For Thursday, March 7: What sorrow builds

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sadness, I think, causes us to build walls around our hearts and lives. Something about sadness creates in us a fear of letting others in or close so we make ourselves an obstacle. Sometimes we are aware of the sadness in others, sometimes we are not. But to sorrow alone is one of the worst things I can think of to do. It is in sorrow that we need the comforting touch of another, the gentle voice of someone who loves us, and the clarity with which someone else can provide. What would happen if we chose not to build walls with our sadness but instead built gates and openings and let others in. Might our sorrow cease and we bloom with warmth?

Comments

Call it a Day

The literal use of this phrase hails from 1838 when the phrase originally was "call it half a day" to mean leaving work early. (source) The modern use of the phrase is to indicate ending something due to false sense of accomplishment.

More bang for your buck

This phrase was used a lot in 1953 but an earlier citation puts it at 1940 in a Metals and Plastics Publications advertisement. Read about it here . The phrase means you get more for your money.

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.

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