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    Younger and Wiser: Peaceful Words For A Troubled World
    Younger and Wiser: Peaceful Words For A Troubled World
    Younger and Wiser: Peaceful Words For A Troubled World
    Ebook237 pages2 hours

    Younger and Wiser: Peaceful Words For A Troubled World

    By Gene S. Jones

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    About this ebook

    A unique literary masterpiece richly seasoned with wisdom, humor and inspiration
     

    In his compelling new book Younger and Wiser, Gene S. Jones travels beyond traditional formats to explore the full spectrum of human emotions and experiences. Utilizing pithy vignettes anchored by clever backstories, Younger and Wiser relates the eclectic saga of the author's fascinating personal odyssey. The result is a mind-expanding reading adventure that expresses heartfelt emotions and life lessons while demonstrating a deep appreciation for humanity's ability to improve itself.

     

    Featuring intimate storytelling and witty humor interspersed with profound wisdom, Younger and Wiser delivers bite-sized nuggets of invaluable insights for readers of all ages.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamquest Publishing
    Release dateSep 3, 2020
    ISBN9780998324012
    Younger and Wiser: Peaceful Words For A Troubled World

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      Book preview

      Younger and Wiser - Gene S. Jones

      Younger and Wiser

      v

      Cry Like A Man

      Today I sat down

      and cried like a man.

      I cried for all the people

      who will never know the pleasures of a good home,

      for those who love objects

      but not themselves,

      and as my tears poured down

      upon the shadow of an ant,

      I cried for those who live so loud

      they cannot hear the ever-present sound of love,

      for dreams that never come true,

      and for all endangered species

      I cried for technology,

      while praying for wisdom

      to take hold of our hazardous course.

      I cried for the ocean

      the air

      fragile forests

      infants

      the old

      the sick

      the wealthy and the poor,

      who all find their own ways to suffer

      Where does it all end?

      These tragedies seem so far away,

      but I can’t stop crying, because there’s so much to cry about.

      It’s really not the world

      but the people,

      not just who they are,

      but what they will become

      Once a boulder begins rolling down a hill,

      it becomes impossible to bring back to the top,

      so today I sat down and cried for my father,

      who in his greatness

      died before he could tell me

      about the last time he sat down

      and cried like a man

      v

      Backstory

      Cry Like A Man

      Cry Like A Man intertwines the death of a beloved parent with the exploration of deep compassion for human suffering. These two powerful forces gripped me one chilly winter afternoon, creating an urge to channel the grief derived from my father’s sudden demise into an all-encompassing world view. Such a vision provided plenty to cry about, since nothing boils my blood faster than the stinging loss of my father when I was a very young man. It’s a nagging grief that haunts at will, with surprise attacks triggered by seemingly innocuous events. For some mysterious reason, I have never been able to cry while standing up, so these attacks always force me to sit down before tears can flow. Over time I’ve learned to transition this emotional condition from grief to compassion, which initiated a much needed healing process. The backstory for Cry Like A Man was triggered by October Sky, a film documenting the true story of Homer Hickam, a teenager whose love of launching rockets led him to become a NASA rocket scientist.

      A compelling subplot of October Sky is the turbulent relationship between Homer and his father. As a young boy, Homer grew up in a close-knit mining community dominated by the local coal mine. Awed by Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite in 1957, Homer developed an unbridled passion for rockets. His father was a lifelong employee at the mining company who demanded that Homer follow in his footsteps, but Homer was strong-willed and highly motivated. Homer’s unwavering determination brought ardent support from friends, teachers and numerous townspeople, but not his father.

      Cry Like A Man and its backstory demonstrate how full immersion in grief enables potentially positive outcomes. When grief is allowed to fully run its course, that process paves the way for an emergence of clarity and compassion. Clarity and compassion are ingredients for the reemergence of happiness and joy. This magnificent transition from grief to joy represents one of humanity’s finest attributes, and although Cry Like A Man was originally inspired by personal tragedy, substantial catharsis was derived from converting grief into a universal view of the human condition.

      v

      Educated Sweat

      After years of having much

      but wanting more,

      too often pouring every ounce

      into a seemingly precious pitcher

      only to discover gaping holes in unsuspected places,

      after watching a mockery made of caring,

      it finally dawns on my educated sweat

      that everything is something,

      something can be nothing,

      but

      nothing is everything

      The events of life

      parallel the ingestion of food

      where no meal is great enough

      to eliminate the need for another

      So when desire strikes

      I don’t put on my best clothes anymore,

      having learned

      the highest mountain peak

      is merely the bottom of the sky,

      and

      success can be the ultimate disappointment

      v

      BACKSTORY

      Educated Sweat

      Although Educated Sweat was written more than forty years ago, it continues to resonate with me today. After weathering many more life experiences, I still agree with its conclusion:

      Fulfillment and happiness are not necessarily achieved by effort alone, and apparent success can often feel empty.

      It takes awareness and other intangibles to create a rewarding and happy life. This backstory for Educated Sweat proved difficult to write. It truly made me sweat, mainly because no single event inspired this poem’s creation. I spent a substantial amount of time beating myself up for not being able to concoct any worthy embellishment or insight to highlight the poem’s words. Meanwhile, an irate voice inside my mind was shouting,

      How could you have lived another forty years and not figured out anything worth mentioning about Educated Sweat?

      To which I silently shouted back,

      Maybe I was wiser than I realized when I was younger!

      This internal dispute raged inside my head for days while I repeatedly studied every word of Educated Sweat as if reviewing a crucial legal document. My conclusion at the end of this struggle was:

      In some ways I was very wise at a young age,

      but in other ways I was clueless…

      a dichotomy that evolved into the title for this book.

      So here is my updated lesson regarding Educated Sweat:

      Apply the concept of sweating smart to avoid many perilous pitfalls of life, and always provide your instincts some space to evolve.

      Most importantly: Never sweat in vain.

      v

      Sketch

      An old man sits on a porch stoop

      stroking the gray cat on his lap

      The scene doesn’t look like much,

      but his unshaven face and tattered trench coat

      speak the many winding roads of his past sixty years,

      those he loved, then lost,

      those who loved him

      yet were abandoned by his once carefree heart,

      wealth gained and squandered,

      friends who died too young

      and the dream house in the country he never owned

      Faces don’t wrinkle solely from the passage of time.

      A man earns his wrinkles

      from mistakes and disappointments,

      inevitable though avoidable as they may be

      The man had a dog once…

      a trusted dog who ate at the dining room table

      listening carefully to all the gory details.

      That dog knew everything

      except how to speak and play poker,

      but dog lives are short

      so after a canine funeral

      which lasted twenty years,

      the man bonded with a stray cat

      he trained to listen to what was left:

      Chilling stories of stray animals

      who all have tragic tales to tell

      but sadly swallow them in solitary silence

      So it was the summation of a life

      to see not much

      as an old man sat on a porch

      stroking a cat

      v

      BACKSTORY

      Sketch

      It’s not what you look at that matters.

      It’s what you see.

      —Henry David Thoreau

      Writing Sketch felt like drawing a picture with a pencil.

      I wrote this poem in front of my apartment in Santa Monica, California. One late afternoon, as I returned home from the grocery store, a scraggly old man sat across the street on the stoop of a porch. Even though it was a very warm afternoon, this old man wore a tattered raincoat. He clearly had not shaved in many days and his hair was disheveled. Nested on the old man’s lap was an equally disheveled gray cat. As the old man scratched between its ears, the cat squinted with pleasure. They both seemed at peace, indicating neither of them had anywhere else to go.

      This unglamorous duo caught my eye as I unloaded two large bags of groceries from my car and strolled toward my apartment door. After taking a few steps, I was struck by an urge to capture this most mundane scene on paper. Inspired to attempt a verbal sketch, I quickly emptied one of the grocery bags, pulled out a pencil, and sat on the sidewalk directly facing the old man. He and his cat never took notice of me, and we never spoke a word to each other. The more I wrote on my brown paper palette, the more I felt I knew the old man. When finished writing his verbal portrait, I reloaded the groceries and hurried home to transcribe the newly created portrait, which I envisioned in black and white.

      I never saw that old man again, and can only assume he didn’t live across the street, but was just passing through. Perhaps he was homeless, and then again, perhaps he was a billionaire cat lover. No matter what his true condition in life was, Sketch is the essential reality his appearance conveyed to me in that moment.

      v

      9/11 Syndrome

      We give money

      but it’s not enough

      We volunteer

      but it’s not enough

      We send canned food to Africa,

      we hug firemen

      but it’s still not enough

      Every television screen torments us

      with images of billowing smoke

      and endless replays of airplanes

      crashing into the Trade Center,

      while aerial views of Ground Zero

      tell us our souls are still roasting

      in that pile of rubble

      As we mourn the dead and injured,

      we also mourn the loss of safety we once felt,

      while absorbing the shocking realization

      we are so vulnerable

      We can’t escape,

      we don’t want to escape,

      part of us is still smoldering

      deep underground

      We want to be there,

      we sense our world is spiraling out of control,

      the hero in us aches to contribute

      as inner voices scream

      How should we respond?

      v

      BACKSTORY

      9/11 Syndrome

      We cannot solve the significant problems we face today on the same level we were on when we created them.

      —Albert Einstein

      Without inner peace, there can be no world peace.

      —14th Dalai Lama

      9/11 Syndrome was written a few days after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. At that time I was living in Manhattan and experienced firsthand this tragedy from within the traumatized fishbowl, while also being barraged daily by horrific images of destruction repeatedly presented on television. The air in Manhattan was thick and acrid. The Broadway theater district where I frequently worked was temporarily a ghost town. It was eerie to pass through Times Square

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