A Jolly Good Fellow

Transcript

Welcome beautiful thinkers. I want to tell you something I’ve been thinking about. It’s one of these little things. I’ve been thinking about a song. We all know it. “For he’s a jolly good fellow” sung at birthday parties all around the world.

It’s funny how you can take a little thing like this which you already know and shine a little light on it and think about how it actually goes so much deeper than what we originally thought.

So what is a “jolly good fellow”? It’s an interesting phrase; it’s not really a common one today. If you think about it, this person is jolly good. Not just that they’re a little good but that they’re emphatically good but so good that they’re happy, overjoyed to be good.

So good that they will inspire merriment in others and they’re a fellow. If you look etymologically at the word fellow, it goes back and has this implication of cattle in metaphor for money. And a fellow was someone who put down money in an enterprise with you. So somebody who is invested with you, a partner.

Then later of course we have that spiritual significance that’s why we have things in the Christian church like a fellowship. A fellowship is someone who is invested also someone who is on a spiritual path with you.

I look at the lyrics to this song in Spanish and it goes “Por el es un buen compañero”. At first I thought the word compañero or companion surely must be related to the word compassion. Compassion being the feeling of suffering together with somebody.

Actually it’s something a bit more lite. Companion goes back to the Latin roots the word “Panis” in Latin means bread. A companion is someone who breaks bread with you so a fellow, companion is somebody who spends the good times with you, walks on the spiritual path with you and is invested in you that have the money down personally invested in what’s going on.

Great to have somebody who’s so happy about being good who’s ready to walk the path with you, who’s invested with you, and who will enjoy the good times with you.

Now imagine there used to be this practice in the Christian tradition it’s called Lectio divina now what it meant was when you had a bible reading you didn’t just sit down and try to interpret the verse intellectually. You’d take that verse, read it out loud with all the force and emotion that it deserves to reveal the emotional truth of that verse.

And maybe we can do the same thing with this. Imagine your at a party and your friend is having his birth day. Everyone has sung happy birthday and then somebody starts “Por el es un buen compañero…” I did it in Spanish.

How would it sound, how would you start singing knowing the depth of that, knowing that this person shares the good times with you and shares an investment and walks the spiritual path with you. Feels together with you and is ecstatically happy about it.

How true is it about your friend and can you feel that truth just by singing it? And in fact you might just be moved to tears thinking about what a wonderful person they’ve been, the strength of their spirit.

Now its your birthday party and people start singing and they want to let you know through singing those timeless words that they care for you very much. That they’ve seen that brilliant shining part of you. They recognize it and they wanna praise it.

Its funny how we can take these little things. This is actually a much deeper lesson I like to phrase in a subtle manner “everything is a clue” meaning we can analyze anything and look at anything in a spiritual light. Put on our divine rose colored glasses and find the wonderfulness of everything around us.

“Por el es un buen compañero, por el es un buen compañero, por el es un buen compañero…..que nadie puede negar! Que nadie puede negar! Que nadie puede negar! Por el es un buen compañero ”

Thank you for listening. Thank you for thinking beautifully and thank you for staying grateful!