It's time to update the list of things I should have learned by now. Not because I've learned them, but because that best of teachers, experience, keeps trying to teach them to me. Often enough in vain.
"Experience keeps a dear school," as old Ben Franklin observed, "but fools will learn in no other." If at all. Maybe compiling a list of lessons still unlearned might help.
At the top of the list: Be careful. Slow down. If only to protect other drivers.
"Nothing can be more useful to a man than a determination not to be hurried."--Henry David Thoreau.
Don't waste a single day by failing to appreciate it, especially during another glorious Arkansas fall. Yet we resist the grace all around us. "All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful."--Flannery O'Connor.
Don't worry so much. Don't worry, period. Worrying is an attenuated form of atheism. Do your best and then let Somebody Else handle it.
"Step lightly; do not jar the inner harmonies."--Satchel Paige.
A man's never learned as much as he thinks he has. He also may have learned the wrong things. The truly wise may be those still capable of unlearning some things.
Life is just full of surprises. To quote a favorite philosopher of mine named Fats Waller: "One never knows, do one?"
Always show good will. If it is not reciprocated, nothing is lost. If it is, celebrate.
Contrary to Machiavelli, it is better to be loved than feared, at least in personal relations. Nations are different; they have interests, not friends.
"Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, and don't mess with Mister In-Between."--Johnny Mercer.
I've been taught what a good piece of writing should do. But as Dr. Johnson said, we need to be reminded more than taught. I just need to be reminded of what I've learned. Such as: "When you're sure you're right, forget caution." That's about the wisest thing a publisher ever told me. It ranks up there with something another publisher once told me: "The best editorials appeal to the community's own standards--while raising them." Which is a neat trick, but the only one really worth doing on an editorial page.
"The best editorials articulate what everyone knows but no one has ever said before."--William Allen White.
The real winner of any debate on the fleeting issues of the day, which all seem so important at the time, is the one who, win or lose, raises the level of public discourse.
There is no such thing as permanence in human affairs, especially politics. The only thing permanent, as the ancient Greeks knew, is flux. Yet after every landslide election, pundits proclaim a new era has begun. In 2008, Barack Obama ushered in a new coalition that would dominate American politics from then on. We can now see how long that lasted. Yet separate but equally confident experts now tell us we have entered a new period of Republican ascendancy. But the only thing that's happened is that the political pendulum has just swung the other way. As it should in a healthy two-party system.
Politics may be worth arguing about. But it is never worth losing a friend over. Well, almost never. The fervent Nazi or Communist, those twins under their outward opposition to each other, may be well worth losing. And even then you can never tell when even the worst of them may see the light. Whittaker Chambers was the managing editor of the Daily Worker and a Soviet espionage agent before he wrote the most powerful endorsement of freedom and faith in his time, aptly titled Witness. You can never tell who will one day bear witness.
Obey the rules. You'll sleep better. Imagine if everyone did.
What's the worst thing about television? It's not the trash, the inanity, the shout shows, the sex-with-violence, the vulgarity and idiocy, the escapism, or even the time wasted. It's the unspoken but all-permeating message that your own life isn't the one worth watching.
Savor the written word. Or the spoken one in real, human conversation. Don't settle for less than the best. Don't settle for television's trash talk when you could be conversing with the greatest minds across the ages thanks to the printed page.
Take a long walk on a quiet road. Wendell Berry said it: "There are no unsacred places; there are only sacred places and desecrated places."
"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!" That's Thoreau again.
The South will rise again, just not in the way we expected.
A capacity for surprise is the surest sign of a believer.
Don't be embarrassed to change your mind. No one should have to live with a bad decision.
Stop. The world is a conspiracy to keep us running instead of thinking. Or feeling.
And, oh yes, beware of old men handing out maxims.
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Paul Greenberg is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 11/19/2014