For Sunday, September 23: Don't be a hater

Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate. Unknown

What a concept. Truly! What if we all did this? What if we actually gave more attention to what we love than what we hate? So many examples come to mind - a lot of them controversial so I'm not going to use any of them because I'm not interested in starting a debate. :)
Suffice it to say that when we stand on "street corners" bashing the thing we hate we aren't telling people what we love. We are only sending the message of what we hate. If you've ever been guilty of this then have you noticed how people will "cross the street" to get away from you? It's not because they are convicted by your bashing, it's because they are disgusted. Just sayin'. You've done it too. You've seen up ahead someone standing on a "street corner" bashing something you love and you've "crossed the street" in disgust. We all do it.
But what if you and I took to the "streets" and promoted what we loved without bashing the thing we hate? Can you do it? Can I? Can we actually keep hate and bashing out of the message we are trying to share?

Comments

Butter someone up

There are two probable origins for this idiom and I think both are equally plausible. The first one is that when you spread butter on bread you are buttering it up like one would do when trying to flatter someone. The second is in ancient India there was a practice of throwing balls of butter at statues to ask for favor, i.e. buttering them up. ( source ) When we use the phrase today we generally mean that extreme flattery is used to gain information or favor. It's not always necessarily a compliment.

A dime a dozen

"It's said that in the year 1796, the first U.S. dimes were produced for circulation. Hence, it would make sense for this phrase to originate sometime after." Read more here . Today the phrase carries the meaning that something is cheap or without value if it can be lumped in with other similar or exactly-like things. It's more of an insult than anything.

Life according to van Gogh...sort of

There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing. Vincent van Gogh in a l etter to Theo van Gogh, April 1882 Life is a little bit like today's quote from van Gogh. Some of us live life focusing on the drawing - the details - and have very little color. Others of us go for the color and forsake, to a degree, the drawing - the details. Unlike painting, according to van Gogh, one is not wrong over the other but somewhere in between the two would be the best I would think. If you look at some of van Gogh's paintings I feel like you can see where he might have struggled between the "how to do it" and the " how not to do it" (as he admittedly loved color so much but knew he had to focus more on the drawing) and that seems to be reflected in his life as well. In the end he wasn't able to find the ...

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