THEY’RE pithy little sayings people intone as a measure of their wisdom, and as a measure of our own we make noises of agreement. He who doesn’t know that hard work never hurt anyone knows nothing.
But the fact is that many of these proverbs are myths, just plain wrong, but still we spout them. Hard work, for example, hurt and even killed many Australian men not so long ago when they were required to work long hours day after day, year after year, to provide for their family, and those who reached retirement age would be worn out physically.
The phony assurance that hard work is harmless is on my list of myths and countered by another on the list, slow and steady wins the race. We know that slow and steady is living a boring existence in the ’burbs waiting to collect the pension.
Honest folk everywhere have a small set of dictums we like to spout almost as consolation, among them that every dog has its day, that cheats never prosper and that crime doesn’t pay, but it’s lousy consolation because it isn’t true.
I don’t know who is meant to be comforted by the lie that all people are born equal. I don’t think those who succeed are worried about whether they were born with an advantage.
Time and again as a journalist I have seen the falsity of the solace offered rather desperately to those copping a bad press. That’s the line about all publicity being good publicity, and there are a great many former politicians and bankrupt business people who can attest to precisely the opposite.
Do you, like me, just love the gun lobby’s spouting ad nauseam that guns don’t kill people, people do? I wonder how many people Martin Bryant would have killed at Port Arthur if he hadn't had a gun. That shooters appear to believe their little ditty is reason enough to take their guns.
It’s on the sport pages that we’re most likely to read that what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger, and typically we’re assured of that by a footballer whose season and perhaps career has been brought to an end by a shattered knee. It’s nonsense, of course, and I suppose the willingness of a footballer to believe that hype marks him as a coach’s dream.
What can you add to my list of myths? Is beauty really only skin deep? Can you be only as old as you feel?
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