Aphorisms and Observations – Page 46

A Callable Loan

We who thrive get used to being alive, and forget we have our lives on loan, a loan that can be called on the spot without advance notice. Compare James 4:13-17 (NIV):

¹³Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” ¹⁴Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. ¹⁵Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” ¹⁶As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. ¹⁷If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.

He who is ever on the make will never have it made. He will never be a 'made man.' There is a time to strive, and a time to be. Is the universe trying to get somewhere? It already is everywhere. Are you any less cosmic? If you think you have a Maker, is he not a 'made man'? And aren't you a chip off the old block?

Let It Lapse

If a relationship has a troubled past, no future, and a present that is merely the transition from the one to the other — let it lapse.

Is the King Ever Captured?

The dignity of the king allows no such thing. He never leaves the board during the game. When the game is over, however, he goes into the same box with the lowly pawns. Which is to say: all earthly dignity is as naught before the tribunal of the Great Equalizer.

Water Seeks its Level

Complain if you like about the quality of your colleagues, but had they been better they might not have hired you. It may be that you have a job because of your and their mediocrity.

Possessor Possessed

What I own is mine, but what is mine makes me in some measure theirs.

Appreciate What You Have

Appreciate what you have while you have it. An actual shack is better than a remembered or merely imagined or expected or merely possible palace. Do not allow the present and actual good to suffer diminution by comparison to the modally and temporally and spatially elsewhere.

This is it. This is your life. Right here and right now. If it is good, appreciate it. If it needs improving, act right here and right now to improve it, but without failing to appreciate the good that is here and now yours.

When the Goddess Caissa Becomes the She-Devil Impecunia

We patzers can sport with Caissa and her charms without too much harm. It is the very strong players, who yet fall short of the highest level, who run the greatest risk. Chess sucks them in then leaves them high and dry. The goddess Caissa becomes the she-devil Impecunia.

Relations With Relatives

Our relations with our relatives are too often like the relations of Arabs and Israelis: too much past, no future. But with the Arabs and Israelis it is even worse: too much history, not enough geography.

Tweet This

He who tweets is a twit whose brain will soon be fit only to flit.

Anecdotage

The last stop for the old raconteur.

A Prudent Assumption

It is prudent to assume that what can be taken the wrong way will be.

When to Psychologize

You are free to psychologize your opponent when his position is demonstrably false or incoherent. If his reasons are worthless, then you are justified in exposing the motives that drive his commitments.

Twitter

A weapon of mass distraction.

Duty

My duty is my duty whether I am inclined to do it or not. Being inclined does not make it any less my duty; being disinclined does not make it any more.

Category: Aphorisms and Observations