We need never be ashamed of our tears.
Charles Dickens
******************
Hello Marty
******************
"Real men don't cry." Nonsense. A man who will not allow himself to weep when he needs to is denying his own manhood. Sometimes human life seems to be a bucket of tears, pain and regrets. There are plenty of things worth crying about, not just spilt milk.
But sorrow can be a life line to joy. A good healthy shedding of tears can clean the mind and the heart of the mud of depression and hurts. Weeping can be the ritual of purgation for an accumulation of injustices. It is a compassionate comrade through an obscure night of the soul. It is the heart's answer to anger, resentment and rejection. A good cry cleans the slate.
Young actors have asked me how to cry on cue when performing in a play. I tell them that a genuine cry is easier than a genuine laugh. In both cases it takes connection to something genuine in the actor's life, either sympathetic or empathetic. In the case of tears, if one doesn't have something to cry about or isn't able to be sensitive to the circumstances of his character, he hasn't lived a life yet.
I remember doing a play in Philadelphia in which I had a speech about my long lost son. In the speech was the line "I never took him to a ball game." That simple reference, though only marginally personal to me, was enough to open up the gates of my reservoir of tears.
There are fake laughs everywhere. We are all guilty of them. But fake tears are worse. One can put on a sorrowful face, with a quivering voice and an occasional sniff and try to convince people that you're weeping, as I watched one defrocked TV evangelist do one day.
"What's so funny?" It is best to be genuine all the time. Find the humor and laugh at that. And if the heart tells you it needs to weep than let it happen, man or woman.
DB - Vagabond Journeys
Never Give Up
Showing posts with label Charles Dickens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Charles Dickens. Show all posts
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Friday, January 7, 2011
Is It Folly To Be Wise?
He who tells the truth must have one foot in the stirrup.
Armenian proverb
**********************
Ignorance is doom. It is a danger to our future that so many people desire to grasp and possessively defend their own mental invariance about things. And it is even more frightening when whole groups of people become mesmerized by the nonsense they hear from their leaders. One gang calls people who disagree with them a gang. People would rather be on a race track which goes nowhere than on a highway which does.
In Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" the Spirit of Christmas Present displays two desperate children to Scrooge who wants to know who they are.
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased."
(Charles Dickens)
This is no idle warning. It is ignorance, which is the direct result of nonthinking and that which supports nonthinking. And why do so many people support this ignorance? Why is it even applauded in some quarters? Why is there so much suspicion of those who are trying to fray the enemies of progress? Because people don't want to know the truth. It upsets them.
I have said this before and I am saying it again. When the World Trade Center was destroyed the US Government went immediately to work forming a commission to determine how it happened. But there wasn't a single penny spent on a commission to determine WHY it happened. The government is still behind the screen on that one. Now people don't want American Muslims to build a mosque near where it happened because a group of Asian Muslims destroyed it.
One of our popular journalists, I won't name him, was interviewing an American Muslim who was just about to explain why he said that he understood the motives behind the terrorist attacks when the journalist called him a traitor and shut him off. He didn't want to know the truth.
We proudly proclaim that the United States is the best nation in the world and that our living standards are higher than other countries, and then we expect the people who live in those countries to stay there.
We can't decide who's an immigrant and who isn't. I recently read an article about a woman who was denied her Medicare benefits because she couldn't prove she was a citizen. She was born on a Choctaw reservation. She's a Native American. The tragedy of that far outweighs the irony. It just points the dial at the big I. Ignorance.
I know of a high school that closed down the theatre and arts programs in order to save power during the energy crises of years ago, and yet all the lights blazed for the basketball games.
Our government gives money, not programs but real money, to those who already have it, while it deprives the poor.
"Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade.
Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade:
Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace,
And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place."
(William Blake)
That's the end of my rant for the day, but I've already got one foot in the stirrup. I'm outta here!
DB - The Vagabond
******************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Armenian proverb
**********************
Ignorance is doom. It is a danger to our future that so many people desire to grasp and possessively defend their own mental invariance about things. And it is even more frightening when whole groups of people become mesmerized by the nonsense they hear from their leaders. One gang calls people who disagree with them a gang. People would rather be on a race track which goes nowhere than on a highway which does.
In Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" the Spirit of Christmas Present displays two desperate children to Scrooge who wants to know who they are.
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased."
(Charles Dickens)
This is no idle warning. It is ignorance, which is the direct result of nonthinking and that which supports nonthinking. And why do so many people support this ignorance? Why is it even applauded in some quarters? Why is there so much suspicion of those who are trying to fray the enemies of progress? Because people don't want to know the truth. It upsets them.
I have said this before and I am saying it again. When the World Trade Center was destroyed the US Government went immediately to work forming a commission to determine how it happened. But there wasn't a single penny spent on a commission to determine WHY it happened. The government is still behind the screen on that one. Now people don't want American Muslims to build a mosque near where it happened because a group of Asian Muslims destroyed it.
One of our popular journalists, I won't name him, was interviewing an American Muslim who was just about to explain why he said that he understood the motives behind the terrorist attacks when the journalist called him a traitor and shut him off. He didn't want to know the truth.
We proudly proclaim that the United States is the best nation in the world and that our living standards are higher than other countries, and then we expect the people who live in those countries to stay there.
We can't decide who's an immigrant and who isn't. I recently read an article about a woman who was denied her Medicare benefits because she couldn't prove she was a citizen. She was born on a Choctaw reservation. She's a Native American. The tragedy of that far outweighs the irony. It just points the dial at the big I. Ignorance.
I know of a high school that closed down the theatre and arts programs in order to save power during the energy crises of years ago, and yet all the lights blazed for the basketball games.
Our government gives money, not programs but real money, to those who already have it, while it deprives the poor.
"Degrade first the Arts if you'd Mankind Degrade.
Hire Idiots to Paint with cold light & hot shade:
Give high Price for the worst, leave the best in disgrace,
And with Labours of Ignorance fill every place."
(William Blake)
That's the end of my rant for the day, but I've already got one foot in the stirrup. I'm outta here!
DB - The Vagabond
******************************
WINTER QUESTION
(This is not a contest)
What was the most significant event that happened in 2010?
dbdacoba@aol.com
1 response so far
I await your answer.
DB
******************************
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Watch The Sword
Year by year, the Congress and the Senate must become of less account before all decent men.
Charles Dickens
*******************
There is a sword hanging over America's head and it was put there by the Founding Fathers. Most of those who freely refer to those men have no bedrock idea who they were. Someone should write a book, if it hasn't already been written, about what happened to those men who signed the Declaration of Independence. How many lost their property, how many lost their families, how many were tortured by the British, how many were killed.
To stand up against the most powerful nation in the Western World took unimaginable courage and faith, what Schopenhauer called "reckless optimism." If we had lost the War of Independence George Washington would have been tortured and hung on the street in London, and he knew it.
And why did they do it, that disparate crowd of men who frequently disagreed with each other but who came to agree about what they had to do, to make a nation, a new land, a land of the free and courageous, a beacon to the world that personal rights and self government were achievable ideas. And along with that commitment came a challenge sent to the future, sent to us, from the hearts of men who risked everything.
When Charles Dickens visited America he observed American institutions and our way of life and found how much it had degenerated even in 100 years. Slavery was everywhere, rudeness, hypocrisy, dishonesty, corruption, all things he didn't expect of find. He wrote "Year by year, the memories of the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be outraged more and more, by the bad life of their degenerate child."
The current state of politics in this country is a betrayal of the gifts of those original thinking men and women. The avowed agendas of the recently elected members of Congress are a disgrace. Other nations are saying without equivocating that they don't want us in their lands. Worn out useless contracts are being brought out for acceptance by people who have not learned the ways of good government. Our future as a world leader and beacon is uncertain. Politicking has become a macabre joke, third rate entertainment. There are "decent men," intelligent adults in this country, somewhere. The sword doesn't need to fall. But it's hanging there.
DB
************
AUTUMN QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?
8 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
************************
Charles Dickens
*******************
There is a sword hanging over America's head and it was put there by the Founding Fathers. Most of those who freely refer to those men have no bedrock idea who they were. Someone should write a book, if it hasn't already been written, about what happened to those men who signed the Declaration of Independence. How many lost their property, how many lost their families, how many were tortured by the British, how many were killed.
To stand up against the most powerful nation in the Western World took unimaginable courage and faith, what Schopenhauer called "reckless optimism." If we had lost the War of Independence George Washington would have been tortured and hung on the street in London, and he knew it.
And why did they do it, that disparate crowd of men who frequently disagreed with each other but who came to agree about what they had to do, to make a nation, a new land, a land of the free and courageous, a beacon to the world that personal rights and self government were achievable ideas. And along with that commitment came a challenge sent to the future, sent to us, from the hearts of men who risked everything.
When Charles Dickens visited America he observed American institutions and our way of life and found how much it had degenerated even in 100 years. Slavery was everywhere, rudeness, hypocrisy, dishonesty, corruption, all things he didn't expect of find. He wrote "Year by year, the memories of the Great Fathers of the Revolution must be outraged more and more, by the bad life of their degenerate child."
The current state of politics in this country is a betrayal of the gifts of those original thinking men and women. The avowed agendas of the recently elected members of Congress are a disgrace. Other nations are saying without equivocating that they don't want us in their lands. Worn out useless contracts are being brought out for acceptance by people who have not learned the ways of good government. Our future as a world leader and beacon is uncertain. Politicking has become a macabre joke, third rate entertainment. There are "decent men," intelligent adults in this country, somewhere. The sword doesn't need to fall. But it's hanging there.
DB
************
AUTUMN QUESTION
(This is not a contest.)
At what event of the past do you wish you could be present? Why?
8 responses so far.
dbdacoba@aol.com
Thank you.
DB
************************
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Knocking On The Noggin
Ignorance is the root of all evil and misconception is its reflection.
Marty Brandel
(Thank you Marty)
***************************
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy," Charles Dickens
Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. Thomas Gray
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you're looking for bliss, don't look for it in ignorance. While I don't want to fill my mind with the puss of evil thoughts, it is only wise to know that evil is out there and usually as a result of it being believed in and practiced by some ignorant people.
We have all seen the results of such ignorant behavior. A man will kill another man or do damage to his property because he ignorantly believes he has a right to revenge himself. A woman took a chain saw and cut down a neighbor's tree because it was blocking her view. I read about a man who humiliated his son in the ignorant belief it would teach his son humility. A woman caused a traffic jam because she stopped in an intersection to clean the snow off her windows. Men in blue suits and briefcases go through revolving doors and stop, oblivious of the people behind them. I've seen it happen many times. Other people get to the top or the bottom of an escalator and stop. One can only shake one's head in disbelief over what we humans do.
I made a major move one year to Washington DC. I arrived at my new address with a van full of my belongings at 7:30 Sunday morning. I parked the van on the side of the road and started taking my stuff into my new apartment. A cop came along and told me to move the van, When I asked him why he said that any moment the rush hour traffic would be coming down that road and I would be in the way of it. I told him I chose Sunday morning because I didn't think there would be a rush hour. He gulped. He was caught in has own ignorance. He made me move the van anyway. So I unloaded all of my belongings onto the side walk and put the van in a parking lot. When I returned my belongings were still all there, thankfully. He wasn't.
But Marty also talks about misconception. "I don't know" is a legitimate answer to any question if it's the right answer. Some people seem incapable of saying it, which can cause a lot of serious trouble. The dealings I recently had with the tech support people over my computer problems are a perfect example. I eventually spent well over 40 hours on the telephone, punching this, clicking on that, on the floor unplugging and plugging, straining to understand a difficult accent, when a simple "I don't know" would have gotten me to the person who did know a whole lot sooner. But what was worse was that one of the experts who wouldn't admit to his ignorance forced a totally unnecessary solution on me that destroyed a lot of my files. I am trying not to resent that
We are all ignorant of many things. It is good and proper to know what we know, but it is also only just and kind to know what we don't know and to admit it.
Ignorance is not bliss. Wisdom is not folly.
DB - The Vagabond (teaching my old elves new tricks)
------------------------------------------
Come on, folks we need a question for the Winter Quiz, How about it? If you don't come up with one I may have to invent one myself , And you know what happens when I do that.
1 suggestion so far.
Marty Brandel
(Thank you Marty)
***************************
"This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy," Charles Dickens
Where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise. Thomas Gray
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
If you're looking for bliss, don't look for it in ignorance. While I don't want to fill my mind with the puss of evil thoughts, it is only wise to know that evil is out there and usually as a result of it being believed in and practiced by some ignorant people.
We have all seen the results of such ignorant behavior. A man will kill another man or do damage to his property because he ignorantly believes he has a right to revenge himself. A woman took a chain saw and cut down a neighbor's tree because it was blocking her view. I read about a man who humiliated his son in the ignorant belief it would teach his son humility. A woman caused a traffic jam because she stopped in an intersection to clean the snow off her windows. Men in blue suits and briefcases go through revolving doors and stop, oblivious of the people behind them. I've seen it happen many times. Other people get to the top or the bottom of an escalator and stop. One can only shake one's head in disbelief over what we humans do.
I made a major move one year to Washington DC. I arrived at my new address with a van full of my belongings at 7:30 Sunday morning. I parked the van on the side of the road and started taking my stuff into my new apartment. A cop came along and told me to move the van, When I asked him why he said that any moment the rush hour traffic would be coming down that road and I would be in the way of it. I told him I chose Sunday morning because I didn't think there would be a rush hour. He gulped. He was caught in has own ignorance. He made me move the van anyway. So I unloaded all of my belongings onto the side walk and put the van in a parking lot. When I returned my belongings were still all there, thankfully. He wasn't.
But Marty also talks about misconception. "I don't know" is a legitimate answer to any question if it's the right answer. Some people seem incapable of saying it, which can cause a lot of serious trouble. The dealings I recently had with the tech support people over my computer problems are a perfect example. I eventually spent well over 40 hours on the telephone, punching this, clicking on that, on the floor unplugging and plugging, straining to understand a difficult accent, when a simple "I don't know" would have gotten me to the person who did know a whole lot sooner. But what was worse was that one of the experts who wouldn't admit to his ignorance forced a totally unnecessary solution on me that destroyed a lot of my files. I am trying not to resent that
We are all ignorant of many things. It is good and proper to know what we know, but it is also only just and kind to know what we don't know and to admit it.
Ignorance is not bliss. Wisdom is not folly.
DB - The Vagabond (teaching my old elves new tricks)
------------------------------------------
Come on, folks we need a question for the Winter Quiz, How about it? If you don't come up with one I may have to invent one myself , And you know what happens when I do that.
1 suggestion so far.
Saturday, August 1, 2009
Natural Nincompoops 8/01/09
You have been given worldly means to use and employ against human ignorance and wrong.
Knute Nelson
*********************
Happy to see you.
---------------------------------
There are two men out west somewhere. One of them did me a serious heartbreaking wrong thus ending a friendship of 20 years. The other one automatically took the first one's side without giving me any explanation for it. I knew from his emails that he didn't know what had happened. I tried to explain to him what had taken place just so he would know, not to turn him against the other guy. The more we communicated, the more adamant he became at not considering or even listening to what I was saying. It was causing me a lot of distress until I heard someone say "You can't win an argument with an ignorant man." Then I relaxed and let it go. It's not up to me alone to heal ignorance.
You can't reason with the unreasonable. You can't educate one who refuses to be educated. You can't convince a person whose mind is closed. You can't turn the lights on in a house that has no lights, You can't argue with an ignorant man.
In "A Christmas Carol" Charles Dickens writes that the Spirit of Christmas Present shows Scrooge two children it has hiding under it's robe.
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
'Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.' exclaimed the Ghost.
'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased.
Beware the ignorant of the world, They are dangerous, They will do wrong. The best we can do is work against human ignorance and wrong, because we can't argue with it.
DB
__________________
Welcome to August.
**********************
Knute Nelson
*********************
Happy to see you.
---------------------------------
There are two men out west somewhere. One of them did me a serious heartbreaking wrong thus ending a friendship of 20 years. The other one automatically took the first one's side without giving me any explanation for it. I knew from his emails that he didn't know what had happened. I tried to explain to him what had taken place just so he would know, not to turn him against the other guy. The more we communicated, the more adamant he became at not considering or even listening to what I was saying. It was causing me a lot of distress until I heard someone say "You can't win an argument with an ignorant man." Then I relaxed and let it go. It's not up to me alone to heal ignorance.
You can't reason with the unreasonable. You can't educate one who refuses to be educated. You can't convince a person whose mind is closed. You can't turn the lights on in a house that has no lights, You can't argue with an ignorant man.
In "A Christmas Carol" Charles Dickens writes that the Spirit of Christmas Present shows Scrooge two children it has hiding under it's robe.
From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children;
wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt
down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.
'Oh, Man. look here. Look, look, down here.' exclaimed the Ghost.
'They are Man's,' said the Spirit, looking down upon
them. 'And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers.
This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both,
and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy,
for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the
writing be erased.
Beware the ignorant of the world, They are dangerous, They will do wrong. The best we can do is work against human ignorance and wrong, because we can't argue with it.
DB
__________________
Welcome to August.
**********************
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