We don’t Live in an Emergency Room and Other Maxims for Life

A lightweight collection of practical and witty maxims 

I am a compulsive note taker and collector of quotes. Last week I started sorting them, separating the long ones from the maxims . Midway through the process a thought passed through my mind: “what use is collecting anything if not shared with others?”. Even the most beautiful garden is meaningless if kept locked away.

So here they are, some of the maxims I personally love. Picked for their simplicity and practical application, the list will make an easy reading. If a particular maxim holds your attention for more than a moment feel free to stop and think about it before moving on; if not, just move to the next one, at least one of them will stay with you

1.We don’t live in an emergency room. Everything does not have to be or feel like an emergency

2.Slowing things down can be a learning experience: By all means find new things to do learn and do but on days when you are just short of ideas try doing something you know really well slowly. “Moving slowly allows you be aware of what you are doing, lets you make distinctions and lets you choose a new and different way of doing things.”

3.Beware of those who protest too much: Chances are, they either don’t know enough about whatever they are detesting or are dangerously myopic and biased.Just ignore them

4. Don’t resist change: Variation is the hard reality, not a set of imperfect measures for a central tendency.

5.Dissatisfaction is the mother of all thinking: If we are satisfied with things, there is nothing more for us to search for in this world.

6. Laughter is not just the best medicine, it is also our best weapon against all repair and sufferings: “The swords of battle are numerous, and none more effective than humour”.

7.If something is free you are the product not the customer: I guess this one doesn’t require a by-line.

8.Don’t stagnate, keep crawling at least: Fly if you can but “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But by all means, keep moving.”

9.Life is too short to get stuck in endless cycle of thinking and rethinking, just get on with it: “Broken thoughts about duty, success, and failure and about the nature of life are like a wall that keeps us from the simple liberation of letting joy and love into our lives”.

10.Give some thought to what you speak : Speech is the essence of our existence as social beings.

11.Don’t fall in to the trap of looking at your life as unqualified victory or absolute defeat: Instead, see yourselves as a series of victories and defeats, a continuum.

12.Look at education as transformation, not as mere means to accreditation.

13.Fear and learning do not go together: “You can’t learn when you’re afraid. You cannot be transformed when you are afraid.”

14.Sometimes distance from lovers to strangers is just two words — It’s over.

15.Great men are not accidents — they come to fill a need:“Would you call Shakespeare an accident? Or Balzac an accident? Or Michelangelo an accident? Something is required and they do it.” If you feel there is a need in the world that you can fulfill, go ahead and do it.

16. Take a good look at anything before rejecting it: Sometimes, after having several knives stuck in to you when they hand you flowers you can’t make out what it is. It takes time.

17. Be ambitious if you want to but beware where you are going: Climb the corporate ladder, sure, but what if it’s placed against the wrong wall? .