about

All of the modern, invented proverbs, axioms and epigrams on this site were written by Randy Hasper — human being, friend, helper and occasional mediator of raw differences.

Why make up new proverbs, axioms and epigrams?

Because modern life is a firehose of information and sometimes we just want a simple, sweet drop of truth. I saw a hummingbird dip its food snagger in a red honeysuckle flower recently. Yum! One sip! Good!

By formal definition, the proverbs on this site aren’t proverbs in that they don’t have currency. They haven’t been repeated, used, passed on. They haven’t entered the popular lingo-sphere. But they are proverbial in structure and content. They give us short bursts of modern truth, of modern wisdom. They are thought proverbs; more thought packaged in less words, epigrammatic or axiomatic.

I ran into a couple who had just celebrated fifty years of marriage this week. They agreed that to do that, they had done some serious shutting up. Less is more, over the long haul.

Sometimes we want for small when buried in too much big. Yesterday after being social all day, my pajamas and my bed and my laptop were just right to help me restore. Simple beats complex, at the end of most days.

In the end, I went to sleep. We all do, always. Sleep is simply accepting the day. The act of going to bed each night is preparation for death, the moment when we give in to what was, with no more complicated attempts to change that.

Short wise stuff? We need it. It explains the world. It shapes the mundane into the sublime.

Think elegant explanations, like Kepler’s elliptical orbit of the planets; the beauty is often in the simplicity.

And so we love a theory, and we love a proverb. Short truth delights by telling all with some. It’s wisdom literature.

Wisdom literature is axiomatic, classic, lasting, often ancient, but it can also be new, fresh and modern. Old or young, it is pithy, punchy, with a pinch of sarcasm, wit and humor tossed in for seasoning. It skewers us, in a way we like, stabbing sense into our psyches.

Hope you enjoy getting skewered and maybe enlightened by what I’ve written for you, just a bit.

Randy

Note: None of the proverbs, epigrams or axioms on this blog may be reproduced in any form without the written permission of Randall C. Hasper