Month: April 2022

Conventional wisdom, adages, proverbs — there’s not a lot of difference in amongst the lot of them. Wisdom becomes known as wise because of the myriad confirmations of the people who experience it for themselves. — Adages are a bit of wisdom that has settled in to a society. An adage becomes a proverb when people in that society use them to try and teach, or to slip you a little unwanted advice.

Today’s proverb is actually more of an adage, but its wisdom is a bit of hard-won truth from the people of Rwanda that I think we can all acknowledge. It was collected years ago by an NPR reporter who was trying to run down the provenance of Hilary Clinton’s “It takes a village to raise a child.” (I do love people’s tendency to say things are “African proverbs.” People in politics throw them out all the time… and I really wish they would not.) Anyway, unlike that proverb, this one has a real language, country AND continent where it’s familiar, and it was recorded by Timothy Longman, who was at the time the director of the African Studies Center at Boston University:

Never trust the drummer. They make a song sound amazing, but if you listen, the rhythm never changes…

I always thought Polonius was kind of brilliant. This is what happens when you read Shakespeare when you’re on your own, a very young person who is just wading through the words with no idea of context, I guess. But, his whole piece in Act 1, Scene 3 of the Scottish Play where he winds up with “this above all, to thine own self be true,” was poetic gold to me at, oh, thirteen or fourteen. I memorized that entire speech… only to discover much later that it was a bit of comedy, a managing parent holding up the works with a last bit of needless advice as a grown man tries to leave. That speech, so larded with helpful nuggets of advice, comes across a bit differently now, but I still rather like “Give every man thy ear but few thy voice.” We hear similar advice in “Keep your eyes wide and your mouth shut.” Can’t argue with that, really.

I’m a bit disappointed that I couldn’t find any other provenance for our proverb but the generic “Hindustani” label – no idea who said it, but I hope it’s common enough for someone to recognize.

P.S. – Isn’t it a nice bonus that I can inflict my terrible doodles on you this month as well? I think so. Happy Tuesday.

I spent years largely hostile towards Ben Franklin – mainly because of some enterprising elementary teacher’s great idea to combine history and civics and penmanship – we had to copy phrases out of Poor Richard’s Almanac. I spent a lot of time being irritated with his attempts at wit, and at the aphorisms and proverbs that teachers said all the time. My sixth grade teacher repeated this particular phrase so often that I wince when I hear it. Yes, yes, we should have gone to be early and gotten things done on time. Yes, that would have been wiser than the scattered eleven-year-old style of homework we did. Yes, thank you we get it.

I was actually a little relieved when I learned it wasn’t a quote from ol’ Ben. From the UK Phrase Finder:

The earliest record of a proverb that approximates to our current version that I can find in print is in The Book of St. Albans, printed in 1486:

As the olde englysshe prouerbe sayth in this wyse. Who soo woll ryse erly shall be holy helthy & zely.

Note: the Middle English word zely comes down to us now as ‘silly’. This has numerous meanings, commonly ‘foolish’. The 1486 meaning was ‘auspicious; fortunate’. So ‘holy helthy & zely’ meant ‘wise, healthy and fortunate’, which isn’t so far from ‘healthy, wealthy and wise’.

I think the most tone-deaf thing about some proverbs and aphorisms is that they’re aimed at everyone, but they’re not meant for everyone. Not everyone could go to bed early and rise early. Some people burned the midnight oil every night to get what they had – to keep it, and to have it to pass on.

Regardless, while Benjamin Franklin’s pseudonymous journal includes the familiar American form of this quote in the 1735 edition, it was first found in book form in Britain – much, much earlier.

I’m not a good traveler, granted. Even before the pandemic, airports, waiting rooms crowded with endless humanity waiting to board airplanes, and sealed metal tubes stuffed with strapped in passengers hurtling through space while recycling everyone’s breath – none of those made me very comfortable. I’m a bad traveler, but I am longing to go – somewhere. My small house is a blessing, with its bit of yard and flowers (yes you, calendulas, even though you’re ones who are volunteering and choking out everything else I planted), but like so many others, I am sick to death of it. I’ve stayed home since… 2018, really, when my autoimmune disorder popped up, and then got a lot more serious about it with everyone else in 2020. Thank goodness it’s getting warm enough to go outside and (battle the constant, vile, and wheeze-producing pollen and) wander for a while.

Is a change really as good as a rest? I guess we’ll all find out soon…