This morning – a Wednesday – I received a surprise email.  It was from my erstwhile physician. He had shared with me an article from his subscription to the Times of London. In the past these emissions (that is, articles of varied subject matter) have normally arrived on a Sunday morning – which I have always thought was in keeping with a spectrum of life my erstwhile physician dedicated to his lounge, his dog Finn and his moment of release from the outside world. What however especially distinguished today’s complimentary copy (entitled “75 Life Lessons of Giles Coren, Caitlin Moran, Matthew Parris et al.“, is not that it arrived on a Wednesday morning but that my erstwhile physician beaconed me to provide my own production, what he very generously labeled, “…a summary of your three quarters of a century’s wisdom”. Quite justifiably he added (with a smirk of exclamatory punctuation), “Today’s challenge!”

There’s a lot to unwrap here!

First – and may I suggest foremost – is the possibility of an inductive leap on the part of my very learned erstwhile physician. Though I have always accredited him with an abundance of clarity – and nothing I say here is meant to corrupt that perspicuity – it is perhaps an abuse of logic to presume that, with the mere effluxion of time, a “thing” is bound either to change or to improve. I am of course that “thing” in this context; and, without a hint of modesty I question whether I am even capable of adopting or projecting anything approaching a “life lesson”.

As topical as end-of-life speculation and axioms of truth and reliability have become among the geriatric crowd – and I suppose accordingly it is not an unnatural alliance for a physician to have on a regular basis – the truck of much of the humour (for that is what it often descends to – along with cartoons for inflammation) is little more than quips about the colour of one’s hair (if you still have some) or the value of a toilet in the drawing room – or yet more perverse, an allusion to sex (by now a functionally illiterate and dangerously vulgar prescription).

In fairness to my own inductive analysis I acknowledge with grateful thanks to my erstwhile physician that anything I might project to the topic under investigation is worthy of consideration. The very flavour of one’s so-called wisdom is subject to question when appreciating that the shrewdness of the resolve was probably the result of miscalculation. That is, we learn from our mistakes. Without blemishing this fortuity, I believe intelligence in the majority of instances is a product not of wisdom but of the experience – “Seeing is believing” and that sort of confrontation. It removes a lot of the foresight from the conclusion but it confronts a hardened truth. There must be a lesson in all that but I’ll have to ask that you await a more formal arrangement to qualify as a life lesson.

The second point I wish to make – in response to my erstwhile physician’s frightfully kind invitation – is that, in the final analysis and upon the broader canvas, we’re all very similar. And I include insects, animals and vegetables in that succinct and admittedly unimaginative summary of living things. Basically, we all come and go. The corn is seeded; it grows; it perishes. Our own portrait is no less dramatic or spectacular. Any artist will tell you the challenge of painting a corn stalk. And who could imagine how to make a fly fly or a cicada drone? Imperilled as we all are in this “universe” or “galaxy” or whatever moment in time you prefer, it becomes an indubitable trial  to prescribe axiomatic truths of import. Many of the platitudes which spring to mind have a theme of production and demise, directed by some inner mandate and guided by what is euphemistically referred to as “nature”.

A euphemism is when an expression that could offend or imply something unpleasant is replaced with one that is agreeable or inoffensive.^[1] Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes to downplay. Euphemisms may be used to mask profanity or refer to topics some consider taboo such as mental or physical disability, sexual intercourse, bodily excretions, pain, violence, illness, or death in a polite way.

Euphemism comes from the Greek word euphemia (εὐφημία) which refers to the use of ‘words of good omen’; it is a compound of eû(εὖ), meaning ‘good, well’, and phḗmē (φήμη), meaning ‘prophetic speech; rumour, talk’. Eupheme is a reference to the female Greek spirit of words of praise and positivity, etc. The term euphemismitself was used as a euphemism by the ancient Greeks; with the meaning “to keep a holy silence” (speaking well by not speaking at all).

What constitutes “natural” behaviour is already a source of much debate – sometimes figuratively aligned with conservatism (or right) and liberalism (or left); or, it may quickly become a fiction appropriate to rich or poor – once again depending on the circumstances. This variety of experience – manifested by subsequent expression – is the nub of the problem in the resolution of “life lessons”. In the end the total of wisdom is reduced to the adequacy of a manual – and about as uninteresting (though admittedly mandatory).