BRIEF CASE: Life is Contrary

Gosh, life is way too confusing — first there are the manufacturers and advertisers jumbling up my poor mind with their plethora of choices about which flour (fortified, multigrain, soya-enriched), which bread (white, brown or wholemeal), which soap (with glycerine, moisturiser or exfoliating particles?), which toothpaste (with or without fluoride?), which TV (how many inches? Plasma screen or LCD?) and which washing machine (front loading? Top loading?) to buy. On top of that the stress of trying to decide which caller tune for my mobile. Help! If I don't decide fast they'll sms me 30 more options. Life in earlier times must have been easier, I think blearily, head full of decisions made, not made, to be made. Tea or coffee? With ginger or cardamom?

Decisions, decisions — hang them all — I settle down to read a book of proverbs instead. Proverbs. Where would we be without them — those pithy sentences which sum up the accumulated wisdom of the human race? But very soon it becomes clear that whoever they were who handed us down these proverbs were equally big on choices. No one-size-fits-all wisdom for them — they certainly didn't believe in putting all their eggs in one basket.

Go figure these. Does a stitch in time save nine? Or is it better to go with 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'? Is it more prudent to play safe and thus not land in sorry circumstances or should one go with the nothing ventured, nothing gained philosophy? Do opposites attract or is it birds of a feather that flock together? Should you strike while the iron is hot or would it be wiser to look before you leap? Should I trip through life happily, secure in the belief that the best things in life are free, or should I look suspiciously upon free lunches and other freebies? Is forewarned truly forearmed or is it okay to go with the flow and cross one's bridges once one comes to them? And count those drafted chickens too, only after they are hatched?

And after that, does one call in many hands to make light work of the chickens or will too many cooks spoil the murg tikka masala? The truth ain't no easy answers. Life's contrary, that's what.