On January 11th, 2016, I started a daily practice of writing a joke meditation of the day called Cracked Pot Meditations. I was still recovering from the treatment of cancer, and I was having very challenging cognitive issues, so I chose just to put something simple and easy to write every day. Posting it to the blog allowed me to have some accountability. Some of those meditations were poorly written and unedited. I have gone back and begun editing these and adding an illustration, starting with the April 27th meditation. I hope you enjoy.
Meditation for June 16th
Quotes
Here are some famous quotes that will hopefully give you some inspiration.
“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Gandhi
Ignoring the fact that Gandhi was a terrible person and a pedophile, his quote is quite motivational. Stop blaming the world for not being what it should be and be what the world should be. You can type on your little idiot Internet box all day, but nothing will change unless you show the world by example. Get off the couch and free us with your ideal self. Action is louder than words.
“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
Open your mind, asshole. Once you try things and understand other people’s ideas and morals, you won’t be able to go back to the stupid idiot you were before. You have to leave your small, tiny world and experience uncomfortable things. See how other people live. Experience scary things.
“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.” – George Bernhard Shaw
This basically means that instead of sitting there all the time rolling your eyes and expounding on your lazy ass philosophy, get up and do shit, even if it turns out to be wrong. Experience is the spice of life, and lazy grumps who are too scared to do anything are the turds in a lawn that needs to be mowed. Get off the sidelines and dive into life.
“Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it comes and sits softly on your shoulder.” – Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau was a self-granulating son of a bitch, but he was a quotable one. This is just saying that you don’t deserve happiness unless you work hard to help others and improve the world. Happiness is just being useful to others and not going to parties all the time with booze and pills. Self-care doesn’t work if you aren’t living selflessly.
“Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re probably right.” -Henry Ford
I mean Henry Ford thought Hitler was quite the man, so it is a surprise that he’s so quotable, but here he is telling us that if we say we suck, we’ll suck, and if we say we rule, we rule. Don’t worry about being called a cocky bastard if it’ll mean being awesome. Hey, he gave us weekends, so he wasn’t all bad.
“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” –Thomas Edison
Most of you will give up the first time you fail, so this isn’t quite that powerful of a quote, but if you keep trying and trying, you’ll finally succeed. Most of you probably won’t read this because you gave up on my meditations in February when you realized that reading anything is really difficult. Maybe I’ll make a movie based on my blogs. Who would play me? Jason Schwartzman? Miles Telller? Brenton Thwaites? Anthony Mackie? Brad Pitt? Fred Savage?
“Never ruin an apology with an excuse.” – Benjamin Franklin
You’ll make lots of mistakes if you are actually trying to be interesting, but you will fuck up plenty. Don’t make excuses when you apologize, just say you made a mistake and try not to do it again. People who make excuses aren’t sorry; they just want you to know that they are a weak little victim, which is harder on them than you. Admit your mistakes, amend the wrong, and act like you learned your lesson.
“The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.” – Oscar Wilde
The old are self-absorbed, gullible cretins who feel that the whole world owes them, and they’ll believe anything. The middle-aged are just suspicious of getting old and not being young anymore. What does Fr;fr mean? The young just think they know everything, but sadly, they know nothing. There are no such things as prodigies, masters, or wise old people anymore.
“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.” – Leonardo da Vinci
Don’t be a one-trick pony. Try to do a lot. No one used to be just one thing. Hell, Leonardo Da Vinci was an inventor, painter, scientist, sculptor, engineer, architect, and the keeper of the grail! Now, people dress up in costumes representing one cultural genre, and crossing into any other genre is forbidden. Fucking get out of your hole.
“The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you’ve got to put up with the rain.” – Dolly Parton*
You will have to suffer if you want to be a better person. If you don’t ever suffer because you have the means not to, you are never going to know real life. You will never know true joy. Don’t be afraid of things not being perfect all the time and know that shit sucks before it gets better. Don’t just try to stay in a pink cloud of happiness. It’s better to have than not to have.
*Stevie Nicks once sang, “Oh, thunder only happens when it’s rainin'”, and that isn’t true; you can have thunder without rain.