I am becoming more and more convinced that we as Americans enjoy empty and meaningless phrases as long as they sound nice or make us feel good.  The reason for this brief soap box began earlier today and was furthered by the trite phrases on the inside of my valentine’s candy.

If we were to leave the empty and shallow Valentine’s cards that make up most of the selection in any store, we would still be overwhelmed by the trite phrases that delude our senses other places.

Today I ate a couple of pieces of my dove / caramel candy that I received from Linda and realized that inside there were some “promises message”.  Not only do I get a great piece of candy but I get an inspirational thought to live by.  The three that I noticed (the many others were scarfed down before realizing they had little notes on them) were:

• Live your dreams
• Follow your instincts
• listen to your heart and dance

I understand these are typical sentiments in this American “follow your dream” culture that we live in, but they seem trite and pretty stupid at their core.

Based on the dreams that Ann Marie has shared with us in her blogs, I don’t think she necessarily wants to live all her dreams.  I know my dreams are not made up of material I would want to live.  One might say, dreams is not speaking of what you dream of at night but what you long for or “dream” for in your life.  If we speak of those things, an equivalent statement might be, “do all the things you want without taking into consideration anyone else.”  Maybe I’m a bit cynical but I don’t think so. 

Follow your instincts . . . Really.  Most people have terrible instincts and from a spiritual standpoint, our instincts are to sin most often, and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to follow that.

Listen to your heart and dance is just stupid.  For one imagine anyone actually doing this.  I assume that this is metaphorical, but I’m not sure what it would mean if it were.  I would personally prefer to listen to some good music and dance if I were to dance at all.  For one I’m an overweight white man that should probably just listen to music instead of attempting to do the bee bop to it.

The final odd phrase of the day was, “Our car dealership is the best in the world, and anywhere else.”  What does that mean?  Where else is there?  What profit comes by that slogan?  Are you really going to get more people if you tell us that you are the best car dealer outside the world?  I think that based on the principle of it, I will never buy a car from them because of their ridiculous slogan.