Sayings

On stage recently, I have been talking about the sayings that people use and just how stupid they are when looked at literally.

For instance, at school whenever sport’s day came around, the teacher would announce to the class that competing would be compulsory and it was “not the winning, but the taking part that counts.”

By that same logic anyone who knows anything about history would have to agree with me when I say – “Fuck the Swiss, at least the Nazis got into the spirit of things”…

The reason I bring the topic of sayings up is because during a conversation yesterday, someone said to me “the grass is always greener on the other side”.

Now, for me, this saying is the worst metaphor ever that is still constantly used.

The whole point of a metaphor is to make a comparison between one event (the one that is happening) to another that you can easily relate to in order to better understand the situation (the made up scenario).

I have never been interested in the colour of grass.

In fact, when I have a family and home with its own front lawn, I reckon that if I am going to be bitter, it will be because my neighbour has a BMW in his drive way and I have a Volkswagen.

Perhaps it will annoy me that he has a huge widescreen TV with surround sound while I still have the portable TV that used to be in my parents’ kitchen. I can imagine being extremely jealous when looking out the window and seeing that my neighbour’s wife is younger and better looking than mine. There are potentially millions of things that would fill me with envy before I moved to looking at the grass.

In fact, if your number one concern is how green your neighbour’s grass is – I reckon you probably have it pretty good.

Perhaps my opinions will change as I grow older. However, I am fairly confident that I will never longingly look over the fence to the garden next door and feel aggrieved at my lawn’s pitiful chlorophyll definition…