One of the craziest ways people try to show off their wisdom is by creating a phrase that contains two ideas with the second idea being only a reversal of the first. Here’s an example:
“It’s not your eye that hurts, it’s your hurt you’re eyeing.”
This is not a terrible sentence. It’s an awkward, illogical, nonsensical, bland, trite, ridiculous, and annoying sentence. (Read that in the voice of the most ornery, crotchety old man voice you can imagine.) The person is supposedly trying to say your eye doesn’t hurt, but if it does, it’s only because you’re focusing on the pain. Doesn’t that require there to be pain in the first place? Then where does the hurt come from, I wonder. Anyway, the general idea reminds me of the old, hilarious dad joke of saying, “I can make you forget about your hurt eye,” and then dear, ol’ dad kicks you in the shin. If he was a doctor, you’d take him to court.
Malpractice.
Which reminds me of malapropisms, though these are not malapropisms, these idea reversals. For one thing, malapropisms catch our attention because they’re funny. A funny mix-up. Using one word which sounds like another in the wrong context. Like when Uncle Fred describes when he was abducted by aliens and he can’t quite spit it out.
“That was the night they took me aboard the murder ship, er, the murther ship. No, no, no, the MOTHER ship.”
Malapropisms are fun, but idea reversals are not. A better way to say this:
“It’s not your eye that hurts, it’s your hurt you’re eyeing.”
Would be so:
“If you don’t focus on the pain in your eye, it might diminish a little. In the meantime, here’s an Ibu.”
How much nicer would it be to hear that, rather than someone denying your pain and trying to be wise about it?
Then there’s this crusty old chestnut:
“Successful people don’t count their mistakes, they make their mistakes count.”
Ugh! Can you hear the misplaced narcissism on that person? They wanted to say, “I’m so wise. My every word,” but they came up with that ridiculous idea reversal instead. It doesn’t even make sense! Who goes around making mistakes on purpose? Not any sane person. Who goes around trying their worst? If any, very few. No, we try our best.
In fact, the majority try to learn from their mistakes rather than making them again, or making them “count,” whatever that’s supposed to mean. We try to learn from other people’s mistakes as well, and that’s why we read. Read about the failures of another and you don’t have to feel the pain yourself. Read someone else’s poorly constructed thought and you don’t have to repeat the process, or become a cynical old man who writes about other people’s quotes.
Xenosthesia.com 