As I’ve mentioned, my new book, Secrets of Adulthood, is hitting the shelves.
For years, I’ve been writing aphorisms—that is, short, concise statements that convey larger truths. I have a giant trove, so it took a lot of adding, subtracting, and polishing, to assemble the very best ones to include in my new book. There, I included only my most interesting insights that were useful in guiding us through life.
I weeded out any aphorism that was a mere observation, such as “The tulip is an empty flower” or “The Periodic Table of the Elements is an ingredient list of the universe” or “Bread makes food seem clean.”
I omitted my large set of bleak aphorisms, which make for quite discouraging reading.
I also omitted a lot of material I gathered that didn’t fit into the “Secrets of Adulthood” framework. For instance, I have a huge collection of Proverbs of the Professions. I love Proverbs of the Professions! I have collections of jokes that are actually teaching stories. I have a Manifesto for Creativity.
One list I wrote as part of my work for Secrets of Adulthood, that I ended up leaving out, was a list of statements I wrote inspired by the traditional proverb, “No receiver, no thief.” (If you don’t know, a “receiver” is a person who knowingly buys stolen goods in order to sell them later for profit. The receiver is the fence, the middleman between thieves and buyers.)
I found that proverb extremely thought-provoking. If no one creates a market for stolen goods, then many people won’t become thieves. The person who knowingly buys a stolen item is part of the crime, just as the thief is, and if we want to discourage crime, we can focus on the thief, and we can also focus on the receiver.
I was captivated by this brief, suggestive structure: “No X, no Y.” So I started making my own list. Some make the kind of point that “No receiver, no thief” makes, but as you’ll hear, that structure also permits a writer to make different points as well.
Here are just a few I wrote in response. You might disagree with some of them—that’s part of the fun of this structure. They inspire debate. In fact, with a few of these, I’m still not sure whether I agree with what I wrote! But I love pondering them.