The notable Joey Leguay, who may or may not have lived outside of
his now secured place in the cyber world of the early years of 21st
Century, was fond of quoting Horace (65-8 BC). Horace, it should be
noted, is imminently quotable and probably the greatest source of
lasting citations in Latin. Joey was particularly enamored by the
following aphorism from the Odes (Carmina):
“Many brave men before Agamemnon lived, but all unwept and
unknown, lost in the distant night since they lack a divine poet.”
I mention Joey and the quote from Horace because in this very
personal essay I plan to highlight some lesser Horaces---in fact, I
would go as far as to say much lesser because none of them ever
waxed poetic in the slightest. In reading this you may indeed find
their observations to be very commonplace even to the point of
banality. It is my job to make their words as meaningful to the reader
as they have been to me during my life, and so I reach back into the
distant night of my own waning career and pull back certain
characters, who, while not being in anyway heroes of the battlefield
like the immortal Agamemnon, said things to me which changed the
direction of my life. There is great wisdom in banality, and I hope I
can do some of it justice.
M.C., who like M.A. has been dead for many years and who died quite
young, lived the life of an intellectual with interests in many spheres
and sometimes chaotic connections with many people and their own
personal intrigues. M.C. was a writer and poet of sorts and often
baffled by the complexities of life itself, to which he responded “We
live in many worlds.” Trite, banal, yes. But true. A thinking person
travels through many different worlds, and to realize this makes life
less burdensome and threatening. On his deathbed, M.C. saw his
wretched and untimely illness as just another world, and this
philosophy comforted him in his final and painful minutes.
B.R. was a young woman when I was a young, vain man. She brought
me down to earth once by saying “Everyone thinks they are cute at one
time or another.” For young people, I believe this is an immutable
truth. We all have moments in life when we look in the mirror and
find ourselves irresistible, whether we actually are or not.
L.K. had survived poverty and the Depression. Living through
prosperous times, I had the luxury of leaving jobs that I hated or
which depressed me. I had just rid myself of what I considered a
ghastly position and was temporarily unemployed when L.K. said to
me “Most people get up and go work everyday at a job they hate.” Even
though we were long past the horrors of the Great Depression, this
thought reverberated in my mind. There are, I feel, many lessons
from the Depression that are still valid today.
J.L. (not Joey Leguay) was tough, strong, intelligent, brave and beset
by hundreds of conflicts just with the business getting through life and
love each day. He had an issue with routine boredom as opposed to
adventure and excitement and another problem with most of the dull
people he met. He said “It is the contradictions in life which kill.” The
transit between the sublime one minute and the mundane the next is
hard for all of us to surmount. J.L. capsulated it in one remembered
phrase.
B.P. had a very low degree of education and experience but aspired to
be an intellectual and be respected in his business and social
encounters. Early on in life, he concocted his own “paradox” which
he applied to most questions that confronted him. It was simply “Yes
and no.” But it gave him an air of intelligence and accorded him a
suitable enigma upon which to base his judgment. His answer to most
inquiries was simply “Both yes and no.” Not very profound, but a
means of intellectual wingspreading.
Finally, there was N.G., a male manager who took over from B.K.,
who had been a particularly tough female manager to work with
because she, out of fear of losing her job, examined every last element
of what was presented to her by subordinates. N.G., taking her place,
allowed nearly everything to pass and taught me through example the
truism that “Men often let more things slip past them than women.”
Men are, in effect, much easier to work under and far easier to deceive
if one wishes to deceive, and, truthfully, most employees often do.
These were by far not the only guides I have had in life. I chose them
mainly because they expressed some of the simplest truths that I have
ever known in ways that will never be considered for posterity. Their
words are simple and honest, and I wanted to share them without the
baroque embellishment of literary eloquence.
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