My love for the short and to-the-point adage comes from my grandmother. Known to favor sayings such as “The graveyard is full of folks that thought the world couldn’t get along without them,” Grandmother Brown had a big influence on my life as well as my love for words.
Late in 2019, a series of pithy proverbs — those bursts of truth in 20 words or so — debuted on the newsletter. After six months they came together in a post entitled More to Consider. * Five years later I’m still at it. Let’s look at I love the pithy proverb — Volume 9 to see what made it to the More to Consider segment over the past six months.
Pay attention
As I get older, I have come to appreciate those who pay attention to the wonder of life. Four pithy proverbs in recent months suggest this message is beginning to get through to me.
Attention is the beginning of devotion.
Mary Oliver
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
Simone Weil
Mindfulness brings concentration. Concentration brings insight. Insight liberates you from your ignorance, your anger, your craving.
Thich Nhat Hanh
Drive slower: It’s safer, less stressful and gives you time to look around.
Rick Juliusson
In a slightly different way, Pauli Murray speaks to our tendency to look everywhere except the place where we should be paying attention.
Elijah’s story tells us more than the image of a majestic God passing by the mountain in tempest, earthquake, and fire. It tells us that we often seek God in the wrong places.
Pauli Murray
The paradox of limitation
Oliver Burkeman’s paradox of limitation suggests that the more one tries to manage time with the goal of achieving a feeling of total control, the more stressful, empty, and frustrating life gets. But the more one confronts “the facts of finitude instead — and works with them, rather than against them — the more productive, meaningful, and joyful life becomes.”
Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.
13th century Persian poet, scholar, and Sufi mystic Rumi
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
Albus Dumbledore
A boundary is something you set that requires nothing of the other person.
Becky Kennedy
The duty of privilege is absolute integrity.
John O’Donohue
History doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme
I think about history a great deal in these troubled times. Historians say that history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme. These four quotes all seemed appropriate in tying past with present and future.
History shows us that when we come together with ferocious commitment to a shared goal we can be more powerful than institutions and governments … This is not a time to quit. It’s a time to fight.
Rebecca Solnit
If we’re going to continue to move forward as a nation we cannot allow concerns about discomfort to displace knowledge, truth or history.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson
A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.
Thomas Paine
I think of voting as a chess move, not a valentine.
Rebecca Solnit
When someone tells you who they are, believe them
Humans are forever giving people who don’t deserve it the benefit of the doubt. President U.S. Grant, writer Dorothy Sayer, and Governor J.B. Pritzker all have useful thoughts that build on Maya Angelou’s famous line about believing it when people tell you who they are.
The most confident critics are generally those who know the least about the matter.
Ulysses S. Grant
There’s nothing you can’t prove if your outlook is only sufficiently limited.
Dorothy L. Sayer
When someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society.
J.B. Pritzker
Experimentation is the key to success
Experimentation is the key to not just surviving but thriving — in our lives and in our societies. Brian Klaas encourages us to experiment with everything.
Evolution is cleverer than you are.
Leslie Orgel
If everything was perfect, you would never learn, you would never grow.
Beyoncé Knowles
Magic lies in challenging what seems impossible.
Carol Moseley Braun
Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.
Dr. Mae Jemison
Love is our responsibility as humans. Love is hard.
My wise friend Frank Wade recently shared thoughts on the story of the Magi. He noted that the implications are wide and deep . . . “The story speaks to interfaith issues between religions. Ours with the synagogue up the street, as well as the Sunni and Shite around the world. It colors immigration issues and foreign policy, patriotism and class distinctions, law and order on one hand, respect and cooperation on the other.”
Love, in other words, is our responsibility, but love is also very hard.
What makes the temptation of power so seemingly irresistible? Maybe it is that power offers an easy substitute for the hard task of love.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Be a fountain, not a drain.
Christine Clemens from “The Best Advice I Received this Year”
No blame. Be kind. Love everything.
Terrance Keenan
“Literature is a gym for your empathy muscle.”
Anthony Doerr
May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.
John O’Donohue
The kindest person in the room is often the smartest.
J.B. Pritzker
I’ll leave you with my personal pithy proverb, which is life rule #1:
Be grateful. Be thankful. Be compassionate. Every day.
More to come…
DJB
*To capture some of my favorite sayings I created a feature on More to Come that I labeled “More to Consider.” I update these quick bursts of truth every couple of weeks. After the initial More to Consider post pulling together the first group highlighted, I brought out Volume 2: A plethora of pithy proverbs followed with Volume 3: A profusion of pithy proverbs and Volume 4: A plentitude of pithy proverbs. I finally turned to the Super Bowl system (minus the pretentious Roman numerals) with I love the pithy proverb — Volume 5, Volume 6, Volume 7, and Volume 8. For the 10th volume, I’m going to highlight some personal favorites from the first nine editions.
Image from Pixabay
MORE TO COME... 
Pingback: Observations from . . . January 2024 | MORE TO COME...