Archive for May 4th, 2010

May 4th, 2010 One-liners to live by

Did you happen to catch Conan O’brien on 60 minutes last Sunday? You’re not missing anything. He admitted that he believes that: “Everything happens for a reason.” Really?

I suppose some people would nod in agreement. I’m not one of them. That one-liner has never appealed to me. It smacks of desperation. It smells like human spirit gone sour, now needing a catch-all phrase to unpack its guilty burden. So why don’t we just say: “I can’t make sense of this so I’m just going to imagine a force greater than myself has access to an infinite wisdom that ultimately will act in my favor. So there!” After all, isn’t that what it really means?

I’ll have none of it. I prefer pith that is a little harder to divine. I go for bold mystery and audacious assertion instead. Try these on for size:

Failure is impossible!

Or another favorite:

Do not fear mistakes – there are none.

Who needs to understand a thing? Armed with these verbal shields I can leap tall buildings in a single bound, walk through walls, and basically achieve anything to which I put my mind. Who can so sheepishly waste time feeling disappointed in the absence of failure and mistakes?

If I need a one-liner to live by these do me just fine, thank you very much.