A Mild Voice of Reason

Gillikinisms

Posted on 21 September 2008

It’s been said that brevity is the soul of wit.  Perhaps that’s true, and perhaps its just a nod to short attention spans.  Regardless, there’s something to be said about the value of a well-placed aphorism.  Here are some of my own.

1. The rhetorical volume of one’s opinion is inversely proportional to the wisdom contained therein.
2. If given the opportunity, people will disappoint you.  Forgive them anyway.
3. Because most are incapable of seeing the world that lies hidden beyond their ideological blinders, genuine and respectful discourse on politics, religion and ethics is difficult. Approach those subjects with care.
4. Most people cling to the unhappiness and misfortune they know, instead of risking the unknown in pursuit of something better.
5. Few disagreements are so profound, nor many crises so pressing, that a well-formed initial response cannot wait until the next day.  Sleep often brings a perspective that lies beyond the grasp of logic.
6. The pursuit of wisdom and self-understanding is taken seriously by only a rare few.  Your life will be immeasurably happier if you associate mostly with them.
7. Although it’s undeniably true that the unexamined life isn’t worth living, it’s also undeniably true that a life untouched by clear purpose and major goals isn’t worth much, either.  Introspection without action is worse than useless — it’s inherently self-destructive.
8. If you’re not comfortable in your own skin, you’ll never be confident in your dealings with others.  You cannot engage another respectfully as an equal if you cannot first love yourself without qualification.
9. Everyone believes in God, although some define him in peculiar terms — the environment, civil rights, Reason, family, money, sex.  Beware the fool who proselytizes his God yet fails to grasp the nuances of natural theology or comparative religion.
10. A person rises or falls according to his reputation for honesty and follow-through.  Take care to honor your commitments and always speak the truth, for trust betrayed has a cascading effect far worse than the momentary pain of keeping your integrity at a difficult time.
11. Set clear expectations in your dealings with others, but take care that the expectations of others do not curtail your own happiness.  Voluntary assent to a shared understanding is healthy, but grudging compliance with the unspoken demands of friends, family and community will crush your spirit.
12. Nurture the courage to be yourself even when those closest to you wish for you to be someone else.
13. Aversion to reasonable risk fertilizes the full flowering of mediocrity.
14. It is better to leave your heart vulnerable, and thereby to suffer more quickly and more deeply the pain and loss inflicted by others, than to be so calloused inside that your soul is numb to all but extremes.  Just as we need light and dark, hot and cold, to survive, so also do we need frequent doses of joy and anguish to truly thrive.
15. Save your anger for those offenses that are motivated out of genuine and premeditated maliciousness.  Why fly into a rage over a mere carelessness?
16. Commit with your whole heart, but not with all your resources.  Keep something in reserve at all times to provide comfort or security when needed.
17. Regret will leech memory’s color during one’s old age.
18. It is human nature to reject the good for want of the perfect: Nowhere does this tendency hold true more strongly than among 30-something single women seeking husbands.
19. Understand how your opponent will respond along each of the four dimensions of conflict — flight, fight, compromise, and freeze.
20. If your understanding of the facts fits too well with your deeply held preferences, then one or the other is deficient.
21. Civility is the only investment that charges no up-front cost yet pays handsome dividends.
22. Wisdom isn’t about finding the right answers — it’s about asking the right questions and knowing when to keep silent.
23. Appreciate those you love, while they are still around to know it.
24. Never be so convinced of your own correctness that you refuse to give full and fair treatment to the arguments and counsels of others.  Never be so proud that you cannot gracefully revise and extend your prior remarks and concede that you’ve been persuaded to a different position.
25. When you’re caught with your hand in the cookie jar, don’t lash out at the person who snuck up on you to catch you in the act.  Own up to your misdeeds and if you’re genuinely in the wrong, overlook the faults of those who judge you.
26. A person’s self-described self-image usually resembles his true self in the same way a funhouse mirror casts an accurate reflection of his external appearance.  Self-deception and wishful thinking are easy pass along in speech, even unconsciously, but the truth usually comes out in a person’s behavior.
27. Always be willing to divest yourself of negative influences — including friendships and routines that become inimical to your happiness and growth.
28. Master the sword — when to wield it, when to sheathe it and when to fall upon it.
29. People are naturally attracted to those who project confidence and demonstrate high social value, even when such demonstration is more fantasy than fact.  The illusion of confidence compensates for many social blemishes.
30. Everyone goes through times in their lives when everything changes.  Sometimes, loved ones won’t really understand it.  Don’t let their resistance limit your growth.
31. Just as your body needs exercise to stay strong, your mind needs new ideas to keep sharp and your heart needs genuine affection to remain warm.
32. Excellence is the best revenge.  Mere retaliation is for the unrefined; to savor the cold deliciousness of well-executed retribution, you must become conspicuously better than your target in ways that inflame his shame and envy and regret.
33. Never underestimate the power of the human heart to react to perceived slights with abject pettiness.
34. Accept or reject others for who they are and not for whom you wish, or fear, them to be.
35. Every event is open to myriad interpretations and re-tellings.  Take care that the story you tell isn’t merely your own, and be open to the possibility that the wickedness you see in others is, from their view, utterly benign.
36. Prosperity obscures a multitude of sins; conspicuous prosperity magnifies them.
37. No one is entitled to an opinion.  Opinions, being merely the conclusion to an elliptical argument, can be true or false, and are subject to the same laws of factual accuracy and logical consistency as any other formal argument.
38. Learn how to spot the cheap tin beneath the gilding.
39. Cultivate the strength of will to resist the beguilements of the socially aggressive, no matter how instinctive the urge to please them may be.
40. Even mediocrity, creatively leveraged, can become an asset.  Find one useful talent and take it beyond the ordinary.
41. There is great power in well-done ritual.
42. When your knowledge of complex subjects is limited to bumper-sticker sloganeering — shut up.
43. The smartest person in the room is the one smart enough not to flaunt it.
44. Experience puts meat on the bones of theory.
45. Fools put their trust in the blind luck that says, “Your day will come,” but you’ll never be dealt a royal flush unless you actually belly-up to the table in the first place.
46. Nice people finish mid-pack.
47. There is no greater crime against the human spirit than to crush a child’s dreams.
48. Avoid judging when simple evaluation will suffice.
49. Ethics without aesthetics is like physics without mathematics.
50. Most people prefer to excuse or ignore genuine moral evil than to confront it.
51. Good intentions are nice but irrelevant; a person can only be assessed on what he does, and not by what he planned to do.
52. Even the most trivial of events can set in motion a chain of causation that can touch the lives of many in deep and lasting ways.
53. Every relationship requires a shared understanding about its basis.  Take care that in all your relationships, this understanding is reflects truth rather than lip service to truth.
54. The line between righteous indignation and self-inflicted bitterness is so thin that most of us only see it in the rear-view mirror.
55. Power flows from the honorable pursuit of rational self-interest and not from egoism or altruism.
56. Life may well be pregnant with possibility but at some point, a man needs to give birth to a well-defined identity.
57. Suspension of disbelief works well for watching films, but if your life is overrun with dei ex machina, it might be time to check the script for continuity errors.
58. Most people cannot clearly articulate what their ideal mate should look like — especially those seekers who maintain detailed spec lists.
59. The difference between knowledge and wisdom is that while knowledge is written in the mind, wisdom is written in the heart.
60. Dreams, once dreamt, become the soul’s chief prosecutor.
61. It’s typically not the object of our thoughts or perceptions, but the process by which they form, that is significant.
62. Circumstance is rarely a valid excuse for inaction.
63. The value of a fine Scotch or quality cigar lies less in its commodity than in its culture. Sinking into a nice leather chair for 90 minutes with a dear friend, savoring a smoke and a drink and elevated conversation, may be the closest most men will get to a useful therapy session.
64. Quit finding reasons to avoid being happy.
65. People are generally less put-together than you’d think.
66. Our collective social skills have eroded so deeply in the Age of the Internet that even casual elevator chit-chat among strangers is likely to turn awkward.
67. The louder a young gay male protests that he’s really only interested in a relationship, the more likely it is that he’s stringing along five separate guys simultaneously, looking for which one has the highest hotness-to-sluttiness ratio.
68. Materialism lures us to invest our treasure in labels and fads that quickly fade, instead of cultivating experiences that last a lifetime.
69. Beware the person who keeps his options open; you cannot depend on him.
70. The view from the sidewalk is more intimate than the view from the driver’s-side window. Slow down and find alternate ways of seeing your everyday surroundings.
71. Wear funny non-hipster hats in public — it’s the ultimate assertion of self-worth against a conformist culture.
72. Take the time to watch a spider spin its web. You won’t look at nature the same way again.
73. Never burn bridges, for you cannot know what opportunities may pass you by because you pissed off the wrong future rainmaker.
74. Your family consists of all those who will come to your aid without complaint after a 3 a.m. phone call. All others, blood relation or not, are merely acquaintances.
75. Everyone requires Sabbath — whether it’s in a house of worship or a period of quiet rest and reflection.
76. No terminally ill person I’ve ever ministered to in the hospital ever said that he wished he had a better credit score. Don’t be the person who understands what’s really important only when there’s no time left to act on it.
77. Sometimes when your motivation weakens and you find excuses to avoid doing what you should, your subconscious is telling you something serious about an internal conflict that you must resolve if you’re to resume your progress.
78. Keeping your own counsel saves you from the inconvenience of announcing a different course to those who have already received an ample and probably unwelcome piece of your mind.
79. Avoid the beguilement of progressives and other fools who preach a gospel of radical relativism, for a person who accepts everything understands nothing.
80. Ethical disputes usually distill into one meta-question: Does the disputant favor duty, consequence, Scripture, nature or relationships as the object of highest priority?
81. Writers have the same inner masochism as marathon runners, but we look less attractive in spandex.
82. A right, a liberty and a freedom each has a different character that should be preserved lest our freedoms and liberties give way to rights that foster a dependence on our benevolent overlords in government.
83. You’ll be a better writer if you keep a journal — using a manual typewriter so your thoughts are focused before you commit them to paper.
84. Great leaders rarely make great managers, and vice versa, so pick a boss whose relative leader/manager mix will be least likely to make you go postal in the workplace.
85. When the people who say they love you nevertheless fall into a “me, first” relationship, odds are good the person loves the idea of you, rather than you as a distinct person.