the wisdom of old folk sayings (1)

angel, by melozzo da farli, c. 1480

“… be satisfied with your Lot.”

 a highly unfashionable, heretical notion in our age of aspirational discontent.

(and yet, one would do well to ponder what one’s Lot was…)

i’ve recast the line for a cult-leader character of mine:

“… take your Lot lightly.”

in line with g.k.chesterton’s curiously new-agey:

“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.

(which, in turn, was given a spin by our current pope, benedict: “Die Engel können fliegen, weil sie sich leicht nehmen.”)

chesterton was brilliant with that idea of lightness and not taking oneself seriously:

“For solemnity flows out of men naturally; but laughter is a leap. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light. Satan fell by the force of gravity.”

About freddie

writer, migrant, work in progress

Comments

  1. Taking your Lot lightly is surely a wholly different thing to being satisfied with it??

    Laughing in face of adversity is Grand Aim, of course… but the accepting of one’s Lot surely means that we unpublished writers must shrug and be content as such, which seems a bit unproductive to me.

    Pass me my knitting, would you…

  2. depends on what Lot and Satisfied are..

    Lot is vague, it is fate and luck (as in Lotto), casting lots, it falls to my lot.. a chancy unfixed aspect in life..

    Satisfied says you are sated, that your Lot will do for now… but it doesn’t preclude working to improve on it… or hoping that it will fall better for you next time around…

  3. I’m in a “never rains but it pours” cycle at the moment…

  4. just grin and bear it, if you didn’t laugh you’d cry.

  5. Oooh… cliché contest… My entry is: stiff upper lip, chaps, stiff upper lip!

    But we should remember Lot’s wife, of course, who, clearly unsatisfied with her Lot, embarked upon the Fatal Backward Glance and poooof!

  6. she was the salt of the earth, mrs Lot.

Speak Your Mind

*