“May you live in interesting times.”
That phrase has been often repeated as an ancient Chinese curse, but it turns out to not be anything of the sort. Reportedly, Sir Austen Chamberlain was the first to relay the so-called curse in a speech in 1936. As far as anyone has been able to determine, that is where the saying originated as there is no evidence of anything resembling the phrase anywhere in Chinese literature and/or folklore. The lesson here is that something isn’t necessarily a fact just because it has been repeated over and over again, nor just because someone says it is so. Considering what is going on in the U.S.A. right now (at the time of this writing it is the end of January, 2017), this lesson has never been more timely.
I’m not sure what more I can say here that I haven’t already said, and continue to say, on my personal Facebook page. One thing I have noticed is that it has all distracted me from creating, and that will not do. I won’t be burying my head in the sand nor will I be ignoring the seemingly ever-growing bad decisions by the man elected as the president of my country, but I will choose to mitigate that by doing what I can to create more art. My form of art is writing and podcasting and I am prioritizing in order to be able to create more of both.
More to come about what I am doing. All I can hope is that some of you will find some of what I do…interesting.
