Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Your cheating heart will tell on you …


Idiom: To cut the corner

Sometimes cutting corners is okay. It might simply mean finding a quicker way to do something. However, there is often a lost of quality in the work achieved. Sometimes, the idiom “to cut a corner” has a negative connotation. It simply means cheating.

Runners know all about cutting corners. There is nothing more annoying than seeing a runner up ahead cutting a corner on a clearly marked course.

You cut a corner and win; you cheat and achieve your goal. What have you got? A goal and a lost soul. I’m not talking about hell here folks! I am talking about not being true to your innermost self.

The prophet Jesus of Nazareth put it well “What does it profit a person if he/she gains the whole world and yet loses his/her soul”.

Shakespeare took it up in King Lear when Polonius advises Laertes “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man” (Act 1, sc 3).

No comments: