A proverb for the season

Every season has its rituals. Graduation season is no exception. Everyone is expected to hang some ornaments on the wisdom tree. Yes, ‘tis the season for platitudes, especially those of the inspirational variety.

I figured I’d get in the spirit of the season this time around. The challenge is to offer something that’s pragmatic and not decorative. I’ve pulled an old box of proverbs from the attic and I’ve been digging around for a good one. Hey, here’s a good one; in reality, it’s pragmatic, and in theory, it can lead to an inspirational outlook. So let’s hang it on the wisdom tree. It’s labeled Made in China because it is, in fact, a Chinese proverb:

“Disease enters the mouth, disaster comes out of the mouth.”

OK, you’re not going to hear that at a graduation speech. Like I said, it’s not decorative. But pragmatic? It might be the most pragmatic sentence I know of, especially when we consider the decades of consequences that accumulate after we’re no longer bright and shiny young graduates.

We humans are pretty good at putting all manner of stuff with our yappers, be it solid, liquid, or gaseous: sugar, salt, fat, chemicals, pills, booze, and various smokable materials. How many health woes are attributable to this? Outside of accidents or combat, I’d say that over half the people I know who have died early or who have been chronically ill can ultimately trace their woes to what was going into the mouth.

Most toxic stuff can be recognized for what it is; everyone makes their own decisions on that note and will answer for them eventually.

Paradoxically, it’s the innocuous stuff that can be the most insidious. The calorie-rich American diet is mighty savory, to me, anyway, but I don’t shed calories like I did in college. Telling myself “disease enters the mouth” is a good way to scold myself into not being too much of a pig. True, it might not keep me away from the burgers, but at least it’s fending off the fries, shakes and sodas.

Well, so much for the first part of the proverb. As for the second part, on the empirical side of the equation we all accumulate enough observations in life to reach our own conclusions; humanity always offers examples, be they on Saipan or elsewhere. And on the proverb side of things it would be easy to come up with dozens of related cautionary sayings. I’ll content myself with two here. From the West we’ve got “Loose lips sink ships.” And an old Chinese phrase says, tersely, “Knowers don’t talk, talkers don’t know.”

As for the proverb at hand, “Disease enters the mouth, disaster comes out of the mouth,” as blunt and cautionary as it sounds, it does lead to an inspiring picture. It’s actually consistent with a very elegant notion. The notion is that sometimes the most profitable approach is to take less action, not more action. In other words, less is more.

We’re all faced with a world that’s driven by the “more, more, more” mentality. You can run yourself ragged trying to keep up with all the action. As important as action is, though, non-action can be a strategic asset of the highest order. I don’t think abstraction illustrates the point well, but some real-world situations can do a good job of it.

For example, I saw some judo matches when I was a kid. It was instructive to see how the experts moved around far less than the hacks did. In fact, the experts used the hacks’ own motion and momentum against them. Although I didn’t know anything about judo, I did sense there was something in the dynamic that had broader applications, which is surely why those matches have stuck in my memory for decades now. Indeed, it seems that every passing day is merely another episode of seeing the same dynamic in various contexts.

Likewise, if you’ve ever seen good swimmers and bad swimmers, you’ll note that a good swimmer can float with no apparent movement or action at all. A bad one, by contrast, will splash and flail and stir up a storm, using more and more action to counteract the previous action. There’s a word for this. It’s called “drowning.”

Getting back into the spirit of graduation season, as graduates contemplate all the great things they’ll do, it can be pointed out that doing difficult things isn’t all struggle and toil. What we do can be a lot more effective when we’re mindful of what we don’t do, too.

I don’t think we have that wisdom wired into us innately. We just have to hope that we get to figure it out before we mess anything up. In the meantime, I’ll put away my box of proverbs.