Hunting for life’s quotes sums up half of what I am in one quarter of every year. That tells you how little I read quotes. I don’t do it for a living.

I do not know who made this particular one up. Let me know when you know, “Don't take life too seriously! Nobody gets out alive anyway”

Huh! I do very much get it. I do get it that life’s like food that’s cooking in a pot -of course even in a thousand degrees celsius flames or embers both in one. Despite the high temps torment that the pot and its leafy, meaty, fluidy or tuberous content endure, it wouldn’t bear the right to choose what spice goes in it -neither does the food in it. To leave us a quote that tells us that life’s not to be handled with baby gloves when it is lovely and not to be slammed with a sledge hammer when it’s playing up isn’t at all flattering. Despite my insatiable appetite for quotes, I hadn’t come across this one until today. Today I dilute this with mine, “Life is like food in a pot, the eater decides what spice goes in it.” Effectively, the chef draws and builds all the recipe they want for a cuisine, but will be cautious -always, not to overspice it; because the eater decides what spice enters their stomach and what one must not. It is between the food and the spice that the chef gets to know if they have one more happy customer or one to teach them a lesson of “what not to choose for me.” See the power of the eater over the chef? Enormous power. When the eater doesn’t give it a pass, the chef folds up the recipe paper, tears it down and trashes it and goes back to the drawing board.

That’s a long winded way to demonstrate that you don’t have to take your life seriously, but you must treat others' lives with utmost seriousness. Be careful though not to cling onto all these lines because, the quote simply means, allow laughter and mistakes into your life for that makes your life longer and, you will agree, there’s never shortage of laughter and mistakes in life, so one had better make these two a permanent home in their hearts.

What about, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away?” There are somehow more doctors in the market than there are apples, and there’s still a long demand for more of those surgical scrubs even as my quick-fix records show that our world produces more apples today than it did yesterday to match the increasing supply of patients. Aren’t we feeling ravenous for these apples to keep us healthy and to keep the doctors away?

Or are we not to take these quotes to mean what they say? No, we should. Proverbs have hidden meanings and need intelligent interpretations but quotes mean what they say except a proverb that says, “better late than never.” I can’t possibly think of what else this proverb could mean than, literally, “it’s never too late to arrive” or, “just come, you’re still on time.” It’s a perfect consolation for those who perennially never keep the promise of getting to where they should get to -in time. Once due to a logistical issue I had given up making it to a party that had everything for a party and the hostess on the other end gave me this consolation via text, “Better late than never.” Feeling consoled and encouraged not to give up the will to live for nearly being a MIA at a party that I had been a core co-planner for, I raced to the venue -only to find the last human shutting the venue door behind him. I would have been less crestfallen had I not come at all. For seventeen hours and twenty six minutes, I struggled to recover from the thunderbolt. See how quickly I recover and forgive? Or does it mean I just don’t learn? Come-what-may, you never take a proverb (so) literally, even when it’s such a humble-looking proverb. It could humble you with it and your whole world. Next time I get sent a proverb for encouragement, I’ll go to the mirror and ask my twin what the mood on my face looks like -before I act on a proverb. Some are booby traps. Or a set up.

And so, it’s so fair that, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” The Frenchman Charles-Guillaume Étienne was so right on this. Either he always got judged for everything that he tried to do or only got criticism for what he had done. I suspect his dad. His dad and mine must share something in common. They are police. You have to be on the wrong for them to come to you. I looked up the Frenchman's biography and gutted that his curtains fell one hundred and fifty years before I came to be (please note that the result of any calculation you attempt here won’t give you my own age) but an artist’s black and white impression of how Mr Étienne would have looked like is nothing short of a truth-telling-brain with bright humour locked in it.

What was Margaret Thatcher thinking with, “If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman." ...?

Many say she hit the nail on the head. But of all the billions of those who say so, none of them is a man. When they come across this Maggie line, men turn to the next page faster than they blink before they are caught reading the quote and that is totally understandable or it'll be tantamount to “scoring own goal” because men are so culpable before their other gender.

What flattering quote has got you thinking or put you in the wrong place? Whatever one it is, you should ride on a more serious road of life because life itself doesn’t forgive you when you end up in the wrong place because you overlooked a signpost. Albeit, do not throw away the less serious aspects of life because that’s the penultimate condiment that sweetens rather than spices you up and it’s what ultimately makes you feel good.