If you were to spend a half hour, face-to-face quality time with me over the coffee I hope you would have bought me, you would scream, by the end of the session and before you stormed out, “Would you please stop with the sayings,” you would have yelled on your way out the door.
I’m a sayings junkie. I live my life by quotes. I research quotes on the Internet and I have a fabulous ability to remember them. If I haven’t peppered my conversation with you with at least five quotes, it’s as if we never talked at all.
Quotes are tailor made for people with short attention spans. But for me, they are also the shorthand of philosophers. (Readers under 40 are just now asking, “What the hell is shorthand?”)
Sayings encourage thought, dress wounds, light fires under asses, and generally, keep us interested in life.
The amazing thing about my association with quotes is every little saying I stumble on is instantly my favourite one. At present, I have about 1,200 favourite ones.
Here is my favourite saying today:
“The heart has its reason which reason cannot know.”
OMG! Those nine words say it all. Why do we want the things we want? After all my long life, it seems to me, we have those wants for some very good, if mysterious, reasons. Why was Wayne Gretzky trying to score goals in his living room by shooting a ball through his grandmother’s legs when he was three years old? Who knows? I am pretty sure one of the greatest-ever hockey players didn’t know. And neither did Grandma Gretzky.
During my almost seven decades, my heart has taken me to a lot more wonderful places than my mind has ever managed to.
©2016 Jim Hagarty
