If you give a reason for what you’re doing, you’re doing it for a different reason.
From Gray Matters, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
Switch spent the better part of the afternoon explaining why he was burying acorns under the bad maple and not the good one. Something about drainage, something about the dog two yards over. I believed him until I saw him do the same thing last fall, before there was a dog. For years I thought a reason was the thing that came first and the act followed it out, the way a wingbeat follows the decision to leave a branch; I had it backwards. If you give a reason for what you're doing, you're doing it for a different reason. The honest version is that the maple is near his nest and he is lazy, and I did not say so, because I have never once explained why I pick the fence post I pick.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- Count double the thoughts that precede your actions, half the ones that follow.
- When people say they want to feel better, they usually mean they want to feel less.
- What is spoken barely hints at what is shuttered in.
- It’s not the evidence you find that matters, but the evidence you find inconvenient.
- Leap to a conclusion and you usually fall short.
- When you are not sure where you are going, you are more likely to keep your eyes open.