Carry a Sharp Blade

The world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

— William Shakespeare

When in The Merry Wives of Windsor Shakespeare's scalawag Falstaff refuses to lend money to his trash-talking henchman Pistol, Pistol replies, "Why then, the world’s mine oyster, which I with sword will open."

Knowing Pistol is a blowhard, Falstaff doesn't take the veiled threat seriously. 

But the English-speaking world has.

"The world's your oyster" we are prompt to say to anyone who's unsure about her next avenue.

It is advice I'd freely offer kids, teens, and twenty-somethings fresh out of college.

It's also advice I'd offer retirees. 

Especially retirees.

So often I hear retirees say that they can't decide how to spend their time productively—that the opportunities to accomplish good things are few and that they lack the know-how needed.

It's a shame our language has forgotten the second half of Pistol's threat, or else we'd say: The world's your oyster if you carry a sharp blade.

In other words, countless pearls are within your grasp provided you can pry them out; so carry a decent knife.

Sound like strange advice?

You should realize that Shakespeare's audience would not have found it so.

Being voracious consumers of oysters, they would have grasped it—as they did Pistol's words—instantly.

That's because large rivers like the Thames teemed with oysters in their day, supplying London with cartloads of the cheap and savory snack.

Playgoers in particular liked to chomp on oysters during performances at the Globe, as archeological evidence shows.

They knew full well oysters demanded a sharp blade. 

So when Pistol called the world his oyster "which I with sword will open," they caught his drift immediately: Oysters are everywhere; they're tasty—and some even have pearls; all you need do is open them.

The gift of a long life expectancy has created countless opportunities for today's retirees to make social, cultural and economic contributions previous generations never dreamed possible.

What a crime it would be to waste them for lack of a sharp instrument.

Call it what you will—retraining, reskilling, upskilling, or lifetime learning—keeping your blade sharp is a prerequisite to fulfillment in your final years on Earth.

So get off your ass and get busy acquiring a few new skills.

The world's your oyster.

Still.

Elizabethan pocketknife, circa 1600
Courtesy Shakespeare Birthplace Trust 

The Filthiest Word in the Language

Retirement is the filthiest word in the language.

— Ernest Hemingway

Some words should be retired.

Retired is one of them.

Just as we no longer call anyone "colored" or "retarded," we shouldn't call anyone retired.

The word means, to most people, "purposeless."

Hemingway told his biographer and friend, A. E. Hotchner, that retirement was like a terrible death. 

"The worst death for anyone is to lose the center of his being, the thing he really is," Hemingway said. 

"Whether by choice or by fate, to retire from what you do and what makes you what you are, is to back up into the grave."

"Retired" means purposeless: half-dead, half-gone, half-forgotten.

Over the hill. Out to pasture. Lingering about with one foot in the grave.

Retirement, indeed, is the filthiest word in the language.

Lonely

 

If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Solipsism—the belief that nothing exists except my self—would feel comfortable were it not for the fact that beliefs are social in nature.

And yet we often feel alone sometimes, and frighteningly so. 

The lockdown has heightened the feeling.

Despite solipsism's logical impossibility, loneliness has held center stage since Ancient times.

It's a key part of the picture of the world drawn by poets, lyricists, novelists, and philosophers.

Theologian Paul Tillich called loneliness our "destiny."

"Being alive means being in a body—a body separated from all other bodies," he said. "And being separated means being alone."

Psychiatrists worry that our "hyperconnected" state is making us even lonelier.

Mobile phones and computers are amplifying our tendencies toward solitude, anonymity, isolation, social distancing, and the willful avoidance of others.

Those behaviors, in turn, are increasing the instances of mental disorders like anxiety, depression, and paranoia.

Psychiatrists call this phenomenon the "Internet Paradox" and suggest that social media isn't social at all, but antisocial.

Social media is worsening our craving for loneliness.

The Internet Paradox could explain the sharp rise in severly abusive comments appearing on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

It could also explain the sharp increase in impulsive and aggressive behaviors on our streets and public forums.

CES: the S Stands for "Superspreader"

America wants to get back to normal.

That goes without saying.

But why otherwise smart people would decide to hold a a mega-show like CES in the midst of the third wave of the pandemic merely to simulate normal defies explanation.

Perhaps the pressure from wishful exhibitors was too much for the show's organizer to bear. 

I won't pretend to know.

But I do know one thing.

Thousands of attendees will return home from the event infected.

They'll in turn infect others, who'll swamp the hospitals and deny beds to injury victims and the chronically ill.

And some of those infected will surely die.

All in the name of hope.

Hope, they say, is not a strategy.

Neither is killing your customers.

POSTSCRIPT: They also say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Don't believe it.

Let's Nix the Shibboleths

Then they said unto him, "Say now Shibboleth," and he said "Sibboleth," and they took him and slew him.

— Judges 12:6

The Miami Herald last month called on progressives to stop using the word Latinx.

"Stop trying to make the term 'Latinx' a thing," the editors wrote. "The so-called 'Latinx community' doesn’t even want to be called Latinx."

It turns out 98% of Latinos don't like the word.

I don't care for it either.

It sounds like a brand of laxative. (I can see the tagline now: Latinx. Pity the stool.)

I don't care for shibboleths in general.

Shibboleths often begin life as genteelisms meant to foster goodwill; but they just as often devolve—quickly—into political passwords.

The word shibboleth (Hebrew for "corncob") comes to us from the Old Testament, where we're told that sentries in Gilead used shibboleth as a watchword, knowing their enemies couldn't pronounce the "h."

I pity the fool who couldn't say shibboleth. He was executed on the spot.

I remember recoiling in horror the first time I heard a speaker say Latinx—not because I had no toilet paper, but because I thought, "Oh, no, here's another angry group to worry about offending."

But enough already!

With the real threats to democracy posed by the right, it's time we speak plainly and candidly—without fear of causing offense.

All this precious progressive "rebranding" has gotten way-too Orwellian.

"Some people love to feel offended because it makes them feel important," novelist Oliver Markus Malloy said. 

"When your only tool is a hammer, suddenly every problem starts to look like a nail. And when the only time you feel relevant is when you claim to be offended, suddenly everything looks offensive.”

He's right.

Let's be blunt and to the point.

Let's nix the shibboleths.