Aphorisms
A saying, metaphor, advice, not even words are enough to stay in our heads and help us to understand detail by detail how we really experience life, but aphorisms do. It helps us to understand how clear, trustful, and helpful a statement can be when we pay attention to its meanings. That is why the aphorism exists.
It might not be clear for you here what I am saying, but don't worry, at the end of this blog post you will be able to understand what I meant by “staying in our heads and helping us to understand loud and clear, detail by detail, how our reality of life really is or could be experienced.”
The first time I heard, read this word was back in 2016 when I went to the FILBO for its initials in Spanish “Feria Internacional del Libro en Bogotá” in Bogotá, Colombia. In English “Bogotá International Book Fair,” which takes place every year at the end of April. I was there as I was discovering new books to read every year. I was going through the pavilions looking and scanning every book as much as I could. It was taking so much time, because I am the kind of book person who likes to click with books, until I get it. This small, brown kind of burgundy book titled Aphorism written by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, caught my attention.
At first, I did not understand what it meant, but it took me five minutes to figure it out. An aphorism is a poetic idea, a literary idea. It is a writing by means of which a sudden idea can be emitted, it looks like a telegram. It means that it is intended to express a principle in a concise, coherent, and apparently closed way. Of course, I was very much struck by this. The book I found was written in a complicated, amusing, but smart and interesting way. Every sentence written in that book dug deep into my brain. It got me thinking, questioning my life experience, situations we get into, everything that goes around existing, thinking, and doing. I bought the book and took it home with me.
After that, I did my research and found out that the term aphorism was used for the first time by Hippocrates. It was also used by Heraclitus of Ephesus, referring to a series of propositions related to symptoms and the diagnosis of diseases. This concept was later applied to physical science and later generalized to all kinds of principles. According to some authors, aphorisms never coincide with the truth, or are half truths. The ability of language to be able to hide itself or to shine has captivated many writers, who find a way to dazzle with their capacity for thought through the aphorism.
When we approach the different ways of thinking through language, we find the wonder of the aphorism, that thought smoothed over by the will to style. Like the metaphor in poetry, in language with philosophical purposes we have that concise and lapidary phrase that is the aphorism. The dictionary of the Spanish language defines the aphorism as a brief and doctrinal sentence that is proposed as a rule in a science or art.
The aphorisms, therefore, are propositions that seek to pronounce something coherently and concisely. It is also common for aphorisms to be confused with sayings, proverbs, axioms, maxims, and adages, among other types of expressions. In many cases, these words are used synonymously. However, they are not the same, they are different, they are not synonymous. Specifically, we can determine that, while the aphorism is the fruit or result of experience, all of the latter are not. This is so clear and obvious a truth that no verification of it needs to be carried out.
In a general way, I can say that an aphorism arises from experience, and over time, aphorisms have become a kind of literary genre or format, often with poetic intent. There are those who maintain that aphorisms resurfaced thanks to Twitter and other social networks that promote the freedom of expression of short texts. In this way, the number of people writing their thoughts in a few lines is multiplied by this time. People doing their catharsis in social media is common these days. They exposed things that they have experienced with a simple or complicated sentence. We call that aphorism.
An example of an aphorism is "What does not kill, strengthens", which can also be found as "What does not kill you, strengthens you" or "What does not kill me, strengthens me". This aphorism tries to convey a message of hope, highlighting the possibility of emerging stronger from a situation that causes harm.
Among the long list of existing aphorisms, there are some that have achieved great international fame thanks to the fact that they were expressed by illustrious figures, such as writers or politicians. Specifically, among the most significant are the following:
"Lost time is never found again" (Benjamin Franklin).
"Doubt is one of the names of intelligence" (Jorge Luis Borges).
“The future tortures us, the past chains us. This is why the present eludes us ” (Gustave Flaubert).
"The truth is not on the side of who shouts the most" (Rabindranath Tagore).
"The facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored" (T. Huxley).
"The cruelest lies are told in silence" (Robert Louis Stevenson).
"While the foolish decide, the intelligent deliberate" (Plutarch).
"What does not kill you makes you stronger" (Friedrich Nietzsche).
"Disguises do not disguise some men, but reveal them. Each one disguises himself as what he is inside" (Chesterton).
"Helping those who need it is not only part of duty, but of happiness" (Jose Marti).
"Benevolence does not mean tolerance of the mean, or conformity with the inept, but a will for good" (Antonio Machado).
Now, I do read when I want a couple of aphorisms from my book. Sometimes I read a random but shocking sentence from the book. The sentence always makes me realize that I have already experienced it or that I will be experiencing it. It also provides me with a clear, reasonable meaning behind it, that is why I try to wrap my head around it and think of it as a lesson that I will put into practice soon. When I gather with my friends and we put all of our energy into the book, we then pick a random sentence and spend hours trying to figure the meaning behind the sentence if we don't get it right away.
Aphorisms have changed the way I take the experience of life in the past, present, and future. If I have experienced something that I can put into words, something a little complicated but true, then I would write it down so my aphorism will be proven by other's experiences. If I could read other's aphorisms to prove it in my life, then I would be aware that it could also happen to me, I am always alert.
I am always reading and curious about aphorisms, they are my favorite kind of books. Have I got you interested in it, have you heard about aphorisms? If so, tell me your favorite ones - if you have not, will you give it a try and read, learn more about them?