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I've been getting maximum mileage out of maxims
© by Mike Keenan 
Way back in 100 BC, a gentleman named Publilius Syrus said, "While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity." This is a nice way of suggesting that when opportunity knocks, we should quickly open the door. Publilius made his statement in what he then called his "Maxims." According to my dictionary, a maxim is "an established principle or proposition; a condensed proposition of important practical truth; an axiom of practical wisdom; an adage; a proverb; an aphorism." So a maxim is weighty like mother's advice to wait a minimum of one hour after eating before one goes swimming.
I enjoy maxims for they represent life's great truths. Whenever yearbooks are published, students ask friends to write something appropriate beside their picture, and this inevitably creates opportunities for maxims. Look at your dusty yearbooks and you will discover these oblique "truths." Your best buddy in grade nine, after completing five arduous years of learning Ontario's curriculum, designed to create better citizens, sums up his or her insights with, "There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more." Maxims tend to reflect values and you immediately remember that your best buddy was a carpe diem sort of person, always ready for a good time, and that's why you considered him/her your best buddy. Another might have written, "If it turns out that there is a God, I don't believe that he is evil. The worst that can be said is that he's an underachiever." Often, at the end of a school year, there will be references to God. Some will thank God that they got through the year. Others, not so fortunate, will undermine God as with the latter quote. Once, a friend wrote this on my yearbook: "I am at two with nature." It was his amusing way of mocking my flirtation with Zen Buddhism. In Zen, you are encouraged to merge with everything around you such that you become magically encapsulated in a universal sameness that provides peace and security in the same fashion that your teddy bear made you feel good each night when loving parents took you to bed. "I failed to make the chess team because of my height." I like this statement because it reflects the clever creative fashion people enjoy in employing unique coping devices. Coping devices are strategies used to help us avoid anxiety and despair, for example, when contemplating mortality. You think about your life and what you failed to accomplish and how well others fared in comparison in accomplishments during their lifetime and you become dispirited unless you have adapted these great coping devices. For example, I'm eternally grateful that even though I was a pretty decent hockey player, I never made the Toronto Maple Leafs because I don't think that I could take the constant embarrassment and ridicule. See how great coping devices are! They remove all the pressure. You get cut from the chess team not because you are stupid, but because they have imposed some dumb rule about height, and what can you do about that except slouch for the rest of your life. My final maxim (all borrowed from Woody Allen) is "If you don't fail now and again, it's a sign you're playing it safe." Such a lovely way to empower failure. After all, we are admonished in church that we are all miscreants and sinners, that we are wretches and unworthy and much worse so it's only natural that we hedge our bets. When you watch golfers during important matches, it's fun to examine the way that they putt. Many miss by not hitting the golf ball hard enough. They have no real chance of sinking the putt. A few miss long. They are aggressive. They have a chance. They are into carpe diem. Yes, both ultimately miss, but in their own distinct ways. Golfers summarize this scenario with the pithy phrase, "Never up, never in," and I think that Publilius Syrus might heartily agree. |
