In the spirit of many mothers, my own wishes that I were more of a committed churchgoer, less a dilettante of formless spirituality. She doesn’t bother me about this at all, let alone nag me, but every now and then there’s a little tap on the shoulder just to let me know it’s on her mind.
Over the last week, she gave or sent to my sisters, brother, and me one of those little daily-devotional booklets, spanning the part of the Christian calendar called Lent.
I (and my sibs) thought that today’s item was especially interesting, and I (and maybe my sibs) think so especially for writerly and word-nerd reasons. Shorn of its theological trappings, it says:
How would you summarize your life in just six words? The online magazine Smith asked readers to do just that. [JES: link] It was based on Ernest Hemingway’s response to the same question: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” The result is a book called Not Quite What I Had Planned, a collection of six-word memoirs from folks famous and unknown. A few examples:
“Well, I thought it was funny.”
“I still make coffee for two.”
“Seventy years, few tears, hairy ears.”[...]
So if you were to try to summarize your life in six words, what would you say?
Any takers? (I’m thinking on mine.)
4:50 pm/edit to add: No one noticed (so he thought).*
________________________
* The man does like ambiguity.
‘The best is yet to be’?
“Does something smell funny to you?”
Kate: Your mouth to God’s ear, as they say — and drop that question mark!
moonie: Laughing too hard to reply right now…
Still thinking…or is that the answer…it’s less than six words!
cynth: See, that’s the difficulty here — or one difficulty, anyhow: it’s hard not to kid about it. Many of the candidates that “feel” right to me are also in the “Oh my God, I could NEVER say that publicly” or “He doesn’t really believe that, does he?” categories.
I suppose for the sake of readers who haven’t answered yet I should back off a little on that “Any takers?” challenge, almost a dare, and just say, “Hmm. Something to think about, eh?”
Go see.
http://mapelba.wordpress.com/2008/03/07/a-life-in-one-sentence/
recaptcha: mastered cause
It’s deja vu all over again.
Ooh, very challenging, indeed. I’ll think on this one.
By the way, I’m very fond of the phrase “a dilettante of formless spirituality.”
Now I’m thinking I plagiarized this.
marta: I went and saw. (Very weird, the coincidence in time.)
Squirrel #1: There’s no substitute for some of the classics like that!
Jules: Coming up with ONLY six was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Especially for an inveterate overwriter. :)
Squirrel #2: Ha! I don’t know if you’re commenting on your previous comment, or introducing a whole new six-word summary. Whatever, that’s a spectacular response for a writer to today’s fresh (and completely unexpected) six-word challenge. Heh.
Both. Cliches are plagiarizing.
Squirrel: When I saw you’d left another comment, BEFORE I read it, I was thinking to myself Y’know, bet you anything that Squirrel replied in six words… The four words came as a relief. :)
The time coincidence is weird, but then again in my life, it is really to be expected.
[...] A Half-Dozen Words Which Say “You”3.3 [...]
I did this a while ago…. but I haven’t come up with anything new since. I still quite like my first thought:
The happy hours are too few.
froog: Nicely ambiguous!