You know the wise stuff you keep reading on your Facebook/Twitter timeline? Yes, quotes. They could be uplifting, happy, sad in a for-ever-alone-style or whatever floats the boat of whoever copy-pates them. The problem is they sound so wise and charming that people may take them for granted or even generalize them to all life situations, which is bad, and here are some examples to show you why:
1- “If you love something let it go if it is truly yours it will come back to you”: I’m puzzled, if you really, really love or want something and you believe you should have it, why would you set it free? I know there are cases where this actually applies but this quote is so mass-circulated that it seems to be used for everything. And it’s worst when you apply it on people, real human beings, because here’s a newsflash for you: when you let them go it means you want them to go, they’re most probably not coming back. So I suggest you delete that from your little quotations notebook and replace it with: If you really love something then do whatever you can to make it yours, if after everything you do it slipped away, then it’s not yours, but at least you know you tried.
2- “Speech is silver, silence is gold”: Okay, silence could be better sometimes, but that is when you don’t have something good to say; because silence is safe but it isn’t likely to get you anywhere. So yes, think of a good answer and if you don’t have one then feel free to shut up.
3- “If you’re not lucky, don’t even bother trying”: Actually this is originally a modern Arabic proverb that gets on my last nerve اللي ما إلو حظ لا يتعب ولا يشقى You idiots! Idiots! You still don’t get it? The concept of “Luck” as it’s conceived by people nowadays is the excuse people use to justify their failure, there’s no such thing as: “I’m just lucky/ unlucky” there is work, there is Providence, there’s a number of things that go into why you succeed/fail at things, but there’s no such thing as being a success or a failure just because it’s your luck. You know, I know a girl who has always complained about her luck, and I always told her that her attitude was part of the problem. I went to visit her once when her life has really changed a lot and yet she was still complaining. That day I realized that people who want to complain will find something to complain about, and you really don’t want to be one of them because these are unhappy people.
4- “Love is blind”: Well, if you mean that love makes you overlook the flaws of the person you love then okay, but if you’re using it in the context most people use it in then you’re a moron. You know, a girl loves a man who doesn’t respect her, or a man who loves a woman who treats him like crap and then they say: love is blind. Love isn’t blind, and it has never been. What you call love is perhaps lust or weakness or masochist tendencies or whatever but it is most certainly not love.
5- “Diamonds are a girl’s best friend”: I can imagine that the person who came up with this was either some French Aristocrat in a “let them eat cake” fashion, or a jeweler who made money out of this. I mean, really, what’s the point of diamonds? They are overrated nice looking rare stones that have become the ultimate proof of love somehow. How ridiculous is this? It’s even offensive. And seriously, how can a diamond be your best friend exactly? What does it do? NOTHING. It just sits there looking all pretty and shiny, the diamond not the girl. Now if you tell me that a dog is a man’s best friend it makes sense, a dog fetches, barks, entertains, protects against strangers… but a diamond? Let’s try to put it this way: If a war breaks out and you have time to take one thing only before leaving the house, what would it be? I’ll take my laptop, I can tell you that is my best friend.
6- A spoon of Nutella a day keeps the shrink at bay: Obviously nobody said that, I did, and it’s a load of crap because 1 spoon is not even remotely enough. It would still be total bull to say a jar of Nutella a day because that would keep depression at bay for the duration if having Nutella, then you’d be stuck with the guilt of consuming so much carbs and then your waistline wouldn’t be so happy and… wait, am I philosophizing Nutella? I guess this means it’s time to stop right here, right now. Yeah that’s pretty much it.