Aging Capriciously

Why twelve you may ask?  Probably because I am tired of lists of ten.  Or perhaps because there are twelve eggs in a dozen.  In any case, here is my list of one dozen thoughts that I believe will help you to live a happier and healthier life.  If you find that any of these ideas are not useful, please send your complaints to Dr. John Persico Jr. and I will give you a full refund for any problems you have incurred by adopting these ideas.  That will be right after Trump pays off all the debts he now owes.  😊

1. The Greeks had it right with the Golden Mean; “All Things in Moderation.”   Fanaticism and extremism in any thing will probably make you miserable and unhealthy.

2. Question all assumptions. Remember, assume makes an “ass out of you and me.”  There is a good reason for not assuming things.  Assumptions are the enemy of logic and fact finding. 

3. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. This is a very old thought, but it rings true more often than not.  The phrase was first printed in 1666 in “Piazza universale di proverbi Italiani”, or, A common place of Italian proverbs and proverbial phrases by Giovanni Torriano.

4. Watch your money as though you are going to live forever but live each day as though it were your last. Here the advice is to be frugal when it comes to spending and saving money but somewhat profligate when it comes to living.  I do not think this means that you should go bungee jumping off of Mount Everest but living each day fully is in accord with many of the messages we receive from the Bhagavad Gita, the Tao Te Ching, the Bible, and other wise books. (See my list at the end of this blog)

5. When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Not a terribly profound sounding piece of advice, but very difficult to implement.  When adversity strikes as it will to all of us, do you fall to pieces, or can you see the silver lining in every cloud?  Can you turn adversity into something positive and life affirming?  This bit of advice may just help to keep you optimistic and positive about life until you come to your final day.

6. This piece of advice comes from my father who probably never read Edgar Allen Poe. I received both good advice from him and bad advice.  This is one message that I never forgot and in this day of misinformation, lies and disinformation, it is a very valuable thought.  He told me “John, believe nothing of what you hear and half of what you see.”   I use this thought to help me check out what people tell me and what I read.  I do not assume they are right or wrong.  I simply look for corroboration and supporting evidence before I accept anything as true or false.  In terms of seeing and believing, cognitive science has proven that “believing is more likely to govern what we see than the opposite thought that “seeing is believing”.  Eyewitnesses are seldom reliable and often report wildly different versions of the same event.

7. Love is the most important thing in the world. By this I do not mean passion.  Othello in Shakespeare’s play said, “I am one who loved not wisely but too well”.  People today use the word love to apply to everything from their dog to their cellphones.  Loving wisely applies to how we treat others.  It has nothing to do with things or events or what we own.  Jesus made love for others one of his two most important commandments.  Everything great in the universe begins and ends with love.  Love is the most precious thing in the world, but it cannot be put in a bottle.  Love is spread by compassion, mercy, joy, and happiness but consumed and destroyed by jealousy, envy, hatred, and greed.

8. Never say never or at least never say it too often. The older I get, the less absolutes I find in the world.  Absolutes create a paradox.  Never say never contradicts itself.  We must learn to live with paradoxes for though they may sound contradictory, and they are, they can still teach us something.  For instance, light has found to be both wave and particle.  How can this be?  See (25 Fascinating Paradox Examples.)  By the way, this statement teaches me to be careful when I say that I will never do something, or something can never happen.  Why constrain our lives by having too many “Nevers” in them?

9. The more you study something, the more complex it gets. My advisor in graduate school gave me this bit of wisdom.  I have also found that the older I get, the less I know.  I think this finding relates to the first thought.  We start out thinking about something and assuming it is very simple.  As we learn more about it, we find that it is much more complicated than we first thought.  The older we get the more things that this applies to.  Thus, the older I get, the less I know.

10. Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.  This bit of wisdom comes from an early nineteenth century Scottish author, Sir Walter Scott, a best-selling writer of novels, plays, and poems.  The quote is from Scott’s epic poem, “Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field.”  A man pursues a complicated plot to attain the love of a rich woman.  He is unsuccessful.  This bit of advice can help lead us to the value of directness and honesty in our relations with others.  Any other path will usually lead us down a dark road that ends in despair.

11. Judge not others lest yea be judged yourself. It is not easy to live by this admonition.  Jesus himself was guilty of violating his own precept.  He judged the Pharisees and called them hypocrites and vipers.  In general, we are best lived by not judging others.  We will be happier contending with our own lives which will keep us pretty busy.  However, there are times when we must judge others.  For those times I offer the following three rules.

• Judge frugally. Don’t be hasty to judge anyone
• First look for other options to summary judgements
• Always be open to other possibilities and that your initial judgement may be found wrong

12.  Do unto others as THEY would have done unto them.  The traditional “Golden” rule says to do as You would have done unto you.  This is good advice except that it ignores the fact that THEY are not You.  It is much better to use what some have called the “Platinum” rule and do unto others as THEY would want to be done to them and not You.  In practice, I try to keep both rules in mind

I hope you find these ideas useful.  You should also look at the list of “Wisdom” books that follows and see how many of the 100 you have read.  I suspect none of us will have read all of them, but you should have read at least some of them.  Another thought I learned in business was not to reinvent the wheel.  There is no reason to create your own wisdom when there is so much great distilled wisdom already out there.

These books were identified as the best wisdom books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings

100 Best Wisdom Books of All Time

If you have any suggestions for other wisdom books or wise thoughts that you would like to share, please post them in my comments section.