Wisdom

When collective thought rings true

There’s an Irish proverb for this. / AI generated

I’m a fan of collective nouns. What Poe fan doesn’t love a murder of crows? Don’t you think an exaltation of larks is elegantly descriptive while a business of ferrets needs further explanation? (Do they carry briefcases and wear fedoras? Are they into cryptocurrency?)

Right now there is a collective wealth of wisdom on how we should all be feeling, reacting, or moving forward. Thanks to social media, imparters of their wisdom yammer at us 24/7. What should we embrace, what should we ignore?

I prefer look to wisdom of the past. For example, my Great Aunt Dorothy left us this wisdom on how to make the perfect salad dressing:

Be extravagant with the oil and miserly with the vinegar.

Perfection. It’s a simple bit of wisdom, but oh how it makes lettuce sing! (Foodies, please note she also wasn’t shy with the salt and used red wine vinegar.)

Proverbs are another good source of wisdom. While studying Gaeilge, the Irish language, I learned these seanfhocail that are useful today:

Ní neart go cur le chéile.
There is no strength without unity.

Ní dhéanfadh an saol capall ráis d’asal.
All the world cannot make a racehorse out of an ass.

Maireann na daoine ar scáil a chéile.
Together we live in each other’s shadow.

And my favorite:

Bionn gach duine lách go dtéann bó ina gharraí.
Everyone is sociable until a cow invades his garden.

If you go back further in history, you can find more gems by the Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero:

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief.

Here’s some deep wisdom from Cicero for the present moment:

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:
Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

Mark Twain offered pithy wisdom:

Travel is fatal to prejudice.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

I think this quote from Marie Curie is timely:

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Of course we are all too familiar with that great Maya Angelou quote:

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

Mm hmm. So wise!