And I Quote…

By Natalie Lance

If you’re into social net­work­ing these days, no doubt you’ve been bom­barded with jokes and happy lit­tle inspi­ra­tional quotes. Quotes have become ingrained in our mem­ory; we don’t even know where they come from or how we know them, but we preach them like the gospel. Before you sigh affec­tion­ately and click “share,” why not take the time to pon­der what ideal that you are per­pet­u­at­ing? Read it again and ask your­self, “Is this really what I believe?”

A group of cats tout­ing the ben­e­fits of group hugs has got­ten 4,115 shares. Even a dig­i­tally pro­duced rain­bow with a sappy line about life’s ups and downs is well into the hun­dreds (And here I con­sider myself pop­u­lar when my sta­tus has more than three likes). I’d say that’s a lot of mind­less click­ing. That clever quote may roll off of your tongue nicely, and cer­tainly the water­fall, bunny or car­toon accom­pa­ny­ing it is sure to draw a smile from at least a few friends, but lately it seems that the over­flow of inspi­ra­tion out there is leav­ing the rest of us bit … well, uninspired.

In fact, some of this anony­mous wis­dom is not at all true or even help­ful. Think quotes are for­get­table and harm­less? In this world of post-it note romances and parenting-via-text, those charm­ing lit­tle tid­bits, like Soul-Searching for Dum­mies, have taken the place of ethics so maybe we should pay atten­tion to the mes­sage we’re spreading.

Look at the dam­age done to my own psy­che by a quote loosely thrown about, most often entirely with­out fram­ing per­spec­tive, warp­ing my per­sonal rights and prob­a­bly claim­ing count­less other vic­tims; “Love means never hav­ing to say you’re sorry.” That was on a mug my mother had when I was a lit­tle girl. I’d heard it a dozen times in sep­a­rate cir­cum­stances before I learned that it was taken from the movie Love Story. I did not under­stand that it was an expan­sion on bible coun­sel out­lin­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of uncon­di­tional love — that which does not allow for judg­ments or grudges when one is giv­ing their all. The trans­gres­sion is that most of the love we expe­ri­ence as mor­tal humans is not uncon­di­tional, but that fact does not ren­der it worth­less. Con­di­tional love sim­ply rec­og­nizes its own pro­tec­tive bound­aries. Real­is­ti­cally, we tend to look for a “right” to the wrongs done to us, and an apol­ogy can be the ban­dage that pro­tects the wound from infec­tion as it heals. That’s not the mes­sage I got, though. What I heard was that expect­ing an apol­ogy was like wait­ing for the repay­ment of a loan that you knew the per­son could not afford to pay back, demand­ing and unjust. I washed away many of these ‘debts’ with­out before real­iz­ing that love, in fact, means own­ing up to your own mis­takes and mak­ing a con­scious and con­sis­tent effort to be a bet­ter per­son. Out of its con­text, this par­tic­u­lar quote can be dev­as­tat­ing to one’s sub­con­scious view.

Another shin­ing faux-pearl of wis­dom is that old adage “Some­thing is bet­ter than noth­ing.” I hon­estly don’t know the ori­gin of this one, though I did some research that related it to sim­i­lar proverbs from var­i­ous cul­tures. There may be sit­u­a­tions were some­thing is indeed bet­ter than noth­ing – it would be bet­ter to have some food in your cup­boards that you didn’t care for than no food at all. A sweater would not warm you as well as a coat, but it’s bet­ter than noth­ing on your bare arms. How­ever, this is not a gen­eral prin­ci­ple to be applied as a broad spec­trum life phi­los­o­phy. Then it becomes a myth that keeps peo­ple in unhappy sit­u­a­tions. A hus­band who beats you is most cer­tainly not bet­ter than no hus­band at all. Beyond that, this belief can evolve into apa­thy because it assumes that “some­thing” and “noth­ing” as the only two avail­able options. For instance, I over­head a young clerk ref­er­ence this bit of faulty logic in an excuse to forego col­lege, “Yeah, well I don’t care. This job sucks, but it’s bet­ter than noth­ing.” There you go! Why try for “every­thing” if you think it unat­tain­able or don’t believe it exists at all? You can just take your con­so­la­tion prize and be sat­is­fied with it.

We need to take our stand! Which quotes are actu­ally worth shar­ing? Which mes­sages rep­re­sent our true beliefs and will accu­rately pass on that which we want to instill in oth­ers? Which philoso­phies will affect our future gen­er­a­tions in a pos­i­tive way? My rule of thumb is, if I can’t explain why this inspi­ra­tional mes­sage is of par­tic­u­lar value, it prob­a­bly isn’t.

Now … this col­umn will be posted to my news­feed, so make sure you share it. Do you need me to add a waterfall? 

Natalie Lance enjoys vol­un­teer­ing at the Mans­field Play­house. She is a mother of three and a mem­ber of the Mid-Ohio Writer’s Organization.

Posted by Guest 1 Columnist on Apr 26 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.