Tag Archives: slings and arrows

Chagrin

Chagrin: (n) distress or embarrassment at having failed or been humiliated.

Life waits around, waiting for human beings to express disappointment so it can squash them like that bug you found in your tent during the
 campout.

Even though we contend that a certain amount of disappointment, embarrassment, disgust or sadness is predictable for certain occasions, those who indulge themselves in such a luxury often find that they are left out of the next flow of human activity.

You can be disappointed, but no one really cares.

It’s not because they’re uncaring–it’s because deep in their hearts, each one of us knows that disappointment and embarrassment are useless emotions which must be dispelled as quickly as possible, lest they explode and destroy our will to live.

So when we see this in other people, there is a small part of us that wants to be sympathetic and a huge part that wants to run away in terror.

So beware of the instinct to share your heart if that emotional revelation is filled with chagrin–because even though we all suffer slings and arrows, most of us have learned the wisdom of ducking.

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Adage

Words from Dic(tionary)

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Adage: (n) a proverb or short statement expressing a general truth: e.g. the old adage is “out of sight, out of mind.“

Perhaps a better adage would be, “If you’re out of your mind, we’d like you to be out of sight.

Of course, that’s not really an adage, is it? Just a piece of wisdom.

When I think of adage, I always think of “the boy who cried wolf.”

I remember hearing the story as a young fellow and it put a chill down my spine. I’m not sure why–maybe because it combined a boy, a wolf, and due to the boy’s lies and deceit, he ends up being chomped by the creature.

But today I am wondering if the adage ever prevented me from deceiving. It certainly didn’t stop me from embellishing. And God knows, it did nothing to inhibit my spoofing.

I guess I just think that if an adage doesn’t scare some sense into you, it’s just a story that no one would make into a movie because … you couldn’t get the funding.

Don’t get me wrong–I like adages. I wish that parables and cautionary tales still had the impact they once did. Or maybe they never did, but we all needed some tiny piece of ourselves to pass along, so we told these little fables to create connection. I’m not sure.

But the essence of “the boy who cried wolf” was that if you continue to try to get attention by lying to people about the seriousness of your condition, when your peril does arrive, people will be less likely to believe you and come to your aid.

Obviously, this particular adage has not yet landed in the spectrum of the thinking of the average politician. Newscasters would never be able to put together thirty minutes of copy if they weren’t trying to alarm us into believing that the wolf is at the door.

And what preacher would be able to hold the attention of a congregation without the flames of some hellfire and the sniff of some brimstone?

But human beings are a pretty intelligent lot. We are more intrigued with taking things to the limit than we are with limiting how we take things. So I think we can continue to tell “adages,” but whether they will be applied into everyday life is rather doubtful.

It’s not that we insist on suffering the slings and arrows of our own stupidity, it’s just that often stupidity seems very intelligent to us, and we fail to notice that the slings and arrows … are already shot in our direction.

Abuse

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Abuse: (n.) 1. to use something to bad effect or for a bad purpose. 2. to treat a person or an animal with cruelty or violence.

It was that second definition that stalled me–the words “cruelty” and “violence.”

It is so easy to go on a tirade against abuse and proclaim that such actions are dangerous, evil and dark. I have just learned over the years the futility of stumping against bad attitudes and horrible actions without looking for the specter of that same vice in myself.

Even though I would never put on a pair of army boots and stomp baby ducks for pleasure, nor would I strike a woman because she failed to fulfill my expectations, the seeds of cruelty and the hint of violence can still slip into my behavior and be justified by me just as easily as the wife-beater explains how he needed to slap her because she was being so stupid.

What is abuse?

You want my definition? Abuse is when we fail to deliver to people what they truly need, but insist that they accept what we have anyway.

There you go.

  • So I think politics can be abusive. It doesn’t provide the laws that enrich the lives of people or promote the common good, yet still insists that we go to the polls and vote as our American duty.
  • I think religion can be abusive. It preaches that we should be grateful for a heaven that will come at the end of our lives as we patiently accept the slings and arrows that bruise and beat us in the present.
  • I think corporations are abusive when they know they could make a better product for a few more pennies, but they refuse to sacrifice miniscule percentages points of profit margin.
  • And I think the entertainment industry is abusive when it continues to pound us with more violence and meaningless sexual content because it innocently profiles itself as a reflection of reality.

Abuse is tricky. It’s so easy to see when watching a television show, as a man strikes a woman in anger, but not so easy to see when a joke is told around a game of poker with five friends–to the degrading of the female of our species.

If I can’t help somebody, I shouldn’t make them put up with my inadequacy. If I do, it’s abusive.

My dear God, I need to work on that. How about you?