HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY, MR. DARBY!

On October 5th Mr. Darby turned 1 year-old. It is amazing that he and I are still together because I have never had a dog and as those of you who have raised dogs, they are a handful. Mr. Darby and I are joined at the hip and dyed-in-the-wool companions for life. Thank God he loves his best friend, red heeler/Australian shepherd Riggs, whose daddy and mom are Scott and Alison.

Leave ‘em Laughing

October, 2009

I just came from the dog park with Mr. Darby, who is becoming known as the ‘meet and greeter,’ where I ran into David Keebler, the former Head Librarian of the Sedona Public Library, who is now Director of the Sedona Chamber of Commerce. When I asked him how he could stand going from books to bellyachers he said, “…with a sense of humor.” Then I come home and call my friend Cathy to wish her Happy New Year (Rosh Hashanah for those of you who have not read Jewish Literacy) and we talked about my last month’s column, Dog Days of Summer—with all the kvetching and kvelling from all sectors. Her parting line for how to get through all of these life challenges was, “…leave ‘em laughing.” You would have to know Cathy to understand how she can see humor in the direst of circumstances.

I am in a fellowship whose cornerstone reads, “Action is the magic word,” so I will throw in my two cents’ worth about how to handle hard times, financial, physical, emotional or all rolled into one. Yesterday my chronic back pain kept me in bed reading and watching a bit of television with my fox terrier atop a pile of pillows.  But today I took him to the dog park, swallowed my meds and am doing some work—pulling together the October issue of the Newsletter, writing a new book proposal, and answering emails. In an hour or two I am going swimming. Late afternoon a new client arrives for a week of the Sedona Intensive™. This is my way of saying that you can assuage tough times by doing what is right in front of you—not only does this make you productive but work and game plans get you out of yourself and into doing what needs to be done.

I have sat on the pity pot more than once and I have even channeled Poor Pitiful Pearl cloned with Baby Snooks, but as I live and breathe, self-pity is more torturous than any hand life has ever dealt me. Someone in recovery said to me once, “If you want potatoes pick up the hoe.” At the time I thought that was the rudest thing I ever heard until my first crop of potatoes came in.

A tall and self-assured lieutenant in the Navy in my early days of recovery from alcoholism once said to me after he heard all my serious and dark shadows of woe, “Albert, life may or may not be a bowl of cherries and heaven may just be a figment of an optimist’s state of mind, but this I know to be true: you are too damn serious. The next time I see you make me laugh.”

When I was a young boy I would often stumble across adages and axioms and stanzas of poetry that lifted my spirits. None served me better or is more apropos than these lines written by Ella Wheeler Wilcox in 1883 in her poem Solitude: “Laugh and the world laughs with you/Cry and you cry alone.”

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