{{This article should be read when you have a few minutes to kill and are in the mood for some idle prattle and should strictly be taken with a healthy dose of humor. It may not go down too well if any of these vital garnishes is missing.}}
Proverbs and maxims can be confusing. Really.
I tried applying a few of them, hoping it would bring me unending joy and happiness. Success would be at my feet, begging me to embrace her. My professional and personal lives would never be the same again. What’s more, I would earn the respect of my family and my friends, and have a renewed lease on life at my workplace. My kids would look up to me as a hero. These venerable adages are condensed insights that would give me a telescopic view of all that is good and worthy. Truly, a man who decides to change his life need never look beyond the wisdom of the ancients!
Or so I thought. Because my mind ended up becoming a confused mess. Consider these.
In my younger days I stayed away from my sweetheart. (“Absence makes the heart grow fonder.”) It backfired: she married another man. Too late, I realized that there’s also such a thing as out of sight, out of mind.
I then had an awesome opportunity come my way; I was hesitant. (“Look before you leap.”) But then some other bloke grabbed it before I could. (“The one who hesitates is lost.”)
My resolve to succeed still hadn’t broken, though. (“If at first you don’t succeed, keep trying again and again.”) My friends advised me against it, however, because you should never beat your head against a stone wall.
Oh well, I philosophized, I will be patient. (“Good things come to the chap who waits.”) Unfortunately, I learned too late that time and tide wait for no man.
Aw, never mind this becoming successful business, I thought; maybe I should learn a couple of new technologies (“you are never too old to learn”), not knowing that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks.
Humph! If I could not succeed or even learn anything new, I could at the very least be a helpful guy (“do unto others as you would have others do unto you”), not knowing that nice guys always finish last.
How about helping my wife in the kitchen? (“Many hands make light work.”) A guy just cannot go wrong with *that*. Horror of horrors! How could I have forgotten that too many cooks spoil the broth?
The wife consoled me and insisted that I ought to dress up well. (“Clothes make the man.”) I disagreed, however, when I learned that one should never judge a book by its cover.
Maybe I should try my hand at writing. But I ended up feeling lost; something I have always wondered about is that if the pen is mightier than the sword, shouldn’t my words speak louder than my actions, rather than the other way round?
Perhaps I shouldn’t be bothering so much about these contradictory aphorisms because (remember?) one should never cross the bridge until they come to it. But then is it also not true that we ought to never put off until tomorrow what can be done today?
If you agree with me, please like and share this post, because great minds think alike 🙂 Before doing that, however, I would ask you to keep in mind that fools seldom differ.
[© 2017 Najeeb Shaikh. All Rights Reserved.]Najeeb Shaikh is a veteran programmer and writer. He has been writing both code and prose for a living for well over two decades. Najeeb insists that this article should be read when you have a few minutes to kill and are in the mood for some idle prattle, and it should strictly be taken with a healthy dose of humor. It may not go down too well if any of these vital garnishes is missing.
