Life’s Lessons: Some Passing Thoughts

By Jay Thomas Willis

In going through life one learns many of life’s lessons. This book points out some of the lessons the author has learned. He also gives some of his personal thoughts and ideas. The author begins his life on a small-dirt farm in East Texas, plowing a mule from sunup to sunset: he then receives an inadequate education from a rural-all-Black school, where he was neglected and abused; after which, he goes to college in East Texas, where he was out of place; later to the military; back to graduate school in Houston; and then settles in a South Suburb of Chicago, where he experienced cultural shock. These sayings, personal thoughts, and ideas are derived from his seventy-three years of experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664189867

Jay Thomas Willis

Jay Thomas Willis graduated from Stephen F. Austin State University with a B.S. degree in sociology. He also graduated from Texas Southern University with a M.Ed. in counseling, in addition to receiving a MSW in social work from the University of Houston. Willis has held numerous social work positions.

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Copyright © 2021 by Jay Thomas Willis.

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.

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: 08/18/2021

Xlibris

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CONTENTS

Also by Jay Thomas Willis

Dedication

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 Passing and General Thoughts

Chapter 2 I Made It

Chapter 3 Your Assignment

Chapter 4 Theology, God, and Religion

Chapter 5 Personal Behavior

Chapter 6 Personal Situations

Chapter 7 Family Situations

Chapter 8 Education and Culture

Chapter 9 Friends and Enemies

Chapter 10 Change and Society

Chapter 11 Finances

About The Author

ALSO BY JAY THOMAS WILLIS

Nonfiction

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

Fiction

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

Poetry

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

DEDICATION

To my parents Johnnie and Saddie Willis.

A dog was hanging around the railroad tracks. He lost a small piece of his tail when ran over by a train. He decided to go back for it and was killed by another train. The moral of the story is, don’t lose your whole head over a little piece of tail.

….Anonymous

PREFACE

T HE AUTHOR WAS born in a small town in rural East Texas. He was raised on a fifty-acre-dirt farm that would only grow the hardiest of weeds, to top that off it was full of rocks. There was a small town twenty miles away in either direction. He spent most of his life on the farm plowing a mule from sunup to sunset during growing season. Despite the rocks and lack of fertile soil, his mother insisted that he keep up the farm. His father had worked in an oil refinery on the Gulf Coast since 1947. The author was born in 1947. All his other brothers and sisters had left the farm when he was born. He worked that farm until he was eighteen-years old. At that time, he was fortunate to be able to escape to college. He went to college in East Texas, then to the Navy. After which, he went to two different graduate schools. Subsequently, he moved to the South Suburbs of Chicago. He knew he had to do something other than stay on that farm. He has spent the last 45 years of his life in the South Suburbs of Chicago. He has spent most of his life as a social worker, psychotherapist, teacher, and freelance writer.

These sayings, personal thoughts, and ideas chronicle the author’s experiences. These sayings in this book are some thoughts that he has considered throughout his life, as well as some of his passing thoughts. Some of these sayings are personal. He thought they would be more relevant that way. The author learned all of these from life lessons he picked up along the way. The statements are true to the best of his ability. Some of these sayings are mixed creations: they combine something he had heard before with his own creations. He did his best to stay away from popular sayings. He came across these sayings by free-style brainstorming, free-association, and forcing his brain to retrieve them.

The author wrote these sayings painstakingly one by one. Some days the inspiration came and others it didn’t. Rarely did he sit down without having a thought come to him.

Most of these thoughts came straight from his head. He would never want to write a book of sayings that came from another source. A few of them he had heard in various conversations throughout his life. Please forgive if he repeated any of these sayings from other of his books of sayings. Sometimes it was hard to remember which ones he had used before. He thought of these sayings quickly, but often they faded from memory like snow in a hot-frying pan before he could write them down. He wrote them over a period between January 2021 and September 2021.

The categories in this book are rather fluid. Some of the thoughts could fit just as well in one of the other categories. He simply had to decide on one category and stick with it.

This and any of his other books can be ordered or previewed @ amazon.com by Jay Thomas Willis.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

T HANKS TO MY mother and father for doing the best they could with what they had; to my father’s Social Security benefits for providing the partial resources for me to attend college.

Thanks to my brother Wade for being a true guardian angel and a positive role model.

Thanks to all my teachers and professors for helping me to develop the best way they knew how.

Thanks to many other possible role models whom I secretly aspired to emulate.

Thanks to all those who helped me in some unknown way, but I can’t exactly put my fingers on it.

Thanks to my wife Frances and my sons Marcus and Martin for simply being there and always being supportive.

Also, thanks to the grace of the Almighty God for knowing my weaknesses and fortifying my strengths; and for providing the environment that helped me to somehow develop in my assignment.

CHAPTER 1

Passing and General Thoughts

"Competing with me is easy, because I feel we

can both walk away with victory."

"Geniuses and dreamers are the most hated

people in all the world’s literature."

"Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, snakes got

to crawl, and thoroughbreds got to run. We all

do what nature intended for us to do."

Evil comes in many forms and disguises. Be aware.

Don’t let anyone else decide on the reason for your existence.

"Some people think they know what’s best for you, when

they barely know what’s best for themselves."

"Encourage yourself if no one else encourages you. We

need encouragement like we need water and air."

"We have a way of making things look good, but when

we examine them closely, they don’t seem so good."

"Most things are not what we think they are, and only

a product of our imagination. If you examine them

closely you will find there is nothing to them."

"Most people only see what they want to see in a situation

based on their background and conditioning."

"Inner peace is the most important thing necessary

for your continuous adjustment to life."

"Quit worrying about other people, if they can’t

steal your hope, they can’t defeat you."

"Negative events from your childhood will

forever give you nightmares."

"Your greatest fears will likely never occur. Most of the

things we constantly worry about will never happen."

"Some of the things you imagined happening

in your life never did happen."

"Some of your paranoid thoughts are probably true

while many of them have no basis in reality."

"The universe has no beginning and has no end;

it always has been and always will be."

"One single act of kindness can have a reverberating

effect and benefit many people."

"It may seem that you had limited options, but when you

examine them closely, you will see your many alternatives."

"Sometimes running gets us their too fast,

and walking is the only way to go."

"Scams are easy to run on people who are

looking to get something for nothing."

Let water under the bridge float on down the river, don’t hold on.

You cannot fail unless you absolutely quit and completely give up.

The people you hang around can help to determine your future.

"We all evolved over a period of time; nobody

is better than anybody else."

"If you think anything is fun or funny about

guns you have some serious issues."

"The person you discriminate against today could

be the one responsible for a major medical or

scientific contribution to society tomorrow."

Don’t try to be like other people; try to be better than other people.

"You can keep up that façade for a while,

but you can’t keep it up forever."

Things may seem bad, but you’ll feel better tomorrow.

A small percentage of the population won’t like you or anyone like you.

"You thought you got away with something, but somebody

you know saw you at that hide-a-way motel."

None of us knows how much time we have left on the planet.

"Sometimes we must be meekly bowed