It’s Good to Be Alive

Jay Thomas Willis

Description

This book is a collection of some of the author’s best published and unpublished sayings, short stories, and poems. Some of the previously published material in this book have been revised and reedited. All these sayings, short stories, and poems relate to the idea that it is good to be alive and focusing on the positive rather than the negative. The author emphasizes that no matter how bad your background you can improve your situation by focusing on the positive rather than the negative. Your situation may be negative in most respects, but you can learn to develop your conscious level with positive thinking while enriching your attitude and your altitude. All of this depends on feeling good about your life and your potential.

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 11 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669855057
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

It’s Good to Be Alive
 
Focusing on the Positive Rather Than the Negative
 
 
 
 
 
Jay Thomas Willis
 
Copyright © 2022 by Jay Thomas Willis.
 
Library of Congress Control Number:
2022920952
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-5503-3

Softcover
978-1-6698-5504-0

eBook
978-1-6698-5505-7
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 11/10/2022
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
848503
Also by Jay Thomas Willis
Nonfic tion
A Penny for Your Thoughts: Insights, Perceptions, and Reflections on the African American Condition
Implications for Effective Psychotherapy with African Americans
Freeing the African-American’s Mind
God or Barbarian: The Myth of a Messiah Who Will Return to Liberate Us
Finding Your Own African-Centered Rhythm
When the Village Idiot Get Started
Nowhere to Run or Hide
Why Black Americans Behave as They Do: The Conditioning Process from Generation to Generation
God, or Balance in the Universe
Over the Celestial Wireless
Paranoid but not Stupid
Nothing but a Man
Things I Never Said
Word to the Wise
Born to be Destroyed: How My Upbringing Almost Destroyed Me
Nobody but You and Me: God and Our Existence in the Universe
Got My Own Song to Sing: Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome in My family
Random Thoughts on My Reality
A Word to My Son: A Celebration
Messed-Up Kid
Off-the-Top Treasures
Going with the Flow
Man’s Basic Purpose
God Told Me to Tell You
My Life and Times: Some Personal Essays
Life’s Lessons: Some Passing Thoughts
Why I Write: Notes Straight from the Hip
Just Jazzing: Thoughts from the Depth of My Soul
Promises I Must Keep: Some Passing Thoughts
Fic tion
No Worldly Options Except Suicide or Schizophrenia: But God Has His Own Plans
You Can’t Get There from Here
Where the Pig Trail Meets the Dirt Road
The Devil in Angelica
As Soon as the Weather Breaks
The Cotton is High
Hard Luck
Educated Misunderstanding
Dream On: Persistent Themes in My Dreams
Longing for Home and Other Short Stories
Po etry
Reflections on My Life: You’re Gonna Carry That Weight a Long Time
It’s a Good Day to Die: Some Personal Poetry About the Ups and Downs in My Life
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction
 
I.       Favorite Sayings
II.     Favorite Stories
III.    Favorite Poems
 
About the Author
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all those who strive to think positive rather than negative, and who realize that it is indeed good to be alive.
Acknowledgments
I acknowledge the most positive thinking person I know, my wife: thanks to my wife for all her love and support. Thanks to my wife and sons for giving me a good reason to be alive, and to focus on the positive rather than the negative.
It was probably difficult, but thanks to all those who tried to keep a positive rather than a negative attitude toward me throughout my life.
Thanks to the Almighty God for always being positive, regardless of the situation, and giving me more opportunities than I deserve to get things right. Thanks to the Almighty God, the Balance in the Universe, for keeping me well-ordered, truthful, balanced, righteous, reciprocal, and in right-order.
Thanks to my son for being healthy and strong, and providing me with technical support to put this project together.
Thanks to all those who read any of my books, this provided me with the motivation to continue to write.
Thanks to my school bus driver for being absolutely positive that I got on that bus each and every morning.
Thanks to all those who provided me with educational assistance, but I was not aware of their help.
Thanks to my cousin Wilson for giving me my first educational lesson: how to tie my shoes.
Thanks to my school coach for being one of my sources of motivation; he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I replied, like most children, that I wanted to be a doctor. This served to motivate me.
Thanks to a neighbor Robert Johnson for motivating me to get an education. He suggested that I was too frail to do construction work and that I should get an education. I saw getting an education as being one of my limited options.
Thanks to all those who neglected, abused, and misused me; they provided the obstacles, trials, and tribulations I needed to motivate me to do something with my life.
Without my brother Wade I don’t think I would have survived. He provided me with funds to live on and took me where I needed to go as a youth. He also provided motivation for me to succeed in school. He bought me a car when I turned sixteen. This car got me out of my rural-isolated existence.
Thanks to the staff at Xlibris for all their support, without which, this book would never have become a reality.
Introduction
They say your life is to some degree determined long before you arrive on the planet. By that decree the author supposes his life was already determined before he arrived. But you have the responsibility for achieving your purpose and accomplishing something with your life. The author doesn’t believe it is all predetermined; you can determine what you make of your life by the choices you make. Part of it has to do with your outlook, your focus, and your perspective. It is good to focus on the positive rather than the negative. The author always felt he could do something positive with his life. Regardless of how many setbacks he encountered, he kept that positive perspective. Whenever one door closed, he went to another door and kept knocking until someone opened the door. While alive you can partially handle your situation. Once you are deceased it is over.
You know when you are creative you have a chance of something good happening in your life. And you know nothing good will happen when you are dead. He believes that’s why people say it’s good to be alive. To be alive is to always maintain hope that better things will come. In this book the author has collected some of his best unpublished and published sayings, short stories, and poems, relative to the idea that it’s good to be alive, while focusing on the positive rather than the negative.
When he considered writing another book, he kept thinking what he could say that he hadn’t said before in other of his books. He has written forty-one books altogether.
The author recalls one Christmas in Chicago. His son was approximately ten years old. A friend of his son and his father had stopped by to wish them a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. His son’s friend father asked him what he got for Christmas. He told him what he had gotten and then said, he didn’t really need any gifts, it’s just good to be alive.
His sister who lives in Fort Worth once told him that he should be happy with what he had rather than wishing for a different set of circumstances. She also said, after reading several of his books, that he should write about the way he wanted things to be, rather than the way they really were. He had to contemplate this suggestion for a while.
Most of the author’s books have been about the negatives in his life rather than the positives. In this book he decided to focus on the positives in his background rather than the negatives.
At his age he is indeed simply happy to be alive. He has many things to be happy for. He elaborates on some of them in this book. There are many things in his background that serves him well.
He wasn’t born under the best of circumstances. His mother had little medical care, and provided little medical care for them, but he survived with the help of the Good Lord! His mother basically relied on home remedies. They lived in drafty-old-tin-roof shack. If castor oil, Black-Draught, Epson salts, or cod-liver oil couldn’t cure it, then it couldn’t be cured, as far as his mother was concerned.
His parents didn’t monitor his grades or his activities, but this prepared him to be disciplined enough to handle his own business. He never got a note sent home by any of his teachers. His teachers nor parents ever gave him high praise; this made him understand that his greatest praise had to come from within. He knew he had to go for himself.
He was raised in an isolated rural area of a small Southern town, but that also kept him from many of the things that go on in larger cities. He had to plow a mule from sunup to sunset, but that kept him busy and out of trouble. When he was plowing that mule from sunup to sunset, he focused on one day being able to get away from that farm, being able to take a shower and wearing clean clothes, and to eat in fine restaurants. His parents ignored him in ma