Let’s Just Keep Things Light — and Wonderfully Mysterious
The past can’t touch me and the future doesn’t concern me.
By Alec McPike
In 1785, the poet Robert Burns was plowing his field in rural Scotland when he accidentally stirred up a mouse’s nest. With her lodging destroyed, and plans for winter dashed to pieces, the mouse disappeared into a sea of churned earth.
Sensing a deeper metaphor for life, as artists tend to do, Burns decided to write a poem about the experience, apparently, while still leaning on his plough.
Feeling terrible about having destroyed the mouse’s hard work, Burns writes, “Your small house, too, in ruin! / Its feeble walls the winds are scattering!” His sympathy quickly turning to empathy, Burns commiserates, “In proving foresight may be vain: / The best-laid schemes of mice and men / Go often askew.”
The well-known idiom that warns against the inconsistency of foresight, “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” is derived from Burns’ poem; as well as the title of John Steinbeck’s classic novella, Of Mice and Men, about two ill-fated, California ranch hands named Lenny and George.
So what do Burns, his mouse, and Steinbeck’s unlucky duo have in common? They all learned, some the very hardest way, that…
