“You’re your own worst enemy.”
As a professor and student advisor, my father spent a lot of time listening to people’s goals and their struggles on their way to meet them. Most often, these people would be highly critical, either of others or of themselves. My father would analyze their motives, character flaws and excuses as they made their case. More often than not —...
“Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest!”
“Why go looking for trouble?” Dad would ask. “Some trouble is sure to find you at some point in life, but only a fool makes himself a target by intentionally causing a commotion.” Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest is a familiar idiom, likening hornets to angry humans, dating back to the first half of the 1700s. In case you...
Begin the Beguine
“Begin the Beguine” was a popular song written by Cole Porter in 1934. To my father, it was yet another one-liner he’d toss into conversation for dramatic effect. My dad may have been an absent-minded professor, but he was a very intentional father. He never missed the opportunity to instill in us five children the high virtues of hard work,...
