imPROVERBisation

in which i share some proverbs, respond to some proverbs, and come up with my own new proverbs!

dear friends, family, fans, folks,

i’m grateful that you’re here.
thank you for being who and where and what and when and why you are.
and now, for some fun jokes and thoughts and ideas about proverbs.

A) a swedish proverb about being pro-verb, specifically the verb “to share”:

"shared joy is a double joy; shared sorrow is half a sorrow"
-- a swedish proverb
that brings me joy
so i share it with you
to double the joy
and encourage you
to share with others
to double THAT joy
UNLESS it makes you sad
in which case i encourage you
to share so that the sorrow is halved

this truly does bring me a lot of joy, in concept and in application. and i really do like that if it causes anyone any suffering, if they share that suffering with others, in the form of complaining even, i bet it would make a person feel better. e.g. “can you believe this guy keeps talking about doubling joy so much? it really gets to me.” “i know, i feel the same way.” and a joyful communion arises!

B) proverb and response:

"the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
the second best time is now."
— chinese proverb (confucius possibly?)

"what about nineteen years?"
— american doofus, me (confused definitely)

the best time to make this joke was before anyone else made it.

i posted a version of this joke today and then checked to see if any other jokes like it existed, only to find that i myself had posted a very similar joke about six years ago. so, i’m closer to the best than i remembered.

also, so many trees were planted even LONGER ago than twenty years (i imagine), so those ancient tree-planters must have been even BETTER than the best. the better-est! the berst! the burst? the big bang! the root of all trees.

of course, neither planting trees nor making jokes are a competition, i’d say.
it’s nice to help trees AND/OR jokes come into existence?
have you ever made a tree or planted a joke?

C) how hard can it be to come up with your own proverbs? let’s see!:

"live every life
like it could be
your last"

-- proverb for cats (also for people) that i came up with

a thing that i like about buddhism is that all sentient beings, including animals, are considered persons. so really, i could have said that this is a proverb for “cats and OTHER people.” but i also understand that in the conventions of our society and language, we often DON’T include non-human animals under the category of people. but imagine if we did! you could say “i’m a people person” even if you just loved dogs or horses. and i understand that that might be stretching the boundaries of various definitions, like what a “people person” is, but why not? if you like more than one person, including yourself or cats or any animals, you could consider yourself to be on the people person spectrum. if you want. the best time to change definitions was infinite years ago. the also-best time is whenever you want to.

and before we go, a few questions for you, if you’d like to share your thoughts:

1) how are you? how have you been? what’s been new and good?
2) have you any joy to share? or sorrow you’d like to halve?
3) have you any jokes or tree thoughts to plant here?
4) have you any thoughts on animals, people, or other?
5) have you any favorite proverbs? or coined any yourself? would you like to?

thank you for receiving and sharing!
that’s just about all the specific funs here for today!
for this weekend, yes virginia, there IS a comedy show i’m doing:
Sunday, March 12 in Tysons, VA, I’m part of the Ivy League of Comedy

and finally, i made a video inspired by the swedish joy-doubling proverb from item one today, and in the spirit of increasing joy as much as possible, here it is if you’d like to see me say it, along with a few other related thoughts!

thanks for being here!
much love to you and yours and all!
peace, friends!