My Facebook feed, like everyone else’s is filled with useless junk : photoshopped pictures of children with the most dreadful of deformities, chain letters with ominous threats of the worst outcomes if I don’t comply, questionnaires that let me know which Star Wars character I am most like or predict when and how I will die. But by far the most ubiquitous posts are the pithy maxims and proverbs attributed to Churchill or Einstein or the Chinese : if opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door, or, you treated me like an option so I left you like a choice. I mean c’mon.
As I have watched my hairline recede and my pubes go gray, I have wondered whether I too can come up with such words of wisdom. I am not a poet and am clumsy with prose so this stuff doesn’t come to me easily. In fact it doesn’t come to me at all. The other other day a family friend introduced me to his daughter who was planning on pursuing a degree in computer science and requested me to give her some advice. Now, having been in this field for more than twenty years, I should have had a better response than, “yeah, cool, awesomeness.”
What I have done with some consistency is to mangle up some well established idioms, like when I proclaimed in a team meeting that if we didn’t take corrective action, we’d have hell to pay when the shit hits the roof. Jason, a colleague and close friend, gently reminded me that the shit would need to hit the fan first. Or the time, when I wanted to line all the eggs in a row, and after a moment of confused silence, someone asked me if I meant ducks.
So, my resolution for this year, is to start saying wisdom kinda stuff. So when I walk into a room, people will all rise up and say, “listen up, wise man, coming.”
Gotta say, three days into this year, not much wisdom emanating from yours truly. The closest I have come is after I told Alia to eat her food with her right hand: “What’s this one for?” she asked, as she raised her left. “To clean your bum,” I responded.
Well you gotta start somewhere.
Happy New Year, everyone.