Aphorisms for Our Age

The wisdom of our ancestors should be cherished. Those ancient bags of bones earned their knowledge by suffering through eons of abhorrent hygiene, repulsive cuisine, and horrendous wifi. Thus we should totally preserve the sayings passed on down to us. But also, it might be time to tweak them. After all, our ancestors created these sayings in times of abhorrent hygiene, repulsive cuisine, and horrendous wifi. So I’ve taken it upon myself to honor their wisdom by updating it, and making it relevant to modern society. After all, nothing says respect thy elders like a complete wisdom makeover!

The longest journey begins with a single step…and then 9,999 more steps until you hit your daily goal.

There are many paths to the top of the mountain…so make sure you download a hiking app to avoid getting lost.

One generation plants the trees, another gets the shade…then another generation destroys the trees and the oceans, and another generation gets an apocalypse, so start that generation early on post-apocalyptic or dystopic content like The Hunger Games to prepare them.

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know…those who kind of know use Wikipedia.

Haste makes waste…but non-haste wastes time, and time is money, so step on it.

Even though you have ten thousand fields, you can eat but one measure of rice a day…unless you are the owner of the company that owns the fields and employs the workers at a super low wage. Then you can eat as many measures of rice as you damn well please.

Either do not begin or, having begun, do not give up…but if you do give up, take to social media and begin a targeted damage control campaign that absolves you by blaming others.

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back…then post the info in your Waze account to accrue more points and boost your ranking.

Silence the angry man with love. Silence the ill-natured man with kindness. Silence the miser with generosity. Silence the liar with truth…silence your phone at the movies.

To attain knowledge, add things everyday. To attain wisdom, remove things every day…to attain followers, post things everyday.

He who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever…but it’s probably better to be a fool forever, because there’s too many Instagram accounts that traffic in foolishness, and you don’t want to go viral.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be…if that fails, I become something else. If that too fails, I just keep becoming other things, because the possibilities these days are pretty infinite.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and he’ll eat forever…or at least until the rivers run out of fish, which might be soon-ish.

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned…so Tweet about it instead.

Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace…better than one word that brings peace is a pithy bumper sticker.

If you light a lamp for somebody, it will also brighten your path…instead consider a headlamp of at least 300 lumens, and your own path will be super bright without wasting unnecessary light on someone else.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving…because they’ve done their due diligence on Trip Advisor and are stopping off at some killer attractions along the way.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished…but it is accomplished really really slowly, so don’t hesitate to give nature a boost.

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly…what a butterfly calls the end, the rest of the world calls a windshield.

It has been said that a wise man knows one thing: that he knows nothing at all. As a wise man I would beg to differ. I know a lot, hence my ability to update the sayings of previously wise people throughout history. I understand that one day these sayings too will need to be updated, and made applicable to their time. I only ask that you cherish me as I have cherished my ancestors. A massive statue should suffice…

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash