Old Sayings That Are Full Of Cr@P

How many times have you heard someone say "You can't judge a book by it's cover?" Sayings like this have a purpose. They are supposed to take a literal statement that everyone is familiar with, and allow you to apply it metaphorically to other more difficult to understand situations. Usually, this particular statement is used to clarify that you cannot judge other people simply by appearances. Judging other people is complicated business, so apparently by applying a simple thing like the process of judging a book by it's cover, it helps us make better sense out of the complicated process of judging other people.

Have you ever bought a book? Let's say you wanted to get something that's kind of Sci-Fi, futuristic, dealing with robots. You walk up to a shelf, see a book sitting there, and it has a nice photograph of a little girl sitting in a field of daisies. Is this your book? Absolutely not. Why? The cover. I guarantee you that publishers adhere to very strict principles about how best to reflect a book's content and to make that book appeal to a specific kind of reader. Why, then, are they spending a massive amount of time and money on doing this if it does not matter?

If you really can't judge a book by it's cover, why on earth did anyone think this would make a convincing metaphor for judging other people? I think it kind of sends the wrong message, ya know?

Here's another one. "Money can't buy you happiness." What are we to learn from this? That rich people are miserable from the weight of all that cash. I think what it should say is "money won't necessarily buy you happiness, but it's probably going to help avoid a lot of misery." If money didn't help to improve the human condition, why do charities want us to give it to them? Really. Think about that. OBVIOUSLY money is a good thing. Just as "guns don't kill people, people kill people," I think that "money doesn't corrupt people, greed for money corrupts people." Here's where that other old saying of "Everything in moderation" earns it's stripes...it's not an old saying that's full of cr@p. I hear a lot of lottery winners say they wish they had never won the big powerball...but I think they are just lacking money management skills. I think I would manage just nicely, thank you very much. Am I being greedy? No, just wishing to have the resources to live my life comfortably and to help others in need any time I want to. That would be ideal.

One more. "Never put off until tomorrow that which you can accomplish today." Well, I could go into a lot of detail here, but I'll come back tomorrow to finish this blog post then.