Life is the history lesson you get to experience firsthand.
From Taking Everything into Account, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The oak by the fence came down in the storm Tuesday and the crew cut it into rounds, so this morning I sat on one and counted. Eighty-odd rings, some fat, some so thin they were almost the same line twice, and a black scar maybe a third of the way in where something burned and the tree went on anyway. I used to think of a year as a thing that happened to me and then was over, filed, done; I was wrong about where it went. It went into the wood. Life is the history lesson you get to experience firsthand, and the test is not at the end, it is every day, open book, and the book is you. Switch came by and asked what I was doing and I said counting, and he said counting what, and I did not have a short answer.
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
- There are few things as hard as changing directions or as needed.
- Geniuses change everything, sometimes for the better.
- You are more likely to find the truth looking for a flower than to find a flower looking for the truth.
- Necessity is the mother of invention, but it helps if there’s an inventor in the room.
- Every life is a struggle, but not every life is an education.
- The student of history is a student of humility.