Motivation: Jack Benny & The Art of Living Well

I love Jack Benny. More on that in a bit.

Wikipedia will tell you that Jack was an “American comedian, vaudevillian, radio, television, and film actor, and violinist,” and that he was “recognized as a leading American entertainer of the 20th century.”

He was all that, and a whole lot more.

Sites like the International Jack Benny Fan Club (IJBFC) will take you down a marvelous memory lane of old time radio and early television, so I won’t duplicate what you’ll be able to delight in over there.

But I will tell you that Jack was also a decent person who treated people kindly and generously. He was a natural comedian without the stereotypical traumatic background, nor with tragic repercussions in his adult life.

He lived well.

And do

As his daughter Joan Benny said in her biography of Jack, Sunday Nights at Seven, “People don’t buy books about nice.”

But oh, when I found out he had started writing his autobiography, how I wished he had finished.

So for a little bit of Monday-or-any-day Motivation, I wanted to leave this thought out in the ether:

We all want to do something to set us apart, be something that makes us special. But maybe we already do. Maybe we already are.

I think what I’m trying to say is Jack was always himself, even when he was on stage playing a character entirely opposite to everything he was. He worked hard, yes, but he also knew how to sit back and let things flow.

So write down those decent things you do yourself or see in others. Because every now and then we could stand a little reminding that it’s okay to just…live well!