What is a proverb? Wikipedia defines a proverb as a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity.
I have always found proverbs as an astonishing source of entertainment. How can one sentence be profound and yet at the same time take me back to years bygone, making me imagine what infinitesimal insignificant incident would have triggered its origin. After all, all big things must start somewhere very small.
An idle mind is devils workshop.
Ever wondered where this proverb came from? I can, in all possibilities just imagine 3 scenarios.
One , the person in question might have benefited from the experience of others which, in this case could mean he/she stood in one corner and watched an idle mind get into mischief (probably had a good laugh on their account) and say "hmm poor fool..let me enlighten the world with what I gained out of his/her misfortune " . Now this makes one wonder what kind of mischief the idle mind could have gotten into (an endless array of possibilities) and how idle would the authors mind have been to actually observe this and go through the trouble of propagating it and whether we should actually acknowledge an adage from such a source whose state of mind for all you know could be the devils itself.
Second in this analysis could be someone who has been through it himself and wishes for the future to benefit from his experience, a classic case of parents telling their children what not to do after they themselves do it. What if the children were good and blindly followed the advice? A couple of generations down the line, the advice would become meaningless, a mere sentence with a long forgotten foundation. Goes against lesson 101 of - Thinking for yourself.
Third could be someone who is actually in that particular state of idleness of mind and is shocked at the relevance of that sentence and wants to desperately warn as many people as possible. And oh ya that same person could be (I emphasize on could be) writing blogs to get rid of all that is evil in her head.
15 comments:
Brilliant!! Great start!! Especially liked the line, "A couple of generations down the line, the advice would become meaningless, a mere sentence with a long forgotten foundation." Keep blogging :)
PS: What does kannamoochi pesum mean??
thnx grl :)
kannamoochi pesum means hide and seek speaks .. tats wat i am doing here - playing hide and seek with a lot of things and meanwhile a blog :)
u r nasha?? thot it was anusha!!!
u write well..gr8 work...keep writing
@anu - was our common lab name in coll :)
@puja - thnx :)
yaar i m pleasantly surprised...its written well
i wonder y such a late start!!!!
may be i inspired u 2 write one....:P
oye laddu...ob u were one of my motivators..inspiration even ;) ( chalo abhi khush? :P )
thnx :)
u have good blogging skills..
nice to see humour mixed up all along the blog. Btw, most of the bloggers fall into the third category only :)
ahh finally ur long awaited comment ;)
thnx man :)
Not that I know good stuff about writing blogs, and not with a mindset to criticise you, i thought i would comment again.
There was wikipedia's definition of a proverb... you could have included your definition of a proverb too...
"shocked at the relevance of that sentence"
Why did you get shocked by the proverb? what so devilish happened?
Funnily, A idle mind could just be commenting on blogs rather than writing them..
Lastly, Its easier to comment!! :)
@stigacup
firstly this particular idle mind did start off by just commenting but later felt that blogging in one place is better than commenting in many :)
my devilish thought are better kept to myself for nw ..mayb one day i ll write a post abt them too :)
Lastly, i see an idle mind at work here! :P
it really good!!
An idle mind is one thing. But devils workshop, not necessarily. If there is a situation where your mind does become "idle", there could thoughts that could come so brilliant, it could change the world.
Case in point: Archimedes tried hard to determine if the crown was gold or silver without damaging it, but, guess what, he couldn't with a mind that was anything but idle. It is when he relaxing in a tub, that an idea struck him. Some proverbs are just plain stupid. Case closed.
@rajeev
thnx :)
@pranay
Case reopened :) : proverbs aren't a universal thing. Their relevance/irrelevance is upto u to see. I do agree some are really stupid
Case closed :)
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