Reflections on Death, God, and Sunshine

A friend of mine, a software engineer, faced the death of two loved ones in a single month. It was a rough time. She told me this:

"I'd like to file a bug report. In fact, I'd like to switch to a competitor's universe."

That reminds me of one of my favorite Terry Pratchett quotes, in which he says that the presumed extant Supreme Being seems to be lacking a moral compass.

I once asked a Sufi teacher "Does God exist?" His reply: "yes, but bear in mind that he loves mosquitoes just as much as he loves you."

And lastly, this from my dental hygienist: "Life's not fair. But the sun's come out."

Grab Tight, Learn Lots

"But, on the other hand, Uncle Abner said that the person that had took a bull by the tail once had learnt sixty or seventy times as much as a person that hadn't, and said a person that started in to carry a cat home by the tail was gitting knowledge that was always going to be useful to him, and warn't ever going to grow dim or doubtful."

 -- from Tom Sawyer Abroad by Mark Twain, (aka Samuel Clemens, 1894)

And that, my friends, is what Mr. Twain actually wrote. Not "A man who grabs a cat by the tail learns something he never forgets" which, while more succinct, is not what the man said.

So there.

But does it really matter what he exactly said? I have fallen prey to the idea that an accurate and direct quote means more, but a moment's reflection shows that to be absurd; language is always evolving, so why shouldn't the wisdom built of it likewise evolve?

Hmm.

All right, then.  I'll try my hand at this.

"She who grabs a cat's tail tightly learns something she is unlikely to forget."

Or even:

"He who grabs an unwilling cat will remember the lesson."

Not bad. Now I think I'll go try it and see if it's true.

Quoting Me

So I'm surfing the google sea, there looking for things I've written but forgotten about, and I come across this lovely quote from the webpage of an old acquaintance that I swear I don't remember writing, but does sound surprisingly like me, and what do you know, it's not bad:

Basic Flying Rules: Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees, and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.

Sounds like me, all right.

And this one, thoughtfully collected for me by someone I simply don't remember:

Dedication is not measured in suffering-units.

Which sounds very much like me. Flying, suffering - am I an expert on these things because I'm quotable? Sure, why not.