Cliche’. Whenever I hear the word, it reminds me of fencing for some reason. Like Touche’ when the tip of the foil hits your chest. “Ha! Cliche’!”
But that’s not it at all. A cliche’ typically involves some sort of phrase or even an opinion. And that phrase is overused, oftentimes, lacking original thought. Using phrases can be tricky things. Their meanings can be many things besides cliche’, including the hidden, deep, or even the dark.
Yet, there are phrases out there that are just plain wrong. Whoever said them in the first place was drinking the very, very fermented version of the mead. Take this for example. “There is no use crying over spilled milk.”
The origins of this one are unknown. But. Depending on the situation, the person involved, their love for milk, OR the volume of milk being spilled, this could be extremely bad. It could be worth crying over. In fact, if we are not taught the value of that good milk, people will go spilling it all willy-nilly with no regard at all. I say we should cry when the milk spills. It teaches us compassion, and of course, cleanliness.
The next phrase is just completely untrue, the one that says, “It takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile.” This may be true in other animals, but in the human type, a small smile takes about ten muscles to raise the upper lip and corners of the mouth. If you make a small frowny-face, you will use only three muscles to drop the lower lip and corners of the mouth. And then, some of us by nature, have downward turned mouths when we rest our faces. People think we are angry, or sad, all the time, when if fact we are just as happy as freakin’ larks on the inside, barely containing our propensity toward frolicking about the room at any given moment. So. Frown if it makes you happy.
Sometimes, people’s unhappiness is caused because they perceive themselves as “Low man on the totem pole.” This too, is a phrase gone wrong. People who study totem poles say that they are carved by many people. The most experienced, the highest-ranking carver, is the person who whittles out the lowest figure on the pole. The bottom-most figure is typically the largest, most prominent, and most detailed of the bunch of dudes on the pole. And that supreme carver oversees the rest of the carving of the pole. The higher it gets, the less experienced the carver. So, in fact, being low man on the totem pole means you are top-notch.
This last one always gets me too.
“It is always darkest before the dawn.” I was never even a Girl Scout and I know this one to be false. This is taking moonlight out of the equation. Not a moon in the sky, all covered by clouds. In that case, the darkest part of the night is midnight — which is literally, the middle of the night. This it the time when the sun is exactly opposite the face of Earth we’re all standing on. As the ball rolls around, the closer you are to seeing the sun again, the dawn. Naturally, the sky gets brighter. Just before dawn is pretty light, truth be told. On another note, if we are considering temperatures, most of the time is coldest just before dawn. The earth has had a longer amount of time without the sun’s warming effect. Brrrr. But bright.
But where would we be without all our good phrases? Not all phrases are wrong. Not all of them are bad, either. We can learn a lot from a good phrase, and I’m sure we all have our favorites. I have a few that I try to practice every day.
Especially when I am fencing, right before the dawn, and just after I’ve spilled my milk. I frown, then, because it is easier that way.
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Change the world by being yourself. – Amy Poehler
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Every moment is a fresh beginning. – T.S Eliot
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I could agree with you but then we’d both be wrong. – Harvey Specter
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