I'm Mark Rickerby, a 30-time Chicken Soup for the Soul contributing author and partner at Temple Gate Films, LLC. My posts are usually inspiring, sentimental, humorous, or any combination of the three, with occasional essays about screenwriting, filmmaking, parenting, travel, and other things that make life worth living. As the title suggests, also look for episodes of my series Messin’ with Mark – God's Sitcom, wherein God messes with me for heaven's amusement. It's the only explanation for the bizarre things that happen to me. If they give you a laugh, great. If not, blame God – it’s His show!
Please look for my stories The Radio That Couldn’t Be Stolen and A Word Whispered to a Toddler in this book, now available in bookstores and online.
These make 23 of my stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul’s inspirational books, but only the second time I’ve had two stories in one book. I’m always very proud to be part of their inspirational collections.
There was an expression in the 60’s – “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” These books are part of the solution. All of life’s great questions can be found in them, collectively. With over 250 titles released over the past twenty years, they are the best place to find stories about extraordinary events written by ordinary people.
Sunday is a day of contrast for me. I go to church in the morning and hear sermons about how to love, then I meet friends in a park and study Krav Maga and learn how to kill bad people.
In case you’ve never heard of it, here’s a good demo video of Krav Maga (WARNING: some violent scenes) –
As much as I love the philosophical aspects of martial arts, I hate that its still necessary to know how to fight in this world. When I was a kid watching sci-fi movies, the future was always depicted as a time when people communicated telepathically, wore white robes, and swore off violence decades earlier after an apocalypse had finally happened and taught them all (too late) the folly of hatred and aggression. These survivors were usually disfigured somehow. So the message was clear – spiritual advancement comes at a terrible cost.
And isn’t that true? Don’t we learn most quickly and deeply when things are worst? Some would argue that pain and the avoidance of further pain is the only thing that ever changes anyone. It is rare for one to learn anything once and for all, or to learn from someone else’s experience.
I’ve studied boxing, Dutch kickboxing, Okinawan karate and wrestling, but my black belt is in Northern Shaolin Kung Fu. My latest love is Krav Maga, the Israeli army combat system, which I’ve been studying for about four years now. The two styles are very different. Kung Fu is soft. Krav Maga is hard. Kung Fu is pretty. Krav Maga is practical and direct, not dynamic enough for movies and tournament kata demonstrations. There are hundreds of techniques in kung fu, most of which are based on the movements and fighting styles of animals. Krav Maga tries to limit the number of movements so there’s less to remember, and those movements are based on natural, instinctive reactions.
I chose this style because it’s considered one of the most deadly modern martial arts, because I’m getting older and my daughters are, too, (and prettier), and because I’m alarmed every day by the craziness in the news. Things don’t seem to be getting better. Every day a new collection of horrors assails all us normal people who have never had a problem not assaulting, molesting, raping, or killing anyone, and to whom such things are inconceivable.
And that is the reason martial arts are still necessary. Most people wake up and do their best to be happy and kind to others, thinking about their goals and how to achieve them. Others, thankfully the extreme few, but the ones who get all the attention on the news, wake up and immediately start planning who they’re going to rob, rape or kill that day, where they’re going to sell their drugs, what area they’re going to search for houses to burglarize, what schoolyard they’re going to hang around hoping to catch a parent not watching his/her child. Evil has always existed and it still does. It even appears to be growing. The reasons are many and a subject for another blog or series of them.
So I’ll keep training to protect those nearest and dearest to me, and even a stranger if I see someone being victimized, even as I wish it weren’t necessary. I’ve never been the type to look the other way, to my wife’s dismay. I’m proud of that. When someone who is victimized in broad daylight is interviewed, they often say what made the assault worse was all the people who looked the other way, who walked by as if they didn’t hear her/him screaming. Most people are just too terrified to help. Some have a good excuse – being small physically, being unarmed/untrained, age, etc., but too often they’re just selfish, concerned only about their own skin. So evil wins again.
The battle between good and evil has always been and always will be. I know what side I’m on. Jesus said to turn the other cheek, but we only have two. And as the saying goes, evil flourishes when good men do nothing. So I’ll love people, even those with evil in their hearts, and do my best to steer them away from evil before they do anything wrong. But if they act on their evil impulses, or if they already have and are unrepentant, and I have a chance to punish them, the full weight of my thirty years of training in how to break bones and cut off their air supply will crash down around them. Our forefathers didn’t create this beautiful country at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives so that their sons and grandsons could just hand it over to the trash of the world.
On the back of the U.S. dollar, there’s an eagle with a quiver of arrows in one talon and laurel leaves in the other. The leaves are a symbol of peace, which the U.S. always tries first. But the arrows are there just in case the leaves are rejected. All men’s arms should be equally able to embrace or destroy. All men’s minds should hope for the best but prepare for the worst. And all men should possess weapons that can be laid down or picked up, depending on whether an angel or devil crosses their path.
For instance, many years ago, I was driving past my local mall when I saw a woman with a very worried expression walking along a sidewalk and a man walking equally fast about twenty feet behind her. I passed by at first, then trusted my instinct that something wasn’t right and turned around. I followed them for a few blocks and he turned every time she did. I finally pulled into a driveway behind her, blocking his path, and asked if he was following her. With a horrified expression, she said, “Yes, he started following me in the mall and won’t go away!” I got out of the car and stopped him, asked him what he was doing, etc. He tried to go around me so I stopped him again. He got mad and took a big, primitive swing at me. I spun him around and put him into a chokehold until he passed out. That’s when the woman’s husband came flying out of her house, which was only a few more doors down, thanked me and finished him off. He was still beating him senseless when I drove away. The woman waved and said thank you as I passed her. That is a much happier ending to me than the alternative – the woman getting punched unconscious and raped in an alley or some bushes.
I want to be everyone’s friend and love everyone. Unfortunately, not everyone else feels that way. So I train so I can be who I am (happy, loving, friendly) with the knowledge that I can be very dangerous if I need to be, and only if I need to be, after all other options are exhausted, only when cornered or unable to ignore an evil act. As Imi Lichtenfeld, the founder of Krav Maga, said, we train “so that we may walk in peace” – the same reason I go to church.
When I get to heaven, I hope Jesus pats me on the back and says, “Well done, my good and faithful servant” – for loving people, and protecting them.
Never underestimate the extraordinary body/mind/soul healing power of a long walk past neighbors’ gardens with a child and a dog on a sunny, almost-spring day.
Join me and many of the other contributors to Chicken Soup for the Soul’s new book, Miracles and More, today at 11:00 A.M. Pacific Time. The information is below. Should be fun and inspiring!
‘Twas battered and scarred, and the auctioneer Thought it scarcely worth his while To waste much time on the old violin, But held it up with a smile. “What am I bidden, good folks,” he cried, “Who’ll start the bidding for me?” “A dollar, a dollar. Then two! Only two? Two dollars, and who’ll make it three?”
“Three dollars, once; three dollars, twice; Going for three…” But no, From the room, far back, a grey-haired man Came forward and picked up the bow; Then wiping the dust from the old violin, And tightening the loosened strings, He played a melody pure and sweet, As a caroling angel sings.
The music ceased, and the auctioneer, With a voice that was quiet and low, Said: “What am I bid for the old violin?” And he held it up with the bow. “A thousand dollars, and who’ll make it two? Two thousand! And who’ll make it three? Three thousand, once; three thousand, twice, And going and gone,” said he.
The people cheered, but some of them cried, “We do not quite understand. What changed its worth?” Swift came the reply: “The touch of the Master’s hand.” And many a man with life out of tune, And battered and scarred with sin, Is auctioned cheap to the thoughtless crowd Much like the old violin.
A “mess of pottage,” a glass of wine, A game — and he travels on. He is “going” once, and “going” twice, He’s “going” and almost “gone.” But the Master comes, and the foolish crowd Never can quite understand The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought By the touch of the Master’s hand.
– Myra Brooks Welch
From old poetry dot com –
Probably best known for the poem “The Master’s Hand” written in 1921, Myra Brooks Welch was born in the late 19th Century in America. Thanks to one of our Oldpoetry readers we believe she was born in Illinois 1878, daughter of John Brooks,and she married Otis Welch. She was a resident of La Verne, California. As a youngster her special joy was playing the organ but this was denied her in later life as she suffered badly from arthritis and spent much of her time in a wheelchair. She wrote with an inverted pencil in each of her gnarled hands and would pick out the words on a type writer. She said that the joy of her writing outweighed the pain of her efforts.
Myra Brooks Welch would say that she heard a speaker address a group of students on the power of God to bring out the best in people. She said she herself became filled with light and that “Touch of the Master’s Hand” was written in 30 minutes!. The finished poem was sent anonymously to the editor of her local church news bulletin. She felt it was a gift from God and didn’t need her name on it.
There’s no way to say any of the following without sounding like a crotchety old carbunkle, but for all you youngsters today who may not know it, back in the 60’s and 70’s, there was a real, serious, dedicated movement that centered around coming together as friends, seeing beyond differences to the heart and soul, ending war once and for all, etc.
We have gradually lost sight of that goal as time has passed. It’s like we’re all standing among the ruins of a half-built Utopia without the will or ability to complete it. In fact, many people seem to be determined to widen political/religious/social/racial divisions and wipe out everything not exactly like themselves. (Exactly what the Islamic terrorists are guilty of, ironically.)
I was a kid in the 60’s, but I was befriended by a group of hippies, and let me tell you, they lived their philosophies. They made me feel like a prince at a time when I felt pretty small and insignificant. I told that story in Chicken Soup for the Soul’s book called Random Acts of Kindness.
I’m not saying we should all become hippies, or even that they were right about everything. For instance, I don’t respect the fact that they wanted to put limits on everything except their own behavior. But what can’t be questioned is their level of commitment to peace and love. I wonder if we’ll ever get back to that ideal of seeking understanding and compassion. We can’t have anything unless we first actually want it, and wanting is useless without action. In other words, if we don’t define what we want, there’s no way to ever achieve it.
There will always be evil and naked aggression that needs to be squashed by non-pacifists. (ISIS, Al Quaeda, the Taliban, Nazi’s, fascists, etc.) But it’s equally and maybe even more brave to seek peace in our daily lives with people we have nothing in common with, to try to connect as human beings and see past (or not even notice at all) our racial/sexual/economic/educational/religious divisions, and all the other ways we divide ourselves from others. After all, the first requirement for doing evil to another is to think of them as something separate from ourselves, or even non-human. That’s why the first thing Hitler and every tyrant like him did to win over the mindless masses was to label the group he wanted to persecute as “vermin” that needed to be exterminated. This is how he convinced men who weren’t born killers to murder women and children.
Every measure of peace must be attempted before breaking out the guns, or fists. At least the hippies were brave enough to try, you know?
Here are a few songs from back in the day that illustrate my point. Feel free to message me with your favorite.
So here we are again, awash in resolutions, but what all self-improvement boils down to is the desire to be happy, right? And even if we did achieve that perfect state of mind, who’s to say it would stick around? Would the realization of one goal only give rise to another? Would the “there” we’re dreaming of now be replaced by another “there” the second we reach it? Isn’t that what has been happening for most of us so far?
I spent most of my adult life waiting for happiness like UPS was going to deliver it. I kept waiting for it as if money or fame or someone else could make happiness come and stay permanently. Then I realized this is it, right now, as I washed the sink, or changed the baby, or resented someone for some insult in the distant past. This is it. Happiness was actually waiting for me, to make a choice, or continue not to, which is the same thing.
I learned that happiness is a choice, regardless of how much I have or don’t have. I must choose it for myself and defend it righteously when someone tries to destroy it (and they do – misery really does love company.)
But the irony is the happier I am, the more likely I am to achieve the things I want. Self-pity is never rewarded. The universe ignores it and I’m pretty sure it annoys God because He’s aware of all the effort that goes into being depressed and cynical – the adopting of the slouching posture, the ignoring of everything good (and free) around me at any given moment, the refusal to even begin to pursue the achievement that’s possible with even a minimal amount of effort. It’s hard work to be depressed. It takes effort to fail. I know. I set my own expectations of myself too low for years. My problem now is choosing which inspiration to pursue. And inspiration is everywhere.
I can be a supernova exploding in all directions, or a dying star. It’s my choice.
I tell my daughters who they are and will be is a choice they make every day and recommit to from moment to moment. Asking the right questions determines destiny –
Am I going to be happy or sad?
Am I going to be nice or mean?
Am I going to be healthy or sick?
Am I going to be decent or indecent?
Am I going to be smart or stupid?
How do I behave when nobody sees?
Not choosing is choosing. Failing to plan is planning to fail. Not choosing is resigning oneself to being a cork on the ocean, tossed about by the caprices of wind and current.
So good luck with your resolutions, and asking yourself the right questions. Choosing the right answers requires a lot of trust – mainly that good things happen to good people. All one must do to see the opposite is turn on the news at night – it’s full of the chaos that fills the lives of those who never bother to ask themselves the right questions, or willfully choose the wrong answer. In fact, this post is probably wasted because it’s being read by bloggers, a generally enlightened bunch who don’t really need to read any of this.
Anyway, in case someone who might otherwise be robbing someone at an ATM, knocking over a liquor store, or just generally treating people like dirt happens to be reading this right now, as the guardian knight in Indiana Jones said . . .
If you’re like most people in the world, you own at least one of the over 250 Chicken Soup for the Soul books. This is my 18th story published with the franchise, and I’m particularly proud of it because it tells a story I always wanted to tell – about a six-month backpacking trip I took through Europe, Greece and Great Britain.
The book is called Step Outside Your Comfort Zone, and my story title is More Kindness Than Danger. It encourages people to not let fear prevent them from living an adventurous life. There are 100 similar stories by other authors in this book, stories that will inspire you to reach beyond your comfort zone and live the life you are supposed to be living.
Tune in to Twitter tomorrow, November 1st, between 2 and 3 EASTERN time (11-1 Pacific) for a Q&A session with the contributors and the publisher, Amy Newmark. Tell them Mark Rickerby sent you. I hope to see you there!
In December of 2014, my father died after five years with Parkinson’s and Dementia, and breaking his hip, then being tortured by a grossly incompetent medical staff at Kaiser Permanente’s hospital in Panorama City, California. I won’t go into detail but it was a real trip to hell and the staff were the demons running it.
My dad died on December 21st, his young dog died without warning four days later on Christmas Day (also from a brain problem, ironically), leaving my mother completely alone. Then, as if all that weren’t bad enough, her house was burglarized. She not only felt sad in her empty house, but afraid, too.
As I was dealing with the burglary, my father’s sister in Belfast, Northern Ireland, was found dead on her bedroom floor. She had been dead for four months but nobody noticed because she was an agoraphobic recluse. She lived badly and died badly. A tragic end to a tragic life. More irony (or something more) – she died within a week of my father, even though she was twelve years younger than him, and she didn’t even know he had passed. It was as if my father’s soul, free of that broken body, found her and said, “Come with me, sis. This is no life for anyone.” Maybe his dog died to be reunited with him, too.
We will all die, and usually badly, in physical terms, from some diabolical, incurable (is there any other kind) disease or combination of them. This is the inherent courage of living – knowing the end will come, but waking up, getting cleaned and dressed, smiling at strangers, and making the most of every day anyway. We all deserve a medal. There is valor in just staying positive and living life knowing the end will come, whether or not we believe in heaven and the continuation of the soul.
My father’s miserable last month of life, made infinitely more miserable by the ghoulish staff at Panorama City’s Kaiser Permanente hospital (with a few rare exceptions), would have been completely hellish except for one moment at the end, after the morphine drip that would end his life had begun, when somehow, he opened his eyes and searched for me in the room full of friends and family. A friend said, “Mark, he wants you.” I was sitting in the corner with my face in my hands, crushed that I wasn’t able to save him. I looked up and saw him reaching for me. I rushed to him and held his hand. He couldn’t speak because his throat was ravaged by numerous botched tube placements. (Another thing Kaiser stole was my father’s right to say goodbye.) He pursed his lips, pulled me close, and gave me the last kiss he would ever be able to give me. I hugged him and told him I loved him, that it was okay to go, that I would take care of mom, and thanked him for all he had done for me. I asked if he understood and he nodded yes. I thank God for that moment now, and am still baffled at how he was able to reach through his brain diseases and all the drugs flooding through his system to give me that moment. A golden moment if ever there was one. I have despaired greatly since his death, about how he died, so without that the despair would have been infinitely worse.
Which brings me to my point – dying well. That moment said everything there was to say about my father. He had a rough upbringing in Belfast, Northern Ireland, with loveless parents, crushing poverty, and almost daily fistfights, but he never complained. He came to America and started a business that flourished for 35 years while others rose and fell around him. He lost his stomach to cancer at 45 and was cut down from 200 to 150 pounds. And again, he never complained. He never complained or made the slightest whimper in the hospital despite his hip and femur being broken in four places, despite his throat being so dry his tongue cracked open, despite the hospital staff making every mistake it was possible to make out of a combination of incompetence and heartlessness. And he didn’t complain as morphine ended his life. Instead, he reached for me and gave me a kiss.
I thought of my dad when the actor Gene Wilder died recently. He was asked in an interview why he didn’t act anymore during his final decades. He was sent scripts constantly so demand for his talent was still there. He said he didn’t like all the cussing and vulgarity. Decency and integrity like that is almost non-existent in Hollywood, where money and attention are usually the only factors considered when making a decision.
Gene Wilder suffered with Alzheimer’s Disease during his final years. He said he rarely went out because children still recognized him as Willy Wonka and he had trouble smiling so he didn’t want to make anyone sad. He didn’t get bitter and hostile because life was dealing him a terrible hand. He was good, sweet and kind to the very end despite his troubles. He lived well and died well.
While writing this, a scene from the Robin Williams movie Patch Adams came to mind. A patient (played by Peter Coyote) was very angry and bitter that he was dying young. Patch was determined to help him make the transition more peacefully. Here’s the scene:
When I was in my early twenties, I climbed over the wall of a cemetery one night and sat in a freshly-dug grave with a Ouija board and candles, trying to summon up something, anything, that would prove to me that there was something beyond this life. I had been told that Ouija boards could be dangerous portals for demons, but I didn’t care. My faith in God had been destroyed by atheistic philosophers like Bertrand Russell and I desperately needed to know if we were immortal or worm food. I chose that night for this “seance” because it was Friday the 13th, and not only a full moon, but a blue moon, too. I figured the timing couldn’t be better. But nothing happened. I sat in that hole in the ground in dead silence until I felt enough like an idiot to pack it up and go home.
But maybe something did happen. My brother had a troubled life filled with drugs and prison and died of an overdose at 37. My mother had breast cancer twice. My life wasn’t exactly easy, either. Maybe demons stay below the radar and do their damage instead of making flashy displays like they do in movies. Life doesn’t feel like nothing to me. It feels like a mystery. It feels like a struggle between good and evil. I can feel the devil push me one way and God push me another. We can write it off as imagination or believe in something larger than ourselves. It’s always our choice.
But no matter what the ultimate truth is about the afterlife, there’s one thing I know – life wasn’t given to us to spend it in misery and sorrow. It just feels right to be happy, generous, kind, loving. I don’t understand people who spend their one, short life buried in greed, anger and/or hatred. Such a waste. Kind of like having a sumptuous meal prepared by the world’s greatest chef then pouring ketchup all over it.
Timothy Leary said dying is one of the greatest things any of us will ever have the chance to do. He was right. How we die is perhaps the largest reflection of who we truly are, beneath all the surface behavior and easy words. Depending on how we live, we will die with integrity or despair. *
My goal is to have the same smile on my face on my final day as I do today. Death shouldn’t extinguish the light within us. It already takes enough.
Erik Erikson’s stages of psycho-social development.
We are so bombarded by meme’s with inspirational quotes on all of our various forms of social media, they become white noise after a while.
Yeah, yeah, “I’m great and wonderful and I can do anything.”
Yeah, yeah, “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone-it, people like me.”
As you more intuitive readers may have guessed, I’m afraid I’ve become a bit jaded by it all. Maybe it’s because I did all that. I ordered the Anthony Robbins tapes. I read the books. I said the affirmations. And maybe all that work did the trick because (not to brag or nothin’ but) I spend most days working my patoot off and feeling capable and confident. Maybe I just have the luxury of yeah-yeahing when I hear yet another amped-up, overly enthusiastic person jumping up and down and telling everybody they need to snap out of it because I’m no longer sufficiently down in the dumps.
But sometimes I can get a little negative about being positive. It’s more rare these days but it still happens once in a while. I just decide to let myself wallow in unpleasant feelings, as if I need to give them reign for a while so the me I like better can emerge even stronger again later. Let the wildfire of negativity burn the old, dead, fallen ground cover so sunlight can touch the soil again and allow for new growth. Something like that. Then again, I could be full of doggy doo-doo. I am not immune to the verbal gymnastics people do to protect their comfort zones, no matter how miserable they are there.
Anyway, I was in that yeah-yeah mindset yesterday when a talk show came on TV with another motivational success coach guy. (I wish I could remember his name but I didn’t write it down.) I thought, “Ah, Jeez. Not another one” but I was in the kitchen so I couldn’t change the channel, which is a good thing.
Then he said something that made sense. Something I hadn’t heard before.
He said every day we should do three things upon waking –
Repeat positive affirmations tailor-made to what we’re trying to accomplish. (He didn’t have me yet. Same old same old. Yawn.)
Prayer and affirmation. Pray for what we want, then say thank you to God for sending it, the same way we would thank Amazon for getting a package mailed out quickly. (Even this didn’t win me over yet. Telling people to pray isn’t exactly unusual. It was the next one that got me.)
Think of the things you know you must do but fear the most, then DO THEM FIRST. (Wham-o. That one alone is huge, but as a follow-up to the previous two, it’s humungous.)
The problem is most people who use positive affirmations and prayer don’t do anything else. They expect what they want to land magically in their lap. They don’t do what they know they should because, well, that stuff is hard! And prayer without action is as useless as pennies under a miser’s mattress.
I’m going to stop before I’m accused of trying to be a junior Tony Robbins. I’ll just leave you to it if this sounds good to you. Here’s a good article to get you started on picking the affirmations that best apply to your life and goals. I hope (you make) all your dreams come true. 🙂
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