Life Is What You Make It
Quotes and proverbs have been driving me mad for the last couple of days. For no apparent reason, it seems that well over half the people I follow on Twitter and other social networks have decided to suddenly begin spouting well-known phrases from… well, wherever. Pet hate. Grrr.
Maybe it’s because Christmas is coming. Maybe all my online friends are drunk at the same time. Maybe they’ve run out of things to say. Or maybe it’s an alien mind-control method, designed to remove any possibility of logical thought from the human species.
I thought you might like to see some of the gibberish I’ve noticed:
“Life is what you make it” - I understand the implied meaning here, but that’s just a blatant lie, now, isn’t it? Life isn’t what I make it at all, or I’d be ludicrously wealthy, more handsome than Brad Pitt, be able to voluntarily teleport myself to anywhere on the planet and I’d be living with both Winona Ryder and Christina Ricci. Life does whatever the hell it wants to do and anyone who seriously believes they have any measure of control over it is deluding themselves. Or on really interesting medication.
“‘Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved” – hello? How the hell would he know? He’s either loved and lost – and therefore cannot know what it’d be like never to have loved – or has never loved – and thus can’t know the loss. How in hell did this become so well-known and frequently-quoted? It’s like a pacifist exhorting the virtues of carpet-bombing. No sense at all.
“It’s always in the last place you look” – full marks for stating the obvious. Unless you have some kind of obscure mental condition that means you keep looking for something once you’ve found it, of course.
Perhaps it’s the after-effects of having worked in an American company where those horrific motivational posters were on the walls (and people actually believed them), but quotes really are the absolute dregs of content.
As W. Somerset Maugham said: “The ability to quote is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
May I quote you on that?
I was doing so well, too. No quotes on me, until tweeting earlier this evening, evidently falling prey to Bob Dylan’s “Gotta serve somebody” alien mind-control method. Oops, done it again
Where’s that MIB flashy-thing? Aw hey, gimme a break here, so few people have ever heard that superb track, let alone Bob Dylan enunciating his tortured whalesong sufficiently to allow deciphering into intelligible words/lyrics to quote.
Have you actually phoned Winona and Christina to see if they’re up for it yet?
Do, or do not. There is no try. ~Yoda’s scriptwriter.
Straight to hell for that one….
It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all
Good old Shakespeare, wot? I can see eye-to-eye on that one. However, I’m also convinced that love is chemical, addictive, and not necessarily exclusive. If my wife leaves me tomorrow, I’ll be sad and I’ll go through some intense withdrawal, but I think it’s something worth experiencing as well. Life is about pain and the absence of pain (Socrates said that the absence of pain was the same as pleasure). Bronte, Emily that is, said that life can be cherished without the aid of joy. For me that means that life isn’t just about being happy, it’s also about being sad. Without all the colors of those emotions, life wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.
Life is what you make it…
Well, that’s true to an extent. But I have an impression that you have interpreted it as ‘life is what you want it to be.’ A friend of mine was fond of saying that life happens while you were busy making other plans. If you sit around all day and vegetate, no matter how much you want a Pittesque physique, it’s not going to happen. Maybe your body type won’t allow for that to happen, but sitting around moaning about it isn’t going to help. Instead, you can do what is required for you to make the best of your body through physical activity, yoga, diet, Yoda, and whatever else is.
My life is in part what I have made of it by figuring out what I want and making a game plan to make it happen. I have succeeded far more than those who raised me thought I would. I haven’t reached the plateau, but I’m still kicking and working for it.
Anyways, just some thoughts. It’s good to question wisdom so that one can better understand it. But, I agree with the first two that you brought up. The third I hadn’t heard until now.
Michael: I’ve never been able to get their mobile numbers. Maybe Yoda has them. Tell me he won’t, no, mmmmm.
Steven: Tennyson, actually. I still think he’s talking crap: I know someone who’s never been in love, as far as she knows (or at least never had a relationship) and she’s MUCH better off than most of the others. Smart lady, and a very contented one. (And incidentally it’s a shame, ‘cos back when we were both teens I’d have killed to go out with her.)
I don’t actually want to look like Mr. Pitt (Brad or the ones who were Whigs), though I wouldn’t mind hanging out with some of the people he knows. His bank manager, for example.
The whole point was, as you say, to question these things but – much more than that – was just a rant because I hate quotes so much. They’re 90% bollocks (excuse the language) that people spout in an attempt to sound deep. Hello? You didn’t say it – someone clever did – and they were probably just saying it in an attempt to sound deeper than they really are.
Dear me, and I’m a Tennyson fan and even read “In Memoriam”, too. I believe that was written about his friend.
I can’t help but think if Juliet had heard that, though, maybe she wouldn’t have killed herself and neither would have Romeo. Here’s the alternative ending:
“Oh Romeo, you’re dead. Oh well, better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.”
“ggggnnnaaaa! But I’m not dead! I’m a zombie! Braaaainnnnssss!”
“It’s always in the last place you look.”
I love this obvious statement and use it a lot! But I usually say it marginally differently – “Why do I find it always in the last place I look?”
Actually, if you think about it, it isn’t necessarily in the last place you look. That happens to me frequently! If I give up looking for something (I have a houseful of stuff!), many times, I just don’t find it, so it’s NOT in the last place I look! The key is finding it.
How about “irregardless”? It’s a word – it’s in the (OED) dictionary! I like teasing people with that one.
And an expression that irritates me to no end (people getting their own back at me, irregardless, perhaps?) is “I could care less” when they really mean they COULDN’T care less.
Just some thoughts.
John B(mjbyyz).
091229-00:03EST
It’s been too long since I’ve popped in to say hello. Sorry about that. May I add my favorite bit of gibberish?
Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Anais Nin
This is my little mantra, recited a few times a day/whenever I need a boost of courage. Happy New Year!
“there’s only two things in life but I forget what they are” ~ John Hiatt
There ARE only two things in life, but I forget what they is! – John Burton