The Problem of Disposal

August 13, 1994

Engaged as I am in the seemingly never-ending task of disposing of accumulations, I found it relatively easy to toss a great many of my own “creations”. However, it is more difficult to get rid of the “texts,” quotes, and quips which may have been the inspiration for my effort. Consequently, this Musing is to preserve the varieties of wisdom which turned me on at one time or another.

If you like some of these “thought-starters”, ponder how you would develop the wisdom into an essay, commentary or “op-ed.”

“Lives based on having are less free than lives based on doing or being.” William James

“The world is divided into people who do things and people who get the credit. Try, if you can, to belong to the first class. There’s far less competition.” Dwight Morrow

“There is no one alive today who knows enough to say with confidence whether one religion has been greater than all the others.” Arnold Toynbee

“Do not search for answers to be given you; if given they would be of no use, for you could not live them. For the present live in the questions and little by little and almost unconsciously you will enter the answers and live them also.” Rainer Maria Rilke

“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” William James

“It ain’t so much the ignorance of mankind that makes them ridiculous as the knowing so many things that ain’t so.” Josh Billings

“It is easier to love humanity as a whole than to love one’s neighbor.” Eric Hoffer

“Meeting:
Mind alone is without hone
Dialogue is whetstone.” Elaine Sommers Rich

Enough for now, although there s more. But I want to end this Musing by re-telling one of the best sports stories I have read or heard (seems rather fitting in these days when millionaire ball players are on strike against millionaire owners). Jim Thorpe (1888-1953) was arguably the greatest athlete in our nation’s history. His college was Carlisle, a school for American Indians. As Clifton Fadiman wrote the story,

“When word got around that the Carlisle Indians had an outstanding track team, Harold Anson Bruce, coach of the powerful Lafayette College team, invited “Pop” Warner’s athletes to a dual meet on Alumni Day. Reluctantly he agreed to pay a large guarantee. But when Bruce went to greet the visitors, he was disconcerted to find only a few young men getting off the train with Warner.

“Where are your Indians?” Bruce demanded.

“I’ve got enough,” answered Warner.

“'How many?”

“Five.”

“But Pop, I’ve got a team of forty-six; it’s an eleven event program. This is a disaster. You haven’t a chance.”

“Wanna bet?” asked Warner.

“Thorpe won the high jump, the broad jump, the pole vault, the shot put, and the low hurdles, and was second in the 100. Two others ran first and second in the half-mile, the mile, and the two-mile, another won the quarter-mile, and the fifth the high hurdles. Carlisle won 71-31.”