Poet Thomas Gray wasn’t wrong when he is said to have coined the phrase ‘ignorance is bliss’ way back in 1742.
One has to wade through 10 stanzas of his poem ‘Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College’ to ‘blisslessly’ get to the ‘bliss’ bit in the second last verse.
Then it ends off with: “Tis folly to be wise”. Go figure!
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The Eton ‘toff’ should have said that in the first place.
While one would rather be ‘blissfully’ ignorant of what Gray was really rambling on about nearly 300 years ago, those three simple words certainly have relevance today when we are bombarded with SO much information that one has a hankering to become an ostrich.
Guptas, Malema, Zuma, state capture, racism, land grabs, bodies in fridges, babies hacked to death, mentally ill left to die, listeriosis, Liverpool losing… enough already!
Alas, there seems to be no escape from the big, bad world… not even on the golf course.
Under normal circumstances, golf is such a frustrating game that it requires all one’s focus, so much so that every woe in the world pales into insignificance when that #@%! little dimpled ball rarely goes where you want it to.
Just when you are ‘blissfully’ stewing over a bad shot, a playing partner’s cellphone rings!
Then it’s back to reality in one little jingle.
A local attorney – who moonlights as a DJ – is probably the main culprit and has now prompted his buddies to take drastic action.
Sitting around the table on the 19th after a game last Saturday, a group who call themselves the ‘Roughclearers’ came up with a wise strategy to help their fellow member to get over his cellphone addiction.
Let’s face it, that’s what it is. It’s easier for some to give up drinking or smoking than their cellphone.
The first step will be to search the player/addict before the game and confiscate his phone until he has bought a mandatory round of drinks afterwards.
If this doesn’t work and he is found with a second phone stashed away in his golf bag, he will be sent to… ‘cellphone rehab’.
This involves being handcuffed to a table while caring fellow golfers sit nearby, holding his phone up when it rings… just out of his reach.
When ‘cold turkey’ tremors subside, he will be forced to join ‘Cellphones Anonymous’.
The only difference to ‘Alcoholics Anonymous’ is that addicts can’t start their introduction with the world: “Hello”.
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