Meaningful philosophical ideas and ‘˜rules of the road’ for living and a handful of seminal ideas that can be expressed in expansive and detailed treatises. They can also be articulated in brief statements. Here is a brief collection of some guidelines for living and key notions that I have come to formulate and believe over the past 64 years of stumbling through life.
As both a therapist and as a human being, my ideas and beliefs about life are sometimes complex and sometimes admittedly over-simplified. The following notions are brief forms of long thoughts. I believe that most ar original and realize that some, perhaps more of them than I am aware, have been thought and written in these or in similar forms before.
Excepting the final quote from Hillel, they have been composed, as they are here, by me.
1. He who laughs last usually laughs alone.
2. If you can’t stand the heat, be cool.
3. If you want something to be different, you need to do something differently.
4. Behavior being determined by applying the ideas of obligation and blame is usually less healthy then using those of choices and consequences.
5. If we are truly mad in God’s image, She must have quite a sense of humor!
6. While not enough may be unsatisfactory, some is often better than none.
7. The trickle-down theory has greater relevance to the flow of effluence than it does to the flow of money..
8. ‘˜Tis better to have learned and forgotten than never to have known at all.
9. Gorging leads to either exploding or purging. Neither is a pretty sight.
10. No matter what elaborate mask arrogance wears, the ugliness is never completely concealed.
11. Awakening is the first page in each day’s book of potential.
12. Our most meaningful legacy is that which we live and model, not that which we leave behind.
13. Celebrity and Self are often oxymorons.
14. The wise man acknowledges that the woman is the wiser.
15. Whether physically or as metaphor, wearing shoes of the wrong size will injure the feet, twist the legs and, ultimately, distort the spine.
16. To believe and to know are two different things. I believe I know that.
17. Deliberate harm to a child is explainable but is never excusable.
18. He who sits, meditatively, by the gentle stream without ever approaching it is doomed to death by dehydration.
19. Beauty that is only skin deep is often misleading and always irrelevant.
Finally, from Hillel:
“That which is despicable to you, do not do to your fellow, this is the whole Torah, and the rest is commentary, go and learn it.”
