Confucion
So I’m eating some Pei Wei last night and I go for a fortune cookie; partly out of habit/tradition, partly because I was hoping for some cheap words of encouragement. I open the thing and, after quickly noting the Chinese characters for “gift” and my lucky lotto numbers, I find this proverb-“A great man never ignores the simplicity of a child.”
Please let my worst misgivings about human nature come to nothing
[/caption]Hmmmm, you know, sometimes the rays of clarity can’t break through the vague cloudbanks because there’s no sun to begin with. There’s only so much room to operate in the field of tentative statements, and “specificity” is a dirty word, but this was ridiculous. My mind immediately assumed the worst: great men recognize an opportunity when they see one? “Never give a sucker an even break?” No, this was one of those “when really, he’s teaching us” kind of things. There was just something about the way it was worded that I couldn’t let go of. Why bring “great men” into it? Why not just “never ignore the simplicity of a child?” Was an appeal being made here? Why “ignore?” It was probably just an odd translation, but it drove me up the wall, and to scour the internet to call bullshit on other faux pearls. You can find some downright inscrutable sayings in a reckless tour of Asian wisdom. “Add legs to the snake after you have finished drawing it.” Your guess is as good as mine. Since it’s a picture you drew you have already made it your own, so make it anything you want it to be? Here’s another “proverb”(trust me, it needs quotes) complete with translation, elucidation, and correction found on Wikipedia:
“yi ren chi bao, quan jia bu ji”
o Literally: If a single member of a family eats, the whole family will not feel hungry.
o Meaning: The whole family consists of only one person, usually referring to the one not yet married.
o Common Misunderstanding: If one person in the family is happy, the whole family is happy.
Morning Inspiration | Post-It Wisdom
Here’s a little something to get your Monday going. Maybe we’ll “get it” once we start preoccupying ourselves with the mundane. I know that these are lessons I have to relearn everyday.
[Why Advertising Sucks via Prostituted Thoughts]
Fast backward in time
