then took the empty container and buried it in the back yard, careful to NOT remember where it was located so that when my dad asked me if I knew where the can of cashews was, I could truthfully say “no.”
He did ask.
I lied.
He didn’t say anything.
I don’t know if he stopped eating cashews or just found a better hiding place. But I was always ashamed of both my gluttony and my deceit.
Even as I write this today I wonder what selfishness would cause me to be equally as much a liar in my dealings with others.
I hope I would either ask for cashews or buy my own can.
Because even though I buried my sin in the backyard, for many weeks afterwards … it cried out to me.
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Populie: Stand Up for Yourself … June 18, 2014
Jonathots Daily Blog
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To gain any understanding of human relationships, we must learn the difference between bullying and physical abuse.
There is no doubt that if a we are physically attacked, a certain amount of defense is necessary to protect ourselves. Yet to channel that aggression into our everyday lives simply because we are dealing with critics, bullies and self-centered opponents is to open the door to cynicism and allow ourselves to become defensive and jaded.
There is a popular belief that we are required to defend ourselves against personal assault. The populie is that we should stand up for ourselves in all circumstances and never allow anyone to put us down.
Religion loves this simply because it allows them to drain creaky energy from the Old Testament, which permits a much more vindictive attitude towards those who are their enemies. (Allow me to warn you–every time you use the Old Testament to support your spiritual and emotional choices, you are denying the purpose for the lifestyle of Jesus.)
Politics loves “stand up for yourself” because it opens the door to deniability. In other words, even though you’ve done stupid or careless things, as long as you can deny them and act offended by the assertion, you can outlast your critics. This is the way politics works.
And of course, entertainment wants to put the hero in the corner with his or her back against the wall, and then have them fight their way to acceptance or freedom, to the applause and cheers of those who bought a ticket and a bucket of popcorn.
But if everybody in the world retaliates when challenged, then we will spend all of our time putting out brush fires of arguments instead of discovering the truth about ourselves and better ways to live.
Candidly, I almost didn’t write this essay because I knew my approach on this issue would be unpopular and even considered unnatural. But the greatest thing you can do when accused, verbally attacked, questioned or placed in a corner is to refuse to participate in the exercise because it only leads to a back-and-forth, meaningless futility. I attack you, you attack me, we attack each other, and then everyone around us is forced to take sides.
Writing a daily column on the Internet constantly puts me at risk of being questioned or even ambushed by people who choose to be critical of the work of others instead of venturing an effort of their own. I have developed a three-step process for everything I do in my life:
1. I said it.
In other words, as long as you’re quoting me correctly, I don’t have any problem with your disagreement and I refuse to question how you approach your comment. You are entitled to be upset with my words, my life and my choices. The power I have is in standing behind my words, my lifestyle and my choices.
I am not sure I know the value of an apology that begins with, “If I offended you … ”
When I offend you, I will apologize dearly, but if my mere beliefs and presence is a source of annoyance to you, I will continue my life and pray that you get over it.
2. I did it.
I am hungry and thirsty to see and hear human beings admit what they’ve done without clarification, excuse or defensiveness. I will tell you right now, if Richard Nixon had admitted what he knew about the Watergate break-in, been honest about his involvement and shared it immediately, he would never have been forced to resign.
I don’t know when we started thinking that diversion, lying, cheating and misrepresentation can ever win the day. Not only will the truth make you free, but if you reject the freedom, your sins will find you out.
3. This is who I am.
It doesn’t mean I’m not working on getting better; it doesn’t mean I’m always right. Certainly there are things I could learn from you. Yet I got over the need to pretend when I stopped being a child.
This is who I am.
I know there is such a thing as bullying, but if our children had more confidence about what they say, do and who they are, the silence they offer to the aggressive individuals around them would soon rob the varmints of the pleasure of riling them up.
Yes, we empower our enemies when we take their insults seriously.
So when we turn the other cheek, we are not being noble; rather, it is a sophisticated form of stubbornness … refusing to be curtailed by the whim and wishes of others.
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Kissing … January 19, 2013
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What’s the hurry?
After all, one of life’s greatest joys is finding oneself in a moment of pleasure and lingering there as long as possible instead of racing on to the next item on the agenda. May I refer to it as singular sensations?
I recently caught myself planning an evening and determining the quality of the experience ahead by how many different possibilities and adventures I could line up in a row. You know what I mean–“we’re going out to dinner, then get in the car, drive to the movie theater, catch a flick, have some popcorn and then trail out for coffee afterwards with friends to discuss the feature we just viewed, closing off with returning home and …”
Get my drift? There are so many singular sensations in that plan of action that could be savored, but will be rushed through to get to the next experience, which may or may not be equally as fulfilling, but certainly will also be abandoned in order to stay on schedule. We have become a nation completely adept at planning fun–and never having it.
Nowhere is this more obvious to me than in the realm of kissing. When I watch a movie nowadays and two people meet and fall in love, they go through a few shenanigans to acquaint themselves with one another and then they kiss, leading to a cutaway shot to a bedroom sometime later, letting us know that the single kiss LEAPED into an evening of sexual intercourse.
Am I the only person who remembers how satisfying, fulfilling and terrifying kissing can be? Here is a positive aspect to abstinence–it does teach us to stop and enjoy the beauty of kissing. There is probably no other physical action between two human beings that universally expresses emotion and intimacy like kissing. Not even the sex act itself offers the same package of potential. Because candidly, sex can be very bland or even uninvited. But kissing is the cohesion of two wills at the same moment, to mesh agreeing purposes.
Does anyone remember the warmth of the breath of another human being just prior to making lip contact? How about the fragrance of the breath when you are so relieved to discover that your partner is not forbidding further contact? Can you recall when the lips meet for the first time–the moist tenderness of discovering that the pair on your face is making the pair on the other face sublimely pleased?
If the goal of every kiss is to end up in bed having sex, it is no wonder that our species is becoming bored. It’s like saying that every dinner must be followed by a movie, a cup of coffee, a discussion and, let’s say, sorting the laundry. Soon no one would ever want to have dinner.
I have never seen two people kissing who are prepared to argue, hurt each other, manipulate one another or cheat. It’s time for each of us to return to the power of the singular sensation–and linger there for a long moment to enjoy instead of rushing off into other pursuits.
I will no longer plan more than one event at a time. I will refuse to move on until I have drunken deeply of the cup of possibility. And I will never again in my life hurry through a kiss because I think it’s just a way to get something else.
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