Cheerfulness

What a delight! Reading about Garrison Keillor's cheerful take on all that happens to him at eighty years of age makes me feel quite cheerful myself.

Keillor quotes Emerson (and this quote is one I can't hear often enough):
Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. Nothing great is achieved without enthusiasm.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (pp. 14-15). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

Diligence is all well and good but thank God for wild good luck.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 29). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

Cheerfulness is rare among writers, maybe because the failure rate is so high, or maybe because it's not taught in school.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 44). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

NOTE: Never marry someone who lacks a good sense of humor.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 56). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

Nobody ever said to me, “Eighty is the new seventy.” Because it's not, it's the home stretch. Most of the people living on earth when you were a child are now dead: that world is gone.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 56). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

As a young man, I practiced irony and saw pretense and arrogance wherever I looked, and now I see splendor and bravery and genius and kindness as the real story and have faith that the story will keep going. I am kind to strangers; I hold the door open for people except young women who might be offended and tell me to go to hell.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 65). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

As Anne Frank wrote, “Despite everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. ... I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again.” If this child hiding from Nazis in an attic in 1943 could be cheerful, then by God so can I.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 74). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

Cheer up. As Dr. Nash once said about my skinned knee, “It looks worse than it is.”

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 114). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

At age 96, Mother told me, “There's so much I'd still like to know but there's nobody left to ask.”

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 126). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

Like the old gospel song says, “This world is not my home, I'm only passing through,” and it feels good to be a tourist.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (pp. 128-129). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

It wasn't depressing to visit the dying, it was a mission: nobody should die alone, we need to see our people to the end of the block.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 144). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

Most tragedy is misunderstood comedy. God is a great humorist who is working with a sleepy and distracted audience. Lighten up. Whatever you must do, do it wholeheartedly, even gladly. As you get older, you'll learn how to fake this.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 162). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

I go to church to think more freely. I mostly believe or believe that I do. I understand those who don't—the idea that omniscience and omnipotence are contradictory, I get that. I believe God will clear this up when we meet Him. But I am moved by the prayers, the readings of Scripture and sometimes the singing is so joyful it reduces me to rubble.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 166). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.

I hum a note and a thousand people sing “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder” and they know the words, the stars and the rolling thunder and with all their souls they sing, “How great Thou art” and it is sort of stupendous, and it feels like even the unbelievers got swept up in it and we sing the last line, “How ... great ... Thou ... art” and I put my hand to my heart and thank them. They've given me a new vocation. I'm the only octogenarian stand-up comic who incorporates hymns into the act and it serves a holy purpose: it pulls people into harmony with others they imagined they despised.

Keillor, Garrison. Cheerfulness (p. 189). Prairie Home Productions. Kindle Edition.