The Liminal Man

Writings of a man born between worlds

Commonplaces

Keeping a written record of wise sayings or other worthy excerpts is an ancient practice. In English, these written collections are traditionally called ‘commonplace books’ and keeping a personal commonplace book used to be a widespread practice. I was introduced to the concept in 2004 in a lecture by D— S— during the first year of my English PhD studies.

This page is my personal commonplace book. Before putting it here, I kept it as a note on my phone for almost a decade. I have tried to cite my sources, but in the joyful moment of capturing some pearl, I have not always been careful to preserve its provenance.

Risk

“A life without risk is not well lived.”

Whether it be riding that motorcycle, asking the girl out, having a child, or starting that business you’ve dreamed about, there’s an unavoidable element of risk in almost any pursuit that’s worth undertaking. Optimizing your life for the least possible risk may mean optimizing for the least possible achievement—and perhaps joy as well.

“Ships are safe in the harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”

I forget where I first heard this, but I love it. Bikes are for riding. Roads are for following. Life is for living. So live!

“A calm sea never made a skilled mariner.”

My friend S— B— used this in conversation on Jan 30, 2015.

“You only live once.”

This has become so common in recent years as to have earned it’s own abbreviation. But it is deep—even cold—in it’s truth. Death is coming no matter what we choose. We all only get one shot.

Strategy

“We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

This humorous modification of a traditional proverb works nicely for me. It’s a way of deferring a difficult problem for a more appropriate time in the future while acknowledging that it will still be difficult, and we’ll probably screw it up then.

“Slow and steady does the job.”

As my life has gone on, this old saw has continued to age like fine wine. Persistent, sustainable effort is the key to long-term success.

“Choose your battles.”

Conservation of effort is an important contributor to sustainable success. There are many things I would like to be good at, many things I would like to accomplish. Better to focus on the most important and achieve them than to invest in too many of them and not. This is a lesson I’m bad at learning.

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

This absolutely is one of my favorites. I find myself quoting it frequently to myself and others. I find it particularly apropos as encouragement to those who are paralyzed with indecision due to their fear of not making the optimal choice. It’s also applicable to creators of every sort who struggle with turning over their work on time due to endless fiddling and tidying.

“Execution precedes planning.”

I forget where I got this; it might be my own. I firmly believe that, in general, the best strategy is the one that takes action as quickly as possible and pivots quickly as new information arises. Too much planning is the enemy of achievement. Having said that, there are times—and disciplines—where planning well is the whole ballgame. For that, the next one.

“Count the cost.”

Jesus’ words in Luke 14 about counting the cost before building a tower are timeless, and they point to real moments when planning well is the key to success. Large building projects such as suspension bridges and skyscrapers are the best examples, but daily decisions of all kinds also require counting the cost ahead of time.

“Just Enough. Just in Time.”

This is in a nutshell my philosophy of effort management at work. It is fair to no-one—not to me, not to my team, not to my stakeholders—to push for more work than is needed or to present work before it is needed. Ask for and provide exactly what is needed when it is needed. This is the key to prioritization.

“Inventory is waste.”

Finish product just before it ships. Finish products completely. Partially completed work ages as it waits and thus loses value. In the consulting world where the product is advice, this is especially true. Incomplete information before decision is worth something at least something. Perfect information after the decision has been made is worthless.

“Be fiscally responsible so you can be creatively reckless.”

Film executive Tom Rothman, Oct 15, 2024. I like this as advice on how to balance competing priorities in any area of life. Identify the more fundamental priority and satisfy it enough to get by so you can have maximal freedom in the other.

Hard Truths

“Poverty is not a virtue.”

There is a strain in literary history that extolls the plain, honest virtues of the common toiler, of the poor man. This needs careful handling. Poverty can indeed provide fertile ground in which virtues—hard work, self-discipline, gratitude, humility, generosity—can grow (think of the widow and her mite), but it is not itself a virtue. Many innately vicious men (such as Wang Lung in The Good Earth) have been granted the patina of virtue by the contraints imposed by their poverty, only for that patina to fall away once they found wealth.

“If you're stupid, you suffer.”

Spoken in and translated from Afrikaans by G— U— in late 2019. Stupidity and ignorance, like poverty, are not crimes, but neither are they virtues. They can be a source of great suffering both to the sufferer and to those around them. My friend S— B— something similar in our conversation on Jan 30, 2015: “The world is brutal to the dummy.” He batted at a very high percentage that day.

“We are the product of our environment.”

A truism I began to learn and understand only in adulthood. My belief that this statement is true has led me as a parent to prune (ruthlessly if necessary) harmful influences from my children's lives. If it (whatever 'it' is, but for example a phone of their own or social media accounts) isn't present, it's power to have shaped them is permanently diminished. However, once my children became teens, I began to realize how much of who they were had always been with them from the beginning and in some respects how little difference my parenting choices made in shaping their direction. This statement still resonates strongly, and I believe it to be true, but it’s only part of the truth.

“Time is money, friend.”

Goblins, the premier merchants in World of Warcraft, say this regularly. There are two halves to this one. On the one hand, nothing is free. Doing work yourself instead of paying someone else isn’t free because your time is also worth something.

“Eventis stultorum magister.” or “Consequences are the teacher of fools.”

Learning to avoid mistakes from the precept and example of others is better than learning the hard way yourself.

“Silence is the voice of complicity.”

This one has long appealed to the activist and the truthseeking parts of me. I encountered it on a bumper sticker which I then kept on my office door at Carolina in the middle 00’s.

“Farmer’s work is from sun to sun, but woman’s work is never done.”

A traditional mid-western proverb that I heard at the lunch table as a kid from my dad’s cousin during one of our summer visits to the old farm in Iowa. Farming is very hard work, but keeping house as a farmer’s wife was not easier. L— and M— were two of my favorite people growing up, and to this day I can think of no finer wheat rolls than those M— would make for a houseful of people.

Age

“Old dogs, old tricks.”

The old man’s response to the statement, ‘You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.’ It highlights the value of life experience even in the face of a changing world, and it does so in a pugnacious way that I like.

“When an elder dies, a library burns.”

My father was 54 when I was born. The family reunions we attended on his side were peopled with the elderly. My whole life I have been around and learned from old people, and how I often I have wished after their passing that I had done a better job recording what they knew and experienced during their lives.

“A man isn’t old until regrets take the place of dreams.”

I have had high aspirations for myself my entire adult life and mostly fallen short of them. Yet hope for a better, more accomplished, more fit, more worthy future has always remained. As I age, that window is closing. At some point, it will have closed and I will have only the past to look back upon. Not what I might be, but what I was.

Practical Realism

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”

A well-known truism. My lifetime has seen a significant breakdown in trust towards authority. The sex abuse scandals in the Catholic church from the early 2000s have been followed by similar scandals in the Evangelical world and elsewhere. Cosby, Weinstein, the #MeToo movement, and other such cases have collectively reinforced the message that position and reputation are not to be trusted. If something appears suspect, it probably is. There's an earthier way of saying the same that I also like: “If it looks like shit and smells like shit, it’s shit.”

“You get what you pay for.”

The truest of truisms, in my experience.

“What goes around, comes around.”

A variation on the biblical Proverb that what you sow, you will also reap.

Idealism

“The goal is not to dream, but to come out of a dream. To say, ‘This is.’”

I am an idealist and a truth seeker. I dream of a golden age. But it is not enough for me to dream of it. I want the reality—whatever it is. Much of my internal life has included weighing or noting the extent to which this or that activity (such as pouring time into video games) pushed me further into or pulled me farther out of Plato's cave. I forget where I first heard or thought this one.

“Rome is an eternal thought in the mind of God.”

—Sir Lawrence Oliver as Crassus to Caesar in the historical epic Spartacus at the 2:05:45 mark.

“If there were no gods at all, I’d revere them. If there were no Rome, I’d dream of her.”

—Sir Lawrence Oliver as Crassus to Caesar in the 1960 historical epic Spartacus at the 2:05:55 mark.

“If Heaven exists only in my heart and mind, better there than nowhere at all.”

—Me, Dec. 6, 2022

Challenges and Effort

“Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no ‘try.’”

Yoda to Luke during The Empire Strikes Back. I consider these the wisest words to ever come out of the Star Wars franchise. They are analogous to Sean Connery’s words to Nick Cage in The Rock about losers and winners and prom queens.

“Bite off more than you can chew and start chewing.”

As I have gotten older, I have come to understand that the only way for one to achieve their full potential is to strenuously try to exceed their potential and then fail. If we succeed at everything we attempt, we’re setting the bar too low for ourselves. This is as true of actual high jumpers and pole vaulters as it is of other people in other disciplines.

“The tallest tree receives no shade.”

A corollary to the above that specifically highlights the central role of community influence and mentors in our own growth. It is a more aphoristic framing of the observation that if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room or that if you ace all the tests, you’re in the wrong class. Experiencing only constant success and superior performance over those around you limits you and keeps you from achieving your full potential.

“No pressure, no diamonds.”

“It’s easy to be determined and have grit about things you like to do.”

Fitness

You can’t outrun a bad diet.”

—Thin man C— H— offering pearls of wisdom to a sedentary fat man who had just taken up regular exercise.

“You get healthy in the gym; you lose weight in the kitchen.”

This is another in the vein of not being able to outrun a bad diet. It tracks with my experience of weight loss.

“Easy to gain, hard to lose.”

A response generated by ChatGPT on Dec 6, 2022 to the prompt “Write a pithy aphorism capturing the difficulty of weight loss in modern society. The original response appended “- the modern struggle of weight loss.” to the end.

“The allure of instant gratification is the biggest obstacle to achieving lasting weight loss in our fast-paced world.”

Another response by ChatGPT to the same prompt.

“No pain, no gain. Embrace pain.”

“Pain is the sweet taste of victory.”

“If it hurts, you know it counts.”

“It’s not how you feel that matters; it’s how you measure up.”

“The hotter the fire, the harder the steel.”

“Fear of failure breeds failure.”

“The edge of your performance is the point where you fail. Push till you fail, regroup, then push again.”

Procrastination

“We can rest in California.”

–what the Donner party should have said after July 4th.

“Immediate gratification is followed by regret.”

“Community is rooted in hard work, in contributions to the whole. Laziness breeds deceit and isolation.”

---

“I will do good work, at a profit if I can, at a loss if I must, but always good work.”

Evil

“There is a malevolent intelligence at work in the world.”

“Just because something is understandable doesn’t mean that it’s good.”

“Sin will take you farther than you wanted to go, keep you longer than you wanted to stay, and cost more than you wanted to pay.”

—My wife, H—, citing a camp preacher from her teen days.

“Those who play with the Devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his word.”

—Buckminster Fuller, as quoted in a splash screen to the video game XCOM: Enemy Within.

“You can only jerk off so much.”

—A friend, Jan 10, 2024. A crude statement of what is nevertheless a deep spiritual truth—the pleasures of this life, even if (and perhaps particularly if) pursued without limit, cannot ultimately satisfy the heart of man.

Eternity

“I’m not concerned about the many years of my nonexistence before birth. Why then should I be concerned about the many years of my nonexistence that will follow death?”

—Adam Frank, What if Heaven is Not for Real?

“If God exists, the path to Him lies through suffering.”

—Me

“If God does not remember, no bad thing will be remebered. If He does remember, nothing good will be forgotten.”

—Me

“The heat death of the universe is coming.”

—Me

“If dows not remember me, I will not be remebered.”

—Me

“This too shall pass.”

“Sow to the wind, you will reap the whirlwind.”

—The Bible

“It is far better to dance alone than not to dance.”

—Me

“You encourage what you allow.”

—My friend C— H—, May 5, 2020, and many other times.

Of Motherhood: “The days are long, and the years are short.”

Mother’s Day observation, Sunday service at church, May 10, 2020

“It is essential to have men think for me and not just carry out orders.”

—George Washington (need to verify exact reference)

“Private disorder leads to public ruin.”

—Dr. C— S— in a lecture on Shakespeare’s Richard II, Oct 7, 1998.

“Even a blind hog will root up an acorn now and then.”

—Charlton Heston as Will Penny in the 1967 Western Will Penny at the 1:03:04 mark.

“Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.”

A familiar old saw that gets at a truth.

“When the Zen ends, the ass kicking begins.”

—Attributed in my hearing to G— U— by C— H— on Nov 11, 2023. G— U— is a team lead known for suffering fools only so long. Humans are emotional creatures, and I believe most would find this one applicable to many relationships in life.

“Friday is a state of mind.”

—Me. If repetion is a metric of favor, then this is one of my favorites. I use it often at work.

“If the Rottweiler is humping your leg, fake an orgasm.”

Another G— U—ism. Applicable to tyrants of all sorts, from bosses to kings.

“With enough force, you can break your finger off in your own asshole. But why would you?”

More earthy G— U— wisdom. A variation on the theme, “Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”