They can make you feel bad in retrospect either way. "Look before you leap," but also "He who hesitates is lost." Faint heart never won the fair" contrasts with "Give it up, dude. She's just not that into you."
It all looks so wise in hindsight. The chorus of Kenny Rogers's "The Gambler" - I have had people* assure me that this was an important lesson they learned in life, that they hadn't realised when they were younger. "You've got to know when to hold 'em...Know when to fold 'em..." Well sure, if you knew the answers in advance, the test is much easier, in cards or in anything else. What does that give you going forward? I suppose there is something to teaching the young folding your hand, walking away, and even running away can be respectable responses sometimes, because the young tend not to know that. But they are going to learn that just from their biology slowing down, without any old sayings or songs.
It's just fun to sing, to be a little world-weary and pretend you have gained great wisdom. I do it all the time.
It's like listening to fans or even baseball managers bemoan "Well, with a few more timely hits we could really get something going here." Yep, that's right. If your whole team could hit .400 with a little power in clutch situations, your won-lost record would probably improve. So how are you going to do that?
*Okay, people working the overnight shift, so maybe I should be applying a discount here.
3 comments:
Someone has probably assembled a book of conflicting folk sayings. "Fortes Fortuna Juvat," but also, "Discretion is the better part of valor."
Probably we are all guilty of picking as a motto the one that favors our natural inclinations, and finding the alternative one -- though just as warranted by history -- a little embarrassing. Perhaps we should consider embracing the alternative view; or, perhaps, it's fine that we do this because society includes enough of us on each side to capture the goods of a full-throated embrace of each of the horns of the dilemma. The losing side only loses today; they might be right next time, and there will be some who feel as they do around to play it that way.
"[A]dvice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill." -- Gildor Inglorion, The Fellowship of the Ring
Yeah, Korora, i still haven't learned that lesson yet.
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