Tigerly Advice

I subscribe to several listservs from my alma mater's alumni network, principally those that provide career networking advice.  These usually include job postings and questions from people looking for advice.  Occasionally, something asked, or something answered, will set the group afire. 

I admit it... it is almost the only time it is entertaining or, even, of interest as most of the job postings are in NYC and not from the kind of industries where I would want to work.

This week, someone asked for morning rituals of *successful* people which led quickly to a discussion of the meaning of successful as well as a lengthy post about morning pooping.

Yup, you read that right... one person wrote emphatically about the importance of the morning poop for highly successful people, particularly as one ages.

I admit that I thought it was moderately entertaining... but there were those on the group that thought it was offensive ... so then we had a plethora of responses regarding offense, poop, and what a tiger can abide.

This was my favorite response:

Heaven preserve me from littleness and pleasantness and smoothness. Give me great glaring vices, and great glaring virtues, but preserve me from the neat little neutral ambiguities. Be wicked, be brave, be drunk, be reckless, be dissolute, be despotic, be an anarchist, be a suffragette, be anything you like, but for pity's sake be it to the top of your bent. Live fully, live passionately, live disastrously. Let's live, you and I, as none have ever lived before.'

Violet Trefusis to Vita Sackville-West, October 1918
potentially, that is.

I have no idea who Violet or Vita are...and I have no time to research it, but I share the tidbit because I don't have the energy to write anything else or finish the many drafts in my folder.

Also, I really did enjoy it.  I hope you do, too.