Accidentals: Our Understanding of Proverbs

 

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Proverbs are timeless pieces of oral literature locally celebrated. In a sense, they are locally sourced to be locally used. The rich history separating the origins of the work from present times, makes it even difficult for the natives to grasp.

The time shift, creates a rift in our ability to understand proverbs. Without the oral education that justifies and clarifies their meanings, the advice are lost. We would be otherwise left wondering what they mean and for what purpose they came to be. Even more mysteriously is how they, somehow,  managed to travel all those years to, us, today, outliving many other supposedly golden nuggets of time.

Sadly, we find that the rift in our ability to decipher proverbs, to glean meaning out of them, grows larger with the spatial distance that separates our hometowns from theirs. Ultimately, they are locally sourced for local use.

It is interesting how capable we are of altering meanings of proverbs simply by being of different cultures. Somehow, in a quest for knowledge, we often succeed in projecting our own ideologies onto others' words.

A fresh look can be harmful in this context. But, often a fresh look is exactly what we need.