“Better to be busy than to be busy worrying,” actress Angela Lansbury is quoted to have said.
I equally like this framing by Fred Rogers: “Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” It speaks to this time as the start of a new era, without any negative connotation. It reminds me of a level of acceptance I wrote down just after I heard comedian Eddie Izzard say it live on stage last year: “ I like to think of life as an adventure, like a roller coaster. Russell, which contains this Western Zen koan: “Nothing’s okay. I heart “I Heart Huckabees,” the film co-written and directed by David O. Good and bad, it's all the same: a Taoist parable to live by “Things could always be better, but things could always be worse,” is a line attributed to actress Marla Gibbs, of all people, famous for her role as a sassy but insightful housekeeper on the 1970s and ’80s sitcom “The Jeffersons.”
#Be strong everything will be fine plus
Personally I prefer Bob Marley’s “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing, cause every little thing’s gonna be alright.” Also directive, plus a call to appreciate the little things, like sunrises and bird song. There have been many happiness songs before and since (Pharrell, the Partridge Family), but McFerrin’s Grammy-winning tune has had the longest staying power, because it’s simple and directive. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”įor anyone alive in 1988, Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t worry, be happy” has been stuck in their head ever since. Now is the time for a more scientific and analytical approach, as the physicist Marie Curie said: “Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies,” written by Matt Charman and the Coen brothers, repeats variations of this wise exchange between characters: “Aren’t you worried?” “Would that help?”įor what use is our fear right now? “Worry is like a rocking chair: It gives you something to do but never gets you anywhere,” wrote humorist Erma Bombeck. “A life lived in fear is a life half lived,” declares a character in the 1992 Australian film “Strictly Ballroom,” the line attributed to the film’s director and co-writer, Baz Luhrmann. Similarly, a line from President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 inaugural address, to a nation paralyzed in the economic fear of the Great Depression, has endured its original meaning because “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” speaks to the psychology of all panic.
It’s also poignant now that coronavirus is invoking comparisons to world war. One of them, “Keep calm and carry on,” has grown in popularity over the years because its message is applicable beyond its original intent. It’s more important that their condensed insight holds us steady.Īhead of attacks on its cities during World War II, the British government issued and displayed three posters with messages written to boost morale and mentally prepare its civilians. Like a crow seeking shiny bits of enlightenment, I’ve indiscriminately snatched quotes from anywhere: books, songs, movies, speeches, articles, plays, poems, religious dogma, bumper stickers, graffiti, t-shirts, friends, family and strangers.īut it should be disclaimed that some quotes have their own journey at times their origin gets historically murky and the provenance dubious. And I turned to them this week, as we all face new struggles, looking for wisdom from the past to help the present.īelow are quotes I think speak to this time of coronavirus shutdowns and of health and economic fears.
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