Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul

by Jack Canfield

  I used to live in perpetual fear of losing things I had, or never having the things I hoped to acquire.

  What if I lose my hair?

  What if I never get a big house?

  What if I become overweight, out of shape or unattractive?

  What if I lose my job?

  What if I am disabled and cannot play ball with my child?

  What if I get old and frail and have nothing to offer those around me?

  But life teaches those who listen, and now I know:

  If I lose my hair, I will be the best bald guy I can be, and I will be grateful that my head can still stimulate ideas, if not follicles.

  A house does not make a person happy. The unhappy heart will not find contentment in a bigger house. The heart that is merry, however, will make any home a happy one.

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  If I spend more time developing my emotional, mental and spiritual dimensions, rather than focusing solely on my physical self, I will be more beautiful with each passing day.

  If I cannot work for wages, I will work for the Lordand his benefits package is unmatched.

  If I am physically unable to teach my child to throw a curve ball, I will have more time to teach him to handle the curves thrown by life, and this shall serve him better.

  And if aging robs my strength, mental alertness and physical stamina, I will offer those around me the strength of my convictions, the depth of my love and the spiritual stamina of a soul that has been carefully shaped by the hard edges of a long life.

  No matter what losses or broken dreams may lie in my destiny, I will meet each challenge with dignity and resolve. For God has given me many gifts, and for each one that I may lose, I will find ten more that I never would have cultivated were the course of my life to always run smoothly.

  And so, when I can no longer dance, I will sing joyfully; when I haven't the strength to sing, I will whistle with contentment; when my breath is shallow and weak, I will listen intently and shout love with my heart; and when the bright light approaches, I will pray silently until I cannot pray.

  Then it will be time for me to go to the Lord. And what then should I fear?

  David L. Weatherford

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  9

  ECLECTIC WISDOM

  I hear and I forget.

  I see and I remember.

  I do and I understand.

  Chinese Proverb

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  What's Wrong with Your Dad?

  Has anyone ever said, ''It is important to spend less time on how we look and more time on how we see"? If not, someone should.

  Carmen Richardson Rutlen

  I was in high school before I realized my father had a birth defect. He had a harelip and cleft palate, but to me he looked like he had always looked since the day I was born. I can remember kissing him goodnight once when I was young and asking if my nose would go flat after a lifetime of kisses. He assured me that it would not, but I remember a twinkle in his eyes. I am sure he was marveling about a daughter who loved him so much she thought that her kisses, not thirty-three operations, had reshaped his face.

  My father was kind, patient, thoughtful and loving. He was my hero and first love. He never met a person in whom he could not find good. He knew the first names of janitors, secretaries and CEOs. In truth, I think he liked the janitors the best. He always inquired about their families, who they thought would win the World Series

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  and how life was treating them. He cared enough to listen to their responses and remember their answers.

  Dad never let his disfigurement rule his life. When he was considered too unattractive for sales work, he took a bike out on deliveries and created his own route. When the army wouldn't let him enlist, he volunteered. He even once asked a Miss America contestant out for a date. "If you don't ask you'll never know," he told me later. He rarely talked on the phone, because people had a hard time understanding him. When they met him in person with his positive attitude and quick smile, people just seemed to take his disability in stride. He married a beautiful woman, and they had seven healthy children, all of whom thought the sun and moon rose in his face.

  When I was a "sophisticated teen," however, I barely tolerated being in the same room with this same man who for a decade had endured me watching him shave every morning. My friends were chic, trendy and popular; my dad was old and outdated.

  One night I came home with a car full of friends, and we stopped at my house for midnight snacks. My father came out of his bedroom and welcomed my friends, pouring sodas and making popcorn. One of my friends pulled me aside and asked, "What's wrong with your dad?"

  Suddenly, I looked across the room and saw him for the first time with unbiased eyes. I was in shock. My dad was a freak! I made everyone leave immediately and took them home. I felt so foolish. How could I have never seen it before?

  Later that night I cried, not because I realized that my dad was different, but because I realized what a pathetic, shallow person I was becoming. Here was the sweetest, most loving person you could ask for, and I had judged him on his looks.

  That night I learned that when you love someone

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  totally and then see them through the eyes of ignorance, fear or contempt, you begin to understand the profound depths of prejudice. I had seen my dad as strangers did, as someone different, deformed and not normal. Not remembering that he was a good person who loved his wife, his children and his fellow human beings. He had joys and sorrows and had already lived a lifetime of people judging him on his appearance. I was grateful that I got to know him first, before others showed me his flaws.

  Dad is gone now. Empathy, compassion and concern for fellow human beings are the legacy he left me. They are the greatest gifts a parent could leave a childthe capacity to love others without considering their social stature, race, religion or disabilities, the gifts of joyful perseverance and optimism. The lofty goal of being so loving in my life that I receive enough kisses to make my nose go flat.

  Carol Darnell

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  Cyclops Stole Our Hearts

  Beauty is in the heart of the beholder.

  Al Bernstein

  "Why do these cows always pick this cold weather to have their calves, anyway?" Bill's deep voice betrayed anxiety more than annoyance as Scott and I hurried along beside him toward the barn. It was midnight, and the temperature at Singing Valley had plummeted to five below zero!

  Valentine was a mountainous Holstein, now a month overdue. She was far too big, weighing nearly three thousand pounds, and we were worried. For three hours, we watched the distressed animal sniffing and pawing the straw while her labor progressed. Finally she crashed to the ground, and with a little help, gave birth to a 140-pound heifer, twice the normal size and the color of butterscotch. We hurried back to our own warm beds for what was left of the night.

  Before dawn I went down to the barn to make sure the calf was up and nursing. I could hear it sucking noisily in the far corner of the stall. Then my foot struck something

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  hard buried under the straw. A piercing squeal knifed the darkness.

  I hurried to let in some light. I was unprepared for what lay before mea hideous black calf, twin to the beautiful heifer, but grotesquely deformed.

  As it struggled to stand, I was appalled at its oversized head and the massive hump rising from its back. Its short, stubby legs were twisted, and its hoofs were clubbed. It trembled.

  Overwhelmed with pity, I sank to my knees and reached to touch it. The calf bawled piteously and searched my fingers for milk. I turned the calf slightly so I could see its face. My heart stopped. The calf had only one eye. How could nature be so brutal?

  I don't know why we didn't destroy him. His twin was afraid of him. His mother despised him. When he tried to nurse, Valentine kicked him in the face, then gored him in the sides with her horns until he fell to the ground. Every time, hurt and bleeding,
the ugly little thing lurched to his feet and tried again. Determined to nurse, he watched his mother from distant corners of her stall and corral. He waited until she lay down to rest. Then he'd move in for his milk, clinging like a drowning sailor.

  At first, our children thought the calf was gruesome. Their feelings changed as they watched him struggle to remain alive. "He's so friendly," said Scott. "He totters up to the gate when we come with the feed, and he won't quit being a pest until we scratch his head."

  One afternoon our daughter Jennifer told us about reading Homer's Odyssey in her English class. "There's a story in it about a one-eyed giant named Cyclops!" she said. "Wouldn't that be a perfect name?"

  So Cyclops it was. During the months that followed, the odd-looking calf became another "ranch pet." The younger children played games with him and fed him

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  lumps of sugar or sweet feed. In gratitude, he licked a hand or a small rosy cheek. "Look, Mama," a child's voice would cry. "Cyclops loves me!"

  We noticed he became a favorite of other animals wandering around the barnyard. In winter, we'd often find a cat curled up against his hump for warmth; in summer, chickens and dogs sought shade in his shadow.

  His best friend was a chick named Omelette. On their first encounter, Cyclops was napping. Omelette was less than a week old. He began pecking at the beads of sweat running down the glistening black, bovine nose. Cyclops snorted loudly, blowing the chick away. Undaunted, Omelette returned again and again, finally jumping on Cyclops's face and pecking his way to where the young bull's incredible horns lay.

  Instead of growing up and outward, Cyclops's horns seemed to have collapsed into a tangled mound, creating a haven for lice and horn flies, the plague of all cattle. The snarled horns formed a perfect barrier against the tree trunks and fence posts on which he scratched, desperately seeking relief from the torturous insects.

  Omelette quickly discovered the banquet beneath those horns. By summer's end, it was not unusual to see Omelette, now a full-grown rooster, perched on top of Cyclops's horny crown and pecking for hours at the hidden pests.

  Still, Cyclops's own kind spurned him. During the first two years of his life, not a single cow, calf or bull would tolerate his presence.

  By the time Cyclops was three, he ate nearly a ton of hay a month, and had grown to weigh seventeen hundred pounds. We tried to avoid any conversation concerning how useless he was to the ranch. Bill raised pedigreed Hereford bulls. Why were we wasting time and money to keep alive this tragic mistake of nature?

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  Spring brought the breeding season. Bulls were turned out into designated pastures with cows of specific bloodlines. Twenty heifers that Bill planned to artificially inseminate were also set apart in their own pasture.

  Detecting exactly when a cow is in heat is the most time-consuming and frustrating part of artificial breeding. Hours are wasted watching for behavior signs that tell whether the cows are ready to be inseminated.

  Cyclops was no longer free to roam. The herd bulls might consider him a threat. Confined to a corral, he became frantic with loneliness. He paced. He pawed. He bawled until his squeaky voice became a whisper.

  Several months passed, and Bill was getting discouraged about the insemination program. Out of twenty heifers, only two that we could be certain of had come into heat. Then we noticed Cyclops had stopped pacing. Instead, he gazed longingly over his corral fence at a young heifer. For hours, they called back and forth to one another, she in her soft alto, he in his high falsetto. "I wonder," Bill said, "if that poor thing knows something we don't?"

  "Let's let him loose and find out," said Scott. Cyclops's deformities left him sterile. "After all, he can't breed. What harm can he do?"

  We opened the gate.

  Cyclops, nostrils flared, snorted loudly and lurched into the pasture on his short twisted legs. The heifers scattered like leaves in the wind, but he found the object of his desire. He squealed. She froze. Cautiously he approached, tilting his head upward to caress her neck with his velvet mouth. Finally she allowed him to rest his head against her shoulder. He could do no more. We knew then she was ready to breed.

  For the next two years, Cyclops became our "heat-detecting" bull, finding each heifer for us when they were ready to breed. We had a 98 percent conception rate that

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  first year and 100 percent the second. Our homely bull was no longer uselessor lonely.

  Cyclops was only four and a half years old when he died. We found him beneath his favorite shade tree. His heart had simply stopped beating. As I ran my fingers along his neck, a lump rose in my throat. The children were fighting tears, too.

  Suddenly I realized that our extraordinary bull had awakened something in all of usa greater sympathy, a deeper understanding for those less fortunate than their peers.

  Cyclops was different only on the outside. Inside he had the same passion for life cherished by all God's creatures. He loved us, and we loved him.

  Penny Porter

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  An Act of Faith

  What the caterpillar thinks is the end of the world . . . the butterfly knows is only the beginning.

  Anonymous

  When my son Luke was small, he liked to sit on my lap and watch television. Sometimes he'd point out what he thought belonged to the real worldauto accidents, fires, Joe Montana, astronautsand what did not. Big Bird, for instance, belonged to the world of make-believe. But so did dinosaurs.

  Luke had trouble understanding how dinosaurs could be considered real if they were not around anymore. My explanation that they were once alive but had all died long ago perplexed and annoyed him.

  One day Mawmaw, his great-grandmother, sent him a drawing of a cat with a note that suggested he color it.

  He finished this project the very day it arrived and then climbed into my chair to show it to me. The cat was red, blue and green.

  "I've never seen such a colorful cat," I said.

  "'Course not," he said. "He's mine and Mawmaw's," as

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  though that somehow explained things. He nestled against me and I clicked on the TV to a retrospective of the life of John Kennedy.

  As a picture of young JFK at the tiller of a small sailboat appeared, Luke asked, "Who is that man?"

  "It's John Kennedy. He was president of the United States."

  "Where is he?"

  "He's dead now."

  Luke looked at my face to see if I could be teasing. "Is he all dead?"

  "Yes."

  There was a short silence. Then he asked, "His feet are dead?"

  "Yes."

  "Is his head dead?"

  "Yes."

  This last question was followed by a long, thoughtful pause. Then Luke finally said, "Well, he certainly talks very well."

  Though I tried not to, I laughedpartly because he did seem to speak very well, for a dead person, that is, and partly because Luke had been so earnest in examining the problem.

  After the JFK incident, Luke seemed haunted by the problem that death presented. Thereafter, almost every walk in the woods became a search for something deada field mouse, a raccoon or perhaps a bird. He would squat down on his haunches over the find and sometimes make up stories about what the animal had been doing when it died. Sometimes we held small funerals.