Phetasy News - Be Useful
Phetasy News - Be Useful
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Greetings from the Phetaverse
In order to turn my brain off, which I have an incredibly hard time doing, some nights my husband and I will partake in the age old pastime of Netflix and Chilling. There is a new three-part docuseries out called Arnold about, you guessed it, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Being a child of the Nineties and growing up with this man as the biggest movie star in the world, we obviously had to watch it. Say what you will about the guy — he’s a force of nature who has lead one of the most interesting lives on the planet. A lot struck me about the documentary. What they left out. What they included. Who was interviewed and who was noticeably absent. And the wisdom Arnold has acquired over the years.
His mother-in-law, Eunice Kennedy Shriver always used to say, “Let’s just move forward,” It reminded me so much of my grandmother who was about ten years older than Eunice. When he was talking about Eunice, I could almost hear my grandmother’s voice saying the exact same thing in her Rhode Island accent. “Let’s just moved forward, dear.” It made me realize how much the mantra that I’ve been repeating for years, Just Keep Going, was inspired by her.
Arnold starts every day asking, “How can I be useful?”
In my humble opinion one of the biggest crises we are facing as a nation, is a crisis of usefulness. People wake up, they merge online and express their outrage and frustration and pontificate about politics. They feel impotent because none of that is useful. There is a general nihilism that exists for many reasons—lack of purpose, lack of trust in the institutions, lack of faith—but if you get up and get over yourself, if you don’t pay too much heed to how you feel and just get on with what you have to do, life is much simpler. It’s also much better. Be useful.
Thumbnail artwork by Lara Cullen.
Email laracullenstudio@gmail.com to inquire or contact her.
I ask myself this daily, but I'm afraid I've fallen into the other trap of being useful to my boss and not my family. That's been manageable only because they need me making food and shelter money while I should have been putting them first.