Life Is Too Short To Drink Bad Wine

I can't recall the time I was able to add a signature to an email, don't think it was back in the very early Demon days in the mid-1990s, anyways, since for my Internet use was a baby, and still, my email signature has ended the phrase:

Life is too short to drink bad wine.

Is it really a Winston Churchill quote, I don't think so, hang on .. [Googles] .. definitely didn't originate with Churchill, but of course he may have said it just like I am, it has a life affirming positive message.

Aha, potentially this 'misattribution' attribution would be more appropriate:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist

(Misattributed)

Often attributed to him, but not found in Goethe's works. The attribution, though, may come from translators' commentary on Goethe's West–Eastern Diwan, "The Book of the Cup-Bearer" (1819/1827), that refers to a poetic passage as deriving from Diez's 1811 translation of the Book of Kabus (Qabus): 

It comes to this, that it is a sin to drink wine. If though, then committest sin, commit it at least for the best wine, for otherwise wouldst though on one part commit sin, and on another drink bad wine. By God! that would be the most sorrowful among sorrowful things. [tr. Rogers (1890)] 

It so happens that wine-drinking is a sin. Hence, if you do commit this sin, do it at least with the best wine; otherwise, you'll commit the sin, on the one hand, and on the other, you'll drink bad wine. By God! That would be the sorriest of all sorry things. [tr. Ormsby (2019)] 

But why do I use it as that's the more interesting read?

I suspect, and have lived my life, that we are merely atoms grouped together without reason or rhyme and some have said that's such a dark and desolate approach to life. I see it as the complete opposite, that life is of such a wonder that every second should be lived with energy, kindness, and by living with as much kairos as possible [originally ancient Greek, kairos means 'the right, critical, or opportune moment'. ]

Life is too short.

I have absolutely no faith in the efficacy or hold with any moral stance that taking someone else's life is justified. It is such a miracle that someone lives at all and will (spoiler) end that taking on the arrogance and self privilege to end it for someone else is unthinkable and a total desertion of what it means to be human. Of course it is a struggle to live on a planet where others don't hold that view ... it's tough.

Life is too short.

But what to do with the life you have, well, don't fuck around, this is it and it's always later than you think. Another phrase that expresses similar thoughts would be

This is it, this is not a rehearsal

At every moment ponder, is that actually bad wine? Compare the experience to what you could be having, the experience you actually want. Wine implies a good time, but there is bad wine and it can hide the fact that you are drinking away the seconds, days, and years, on things you won't be looking back on with any form of affection.

• Working too hard, cut it back
• Hate the job you do, change it
• Not comfortable with a friend, move on
• Miss someone, call them
• Hanker for a different location, go visit others
• In a destructive relationship, get out
• Sad about something, face it

I don't mean to imply that any of the above are easy, life is short but it can also be hard, my heart goes out to you if you are stuck. I can't emphasise enough though, this is your one shot at life, grasp it.

Life IS too short so please DON'T drink bad wine.

And on that note, I am off to buy a lovely bottle of red wine ...

Further reading on killing:

• Violence Solves Nothing BUT ...
• An ethical dilemma - who would you kill?
• On Contemplating Suicide