When I was a young man living with my grandmother, she used to salt her conversations with sayings that I learned later in life were called cliches. A cliché is defined as ‘a phrase that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.’ That about sums up the way I reacted to her pithy little sayings too, even though at the time I didn’t even know the word cliché or what it meant.
The thing about a cliché, though, is that at one time it was considered meaningful or novel and rang true. So, while it might seem trite, even irritating, today, we shouldn’t lose sight of where it came from.
Take the cliché, ‘every cloud has a silver lining.’ That was a way of saying that good and bad are two sides of the same coin, and that you can’t appreciate the good in life unless there’s bad to contrast it with. That was true when first said and, you know what, it’s just as true today.
Take the COVID-19 pandemic for instance. A deadly scourge that has surpassed the 1918 flu pandemic in the number of deaths and the devastation it has inflicted on the world, one hesitates to even hint that anything good came out of it, but the truth is that for all the pain it has caused, some positive things did come out of it.
Medical science stepped up to the plate and developed not one but several vaccines in record time. Some (but unfortunately not all) political jurisdictions showed the ability to make the painful decisions that people elected them to make rather than take the easy way out and pander to public opinion polls or special interests.
On a personal level, despite the anti-social and frankly sociopathic behavior of many people around the world, most people rolled up their sleeves and did what they needed to do to support their communities. Even some of the anti-science fringe are beginning to come around. Not enough yet, but I’m optimistic. We have because of quarantine requirements had to learn to find ways to entertain ourselves alone or in small groups, many families have been brought closer together.
On an even more personal level, because people had to find things to do while stuck at home, reading was back in vogue for a period of time, which was really good for writers like me. My book sales, modest but nothing to write home about before the pandemic, more than tripled during the period March 2020 to February 2021, and even now when the restrictions are being loosened, people are still reading. My sales have fallen in the past few months but are still higher than they were before the pandemic, indicating that some of the habits picked up over the past year might actually stick.
Now, as much as I like selling more books, I am not happy that it took a tragedy like COVID to achieve that goal. I share this little anecdote for one reason and one reason only. I share it to remind you that life is made up of measures of bad and good, and one can only truly appreciate the good if one understands the bad.
Don’t take this as an invitation to overuse cliches, please. But when I use one from time to time, pay attention, please. – NWI
