Yeah, That’s Good … But

Do you ever find yourself qualifying things? It was a time honored tradition in my family. Primarily on my mind are personal accomplishments. I can remember showing my dad a report card that listed an “A” in every subject. His comment was, “This is good. Now let’s see if you can do it again.” My little nine year old brain got the message of “that’s good … but not quite good enough … what about doing it again.” I wasn’t at all certain that I could. I’d sacrificed a lot of the things I really liked to achieve that and wasn’t sure I wanted to do that again for a maybe.

Do you pat yourself on the back enough? Not everyone around you is going to cry your praises and laud your accomplishments (sadly). Giving them a break, they are not always aware of them (humility is a virtue after all). So, really, there should be no shame in patting yourself on the back (quietly and in private, keeping in mind that humility is a virtue) and giving yourself credit for the things you do well, the achievements and progress you have made.

Knowing this, why do I qualify deeds with things like, “Well, it had to work out that way, didn’t it?” or “I couldn’t have done anything else.” I was complimented once (a long time ago now) at a horse show for riding right through a startled sideways bolt of my horse during a test and my only reply was “what else was I supposed to do?” Not very polite really because it put her (the judge) in an awkward position of either having to gratuitously compliment me further or discuss all the ways it could have gone so very wrong; she chose the latter. We were both depressed afterward. On another occasion I was complimented on a piece of jewelry I had made. I proceeded to explain that I had just put the parts together and that the beads on their own were quite beautiful. Argh! I am such a numb nut.

So I say, “Down with qualifiers.” Let that be the rallying cry for all of us that do not value our opinions, talents, and all the rest nearly enough. Of course, we shouldn’t let our new found self-esteem go to our heads because we might seem egotistical and then we would lose all our friends and be reduced to literally patting ourselves on the back. I’m hopeless.

Grasping at Straws

Have you ever wondered where that saying came from? It’s fairly obvious what we mean when we say it. Well, maybe not as much for today’s youth. If you are as old as me, then I’m sure you know well that blank stare that such utterances frequently elicit from young people. And how many people of my generation can even relate the basis for that saying anyway.

It came into my mind just now because I was attempting to be lighthearted and humorous with my previous thought (even though it can be a fairly serious topic) but feel that it fell completely flat. I had this picture in my head of me standing in a field with the wind vigorously blowing hay past me and my hands were out in front of me trying desperately to grab some of the straws as they flew past. It would make me laugh if I could take it less seriously.

As it turned out when I finally looked up the etymology of the saying, I was a little off the mark with my imagination. The full saying is “a drowning man will catch at straws” and is attributed to Sir Thomas Moore in 1534. It indicates an act of desperation. My take on it was that it meant an act of futility. Maybe I’m mixing up my metaphors. Did I actually mean looking for a needle in a haystack? At least they have straw in common. Well, okay, straw isn’t technically hay. There is another old saying, “Hay is for horses. Straw is cheaper.”

I did find this at word-detective.com:

“Grabbing at straws” (or “grasping,” today the more common form) comes from the very old proverb noted by Samuel Richardson in his novel Clarissa (1748): “A drowning man will catch at a straw, the proverb well says.”  The “straw” in this case refers to the sort of thin reeds that grow by the side of a river, which a drowning man being swept away by a fast current might desperately grasp in a futile attempt to save himself.  Thus “grasp at straws” has, since at least the 18th century, meant “to make a desperate and almost certainly futile effort to save oneself” (”Bob’s attempt to build a case that the contract was not valid because it contained a split infinitive was just grasping at straws”).  “Grasping at straws” is still very much in use in this sense, as by one source quoted by the Associated Press in a recent news story on the economy: “People have to pay the bills, so what we see is people kind of grasping at straws and taking anything that’s available.”

You did notice that futility was mentioned, didn’t you? Well the whole thing is that I am trying to be amusing and not succeeding. Back to the drawing board.

No Muse is bad News

Have you ever heard it said that all the really good painters or writers or the perpetrators of whatever creative endeavor you might choose were depressed most of the time, if not all of it? The idea has been tossed around a time or two and I’d like to think that as a result it’s way to frayed and worn out to be of any real use any more. But I wonder.

There are times when I am not feeling very good and I seem to come up with idea after idea for blog posts. Okay, they do tend to be introspective and probably not all that much fun for the reader. But I do try to pull a positive ending out of it all. Really, I do try. There are other times when I am feeling on top of the world and the words and ideas just flow out of me with little effort. Then there are times like right now, when I am just okay, or as close to okay as I get these days. At those times, the ideas are somewhere out in left field and I’m stuck in the dugout. Or maybe it is just that fall is short here and the colder weather is right around the corner and little Miss Muse has decided to go on strike for ski weather. I hope she gets frostbite.

Things I’ve Learned, or I’d like to Say I’ve Learned, Even if I Haven’t

It’s best when someone pays you a compliment to just say “thank you” and smile.

What you think you know is not always what you think you know.

Worrying about your inability to come up with an idea for a blog post will not help you to come up with an idea for a blog post.

Funny just happens. You can’t force it no matter how much you’d like to.

Images and quotes courtesy of Cameron-Brooks, Shutterstock, Wikipedia, The Clemmer Group and Google Play, respectively