Wilde words of wisdom

Oscar Wilde was an Irish novelist, playwright, and poet. He's known as one of the great masters of sarcasm. Let's have some fun with a few of his famous quotes.

"It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information."

Don't you feel we've been burdened with far too much "important" information about everything?

Soon there will be a new health condition called, infoitis, which will be caused from addictions to Safari, Google and all other Internet search engines. Symptoms include headaches from trying to process the overwhelming information that enters the brain. The inability to speak properly will be a late stage of the condition. This will occur because the overloaded brain sends hundreds of informational details to the mouth at one time causing incoherent speech patterns. People diagnosed with severe infoitis will be sent to therapy where they will detox by sitting in a room for 12 hours a day staring at a blank wall.

In my next life, I'm going to earn a degree in ignorance. There will be no classes to attend and nothing to learn. When someone provides me with any information, I'll simply say, "I didn't know that."

How about this one from Wilde? "Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

We hear people encourage us to be unique. Let's be honest, for that to be possible, we'd have to be in a mental coma or live in isolation so as to not attain any influences from anyone who himself has been influenced by everyone else. Put us all in a big room and you couldn't tell one of us from the other. We talk in the "now" language, think in common thoughts, dress in modern trend, and do what's popular to be accepted in social circles.

Last week my daughter told me she wants to be weird. I said go for it. If we can't be unique, then just be weird. The problem then would be if too many people become weird, then weird will become the new normal.

I'm going to dance to the full moon, sing out of my open car window, and chase a butterfly with no hope of catching it. Please don't join me. One makes weird. Two makes normal.

Here's another omen from Oscar. "There are only two tragedies in life: One is not getting what one wants and the other is getting it."

Maybe we should just be happy with whatever comes our way. Learn to like what food is on our plate. Be grateful we have something to eat. Don't complain about a rainy day. Take delight in the skies watering the earth, especially in summer when flowers and trees welcome a good long drink after some blistering hot days.

So now I have to stop wanting anything. Let's think about that. With no desires and no expectations, I will never be disappointed, and since I don't want anything, I'll be happy with nothing. What a permanent cure for stress!

More Wilde words. "A pessimist: who when given the choice of two evils, chooses both."

I've encountered too many "woe is me" people in my life. They think that every decision they make will bring unwanted results and no matter what happens, the sky is always falling.

"I ate the cabbage and the pasta for dinner so I know I'm going to be sick." "I have half my money in the bank and the other half under my mattress. You watch. The banks will go broke and one day when I'm not home, somebody will break into my house and steal my cash." "I have to decide if I should drive to California and take the chance of falling asleep and of having a head-on collision with a tractor-trailer truck or I fly and the plane might crash into the Rocky Mountains."

Finally, here's my favorite wit from Wilde. "I think God, in creating man, overestimated his ability."

So if I believe the Perfect One made the Imperfect Me, there must be no obligation whatsoever that I do anything right. And I don't care if God made a mistake with me or he's just having fun laughing every time I screw something up.

I'll just look up to the heavens and laugh along with him.

Rich Strack can be reached at katehep11@gmail.com.