When the rock, paper and scissors fail to give their conclusion, then we must know how to build our own lives, to avoid being controlled by other people.

Cring shows you a way to rock on.

TRANSCRIPT

Rock, paper, scissors.

Is anybody else confused by this game? I never figured it out. I had people explain it to me, but still, it always seemed whatever I chose, someone came along and said, “No, no, no! Paper covers rock! Scissors cut paper! Rock smashes scissors!”

I never once won, though I am suspicious that a friend of mine who always liked to play this game whenever choosing something to do would every once in a while, let me win just so he could manipulate me into thinking that I was catching on.

It’s a racket, isn’t it?

And I’m not even gonna talk about when they started adding other things to it. Atomic bombs. Hydrogen bombs. Once played with a group of kids who used wind. It was so screwed up!

It reminds me of this story that’s told about how you should build your house.

First of all, let me make it clear: I would never build a house. I hated owning a house.

There were nights I was kept awake wondering when the house was going to break down with some problem that I had no budget for. Worse yet was the instinct that somehow or another, if I was going to be a house builder, or a house owner, I needed to be making improvements.

And then I learned there are improvements that increase the value of the house, and there are improvements that do nothing to build up the value of the house. And some improvements even take down the value of the house.

It screwed me up. Speaking of screwed up, it starts early: The pressure.

WHERE DOES PRESSURE COME FROM?

  • My family, from the day I was born, wants my devotion.
  • My boss craves my time.
  • My banker eyes my accounts.
  • Then there are my parents over there—constantly yearning to be proud.
  • My squeeze, my spouse, my lover—demands my attention
  • My church asks, in a downright forthright way, for my tithe. One-tenth of my income, which they plan to use to improve the vestibule.
  • My car is begging for a muffler.
  • My belt is requesting a diet.
  • My doctor is fearful for my body. “Just one more test! Really, just one more…”
  • My dentist frowns at my teeth.
  • My God is ready to save me!
  • And the devil is waiting in hell.

I take in a deep breath of sanity and exclaim, “Dammit it all!”

People say, “You’re fine just the way you are.” To try to appease you, they proclaim that “you were born a certain way,” and you should “relax and submit to the course of your birth.”

But to be stuck where you were born stifles your individuality.

Back to this rock and sand thing.

Obviously, rock and sand are two different places where you could build a house—which I assume refers to your life.

Maybe my life is like a house, but I certainly don’t have a den. Unless it’s a den of iniquity. Yuk-yuk-yuk.

Sand. Sand is always popular—it’s near the ocean. Beachfront property. My God, my God, there are so many people in Miami who built on the sand. After all, there are no hurricanes coming. The ocean is NOT rising.

You see, the sand doesn’t offer solid ground when the storms come. And oh, the storms will come. They will beat upon you. They will challenge your right to remain firm. They will drown you with the unexpected.

And then there’s this idea of the rock.

You do understand, it’s not easy to build anything on the rock. You have to crack into the surface, dig deep—almost like you’re becoming one with the sediment.

It takes great effort.

Here’s a word we don’t talk about very often—painstaking. That’s the sensation of beginning something and experiencing pain, thinking the pain should go away, but it doesn’t immediately, so you’re tempted to give up.

But if you do build on the rock, and the storms come, and they certainly will…then this house you built is no longer a house. It’s a part of the rock.

To keep people from planning your life, you must keep them at a friend’s distance.

What is a friend’s distance?

It’s just far enough away that they can’t pity you, interfere with you or insist that they know better for your life.

Now, in order to achieve this, you have to actually DO something.

A young fellow came up to me the other day and said, “I’m a song-writer.”

I said, “Well, how many songs have you written?”

He said, “Three.”

I said, “You’re not a song-writer. You’re lucky.”

Doing something is separating yourself from the interference of others by proving through your own efforts that you are both sane and solvent.

I know people who are crazy, and they are constantly asking me for money. But if you give them a piece of advice, they become offended.

If you’re not sane and you’re not solvent, you’re going to get a ton of advice.

No one would disagree—advice is annoying.

What is even more annoying is to refuse advice, but accept checks.

The Cider Press

Whatever. I remember going out one afternoon in the state of Ohio, to a farm, where they had a cider press. Once a year—for maybe twenty-five days—they gathered apples and put them in this press and made delicious cider.

There was a man there in his early thirties who put the apples in and started up the press. I was intrigued. He acted like the world was ending.

Somehow or another, if you are going to get yourself free of people planning your life you have to do something—but you have to do it in a spirit that prevents them from thinking you’re miserable.

Doing must come from being, and being must be grounded on the rock of going.

There it is.

Are we going somewhere?

You damn better be going somewhere or people will start pulling out their brochures, suggesting where your destination should be.

The power in life—now follow this—the power in life is knowing where to go to discover who to be and while discovering, learn what to do.

Here’s the truth of the matter: sometimes you do need to go to God. Not all the time. God doesn’t have all the answers. That’s why He made Earth, food, toilet paper and people. Not necessarily in that order.

But truthfully—honest to God, so to speak—if you need wisdom and strength, God is the guy to go to.

Sometimes you just need to go to a quiet place where it’s just you and the silence. Just make sure the silence doesn’t have an opinion.

Sometimes you need to go to Mother Earth and study science and learn more about the Third Rock from the Sun.

Sometimes you need to go to your cousins—that’s the billions of other folks who are on the Earth with you. They may know something you don’t.

Keep in mind—you are not a mess.

Even if your friends and family look over at you with sad eyes, you’re not a mess.

You’re not a perverted sinner, doomed for hell.

Nor are you a sparkling angel with pristine wings, flying safely above all your problems.

If you want your life back, you must take it, protect it, nurture it, do something, go and know where to go to get your answers.

There’s an old saying: “If you draw close to God, He’ll draw close to you.”

Now, there’s a friend. He does not screw around with your life unless you have a question.

He doesn’t step in and try to control you.

God doesn’t have time to have a plan for your life. He’s opening up new Universes and having trouble with the construction workers.

You just need to understand, you can’t change the rules that have excited since human beings started stumbling across the face of the Earth.

Just because you chose rock does not mean that paper wins. And if you chose scissors, it doesn’t mean that they beat rock, or that rock smashes them.

You need to learn how things work:

You have emotions because they are the confirmation that you possess a soul. Even though we try to pretend that our cats and dogs are “emoting” to us, the only emotion they have is: “Isn’t it almost time for a snack??”

You have a soul, which is confirmed because you have a heart. Your emotions are stirred because your soul yearns for more than the mediocre shit that’s being offered.

And your soul is there because it wants to be renewed by something other than what you learned when you were twelve years old about civil rights. Or civility, for that matter.

Once your mind gets renews and excited about new ways to do things, it enlivens your body.

And your body sprouts energy, which is its way of saying, “Amen. I’m so glad you finally got this in the right order.”

You can’t let other folks run your life. You can’t let them plan for you.

For you see, the good news is, we are born to fulfill Mother Nature.

But the better news is, we are born again to establish our independence and give glory to Father God.

 

About Author

Jonathan Cring

Our story is told from where we begin. For Jonathan Richard Cring, this was music. First he sang songs, played songs and then one day it occurred to him that he might like to write one. He actually wrote two that morning and rather enjoyed it. This opened the door to people recording his music, ending up in Nashville, Tennessee, with a contract. Having read a book, he had an itch to write one. The first one was small. It was called "The Gospel According to Common Sense." But fourteen books later, he has accumulated a considerable journal of his journey and heart. In the process, he had four sons and was godfather to three others. One of these young men wanted to be a filmmaker. Scripts were required, so Papa Cring wrote thirteen screenplays which ended up being produced into independent feature-length films which won awards at twenty-eight film festivals. While perusing websites for his movie career, Jonathan discovered blogs. He decided to write one and called it Jonathots Daily Blog. That was in 2008. Thousands and thousands of entries, which extended to additional blog categories--one called Jonathots, Jr.--pictures with euphemisms, and Words from Dic(tionary)--taking the Webster classic in its alphabetical order, and writing mostly comical essays on each word. Sitting around the table at Christmas time, his children encouraged him to begin a podcast. In 2018, he began one called Good News and Better News. It is a content-filled tongue-in-cheek look at American culture with the contention that life really doesn't suck. Bouncing off what has been done while discovering what is available has created the arc of the career for Jonathan Richard Cring.
Leave a Reply