Why Quotes are Misleading

Someone once said, 'Never waste your feelings on people who don't value them." 

The internet has a cult following for uplifting and heart-felt quotes. Hell I have a whole Facebook page dedicated to them HERE.

The problem with proverbs like the ones stated above (though they appear to be pithy and so full of brevity) is that they sometimes impact you strongly, and yet, when given a deeper thought, they do not sit right. They just sound right but don't feel 'real'.

The truth is, we would all love to stop thinking about people who have been removed from our lives, perhaps through death, perhaps through distance, perhaps something more complex. Perhaps we would like to stop thinking about people who are right there by our side, wishing, hoping they weren't, an abusive spouse, a two-faced friend, a horrible boss. Perhaps we would like to stop feeling a certain feeling because it is just all too painful.

Yet, we cannot.

We give power to our emotions, we feed them with over thinking, we fuel them due to lack of faith, and we let them overwhelm us even when we know, we just know all so well that no amount of frantic frenzy and no amount of pure abysmal grief will change anything.

Sometimes, we are bound in chains.

Hence the lovely and appealing proverbs that are shared, perhaps, more than anything else. A few more:



H.O.P.E.- Hold on, pain ends. It doesn't. But it gets better.

Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Perhaps, but there will be people whom we hate with a hate so pure and black that it taints our souls. We all have that one person we hate- or more.

Here's one that has really made the rounds on the internet and has become cliche:

' "It's impossible," said pride. "It's risky," said experience. "It's pointless," said reason. "Give it a try," said the heart." '

Clearly, the heart here is the hero, but really, is he not the fool? What if listening to the heart meant opening a window to all the hate, torture and abuse that one has moved on from? It makes no sense to listen to the heart. Pride is obviously a jerk, it's why the experience and reason both need to make the tough calls anyway.

I don't know what to make of beautiful sounding quotes anymore, there was a time when they got me through rough mornings, they helped me chin up, they even inspired hope. Their uplifting beat led me to dedicate a page to them. But I am left cynical.

Why, if someone really believed in them, would they not act on them.

Oh well- the ramblings of an over-thinker will drive you over the brink too.

Despite it all, I am a sucker for happy endings. I know, I can feel, that I will get mines before my breaths are finished, that what I wish for will soon come. I know what I am and with experience I am beginning to see the weaknesses in the most uplifting of proverbs, especially their knack to deceive.

But they are popular, they make people feel better, they build a bubble, make people stand on clouds for a while, and perhaps people do need such respite, for one gets tired, so very tired. And so I will continue to share nice, upbeat, pretty and oh so appealing quotes, just like I have been doing, going so far as to quote my own from time to time.