For Friday, April 26: The touchstone of sorrow for happiness

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace. Chuck Palahniuk

While being happy is the preferred, the ideal, the coveted it is in experiencing sorrow that we grow in character and appreciate the happier times. It is easy to forget about happiness as it leaves behind no true reminder of its presence. Sorrow, however, leaves behind a mark on our hearts and we have a touchstone to go back to after we have learned what we should from the time of sorrow. It is in the happier times that the touchstone is acknowledged and used because our happier times are made sweeter by the sorrow we have experienced and learned from. If you do not know what I mean then I would suggest that you have not experienced and learned from sorrow. If you are tracking with me then we are kindred spirits in the touchstones sorrow has birthed in our lives.

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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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