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A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss
28 Plays20 days ago
In this episode Andrew and Patrick discuss the dual meaning of this proverb, how staying physically active can prevent health problems, how effort and hard work keeps things from breaking down, and the benefits of staying in one place and putting down roots.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Theme
00:00:00
Speaker
and the brave new world begins when all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins as surely as water will wet us as surely as fire will burn the gods of the coffee book headings with terror and slaughter return
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining us for another episode of the Copybook Headings podcast. If you're a new listener, just joining us for the first time. This show is inspired by the poem by Rudyard Kipling called The Gods of the Copybook Headings. And every week we take an old saying, proverb, or maxim, and we break it down to see what we can learn from it and see if there's any ancient wisdom that's still relevant today from these old proverbs.
Post-Holiday Routines Discussion
00:00:50
Speaker
I am your host, Patrick Payne, and with me, as always, is my co-host, Andrew Stevens. Andrew, how are you, man?
00:00:56
Speaker
I'm doing all right. How are you? Doing good. ah The holidays are over. Yep. Yep. It's kind of like, it's almost like they were such a crazy party all the time that I'm like glad to be back to work. I don't know, get that feeling.
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, I do. i do yeah it was ah yeah It was kind of a long break. like just I was ah had work. I'm remote, so yeah so you know I was at the desk, but it was pretty quiet. um Not a lot of client work. So it was is more like I was on call, and so I had a lot of lot of family time, and is it was good to get back to the routine. I'll put it that way. so yeah Yeah, it totally is. And I'm not really a routine guy normally. I'm almost like, you know, when things are changing, I think that's exciting. But I don't I didn't know how much I did like my routine until it's like, completely gone for a while. And then you're like, Oh, it actually is kind of nice and stable to have it back.
00:01:56
Speaker
Yeah. um But yeah, we we I think we talked about it a little
Exploring the Proverb: A Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss
00:01:59
Speaker
bit last week. We took a trip out to the coast. My daughter like fell in love with the Pacific Northwest. She's like, I don't know if I said this last time, but she's like kind of a bookworm. you know So she's like sitting by the fire, petting a cat, reading a book is like with the rain outside. It's like her dream come true. yeah She's like, I want to live here. yeah You seem like it'd be a perfect fit for you. But you had a good time.
00:02:22
Speaker
I can relate. but That's what I aspire to. that's That's what like a good retirement looks like for me is sitting looking out the window at the waves and reading a book and falling asleep in a chair. Yeah. There you go. that Sounds great.
00:02:37
Speaker
Maybe getting up doing a little leather work and the, you know, and some walks on the beach. Yeah. Perfect. Cool, man. Yeah. Um, we have a good proverb this week. This is one you selected. You want to, want to tell us about it? Yeah. Just kind of looking through our lists and, um, this one caught my eye, I think.
00:03:00
Speaker
a little bit with ah you know New Year, New Year's resolutions. I was looking for some New Year's proverbs and you know I didn't look super hard, but nothing was really satisfying. But this one this this one thought could relate. I think there's some other meanings too, but without further ado, a rolling stone gathers no moss. So that's the proverb.
00:03:23
Speaker
Yeah, it's a fairly common one. I think this is one most people have heard. I'd heard it. Yeah. um ah What about you? Is this one you were used to hearing growing up? um You know, I don't know if i ever people like in my life were saying it, but it was definitely there in in the culture, in the popular consciousness, you know, it's it's ultimately where things like, you know, the Rolling Stones band and Rolling Stone magazine and stuff that all relates to this. so um So in that regard, it's familiar, I think, to a lot of people. ah But a little bit about this one, and this one even has its own Wikipedia article. it's
00:04:07
Speaker
It goes back that far, first credited to a guy named Publilius Cyrus. So it goes back to to Rome. So it was in Latin one. A Latin one and then kind of like redone later in Europe in a different version, but also still on Latin. and And I think there's some French versions. It's also as far as like an early English version comes from our friend John Haywood in his Proverbs collection, ah which I think we were talking about it last week. I do I do have a like a facsimile copy. I did find one. Nice. ah the The trick with the the challenge with this one, though, it's not really like indexed.
00:04:54
Speaker
And as you can imagine in the 1500s, books were a little different. So it's like, it's a big long poem of rhyming couplets and he's just kind of works in these proverbs and thankfully they're italicized so you know which ones are the actual proverbs. But you can't really search for, at least in book form, maybe I need to get a PDF. You can only search for the the proverbs themselves. Anyway.
00:05:22
Speaker
he had a version of this too. And so um but I guess I went for this one because my first thought when I when i hear this one is like, if if you're moving, right, if you're moving your You're not gathering moss, which is bad. Having moss all over you is bad. You want to be moving and clean and and you know streamlined. and So airodynamic yeah, it makes me think of like you know the new year and getting out with there with your goals and your resolutions and and not being um sedentary, I guess. um there's I think there's some other interpretations, but we like what about you when you when you think of this one, what comes to mind?
00:06:08
Speaker
Uh, yeah, same thing. Uh, motion, motion is the lotion, right? They talk about how you want to, you want to move. And it's, and I actually have some kind of one of the, I, we I have experience about that. We can talk about here in a minute, but yeah, how mostly having to do with health, having to do with energy or vitality or um inertia, momentum, that kind of thing where you're going, you're not going to get rusty
Staying Active: Personal Stories and Health
00:06:30
Speaker
at things. You're keeping up on stuff, that sort of thing. That's kind of what came to mind for me. Yeah, exactly. Um, I think.
00:06:38
Speaker
One you know kind of early, um I guess, so so the the translation of the original Latin one is, people who are always moving with no roots in one place or another avoid responsibilities and cares.
00:06:57
Speaker
And I think that's kind of the sense that this one had for a long time. It's is's kind of being being rootless and being... um So it's kind of a a kind of negative one. h Like you don't put down your roots, you don't...
00:07:15
Speaker
Um, you don't contribute. You're just a smooth stone rolling through town kind of thing. So interesting. So something I hadn't thought about. I'd never thought of that. So that in that case, the moss is good. You want moss. You want, you want life growing on you. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, that's interesting. Yeah. I can see, I could see both, both sides of that. Um, what I, I mentioned, what I thought of initially is these last couple of years, I've been battling some, some health issues. I've had a couple of surgeries and stuff and.
00:07:45
Speaker
and I'd had you know back and neck problems for years, but probably two, two and a half years ago, i was my daily my weekly routine was very active. like I did jiu-jitsu a couple times a week. I'd go to the gym and lift a couple times a week. There was even like a boxing class they had at the gym once in a while that I would pop in and do that too. so I was just like constantly moving.
00:08:07
Speaker
And I was still battling these neck issues and stuff until finally I went and had a surgery done and I was laid up for months and then everything just fell apart. like yeah it just it It just fell apart. And it was about the same time I'm turning 40 and I'm like, what is going on? like Just a few months of like bed rest and hanging out and not doing anything.
00:08:30
Speaker
I'm still recovering from this is like a year and or more later, or I'm not back to where I was. ah The neck is better from the surgery, but I'm like, I'm not like everything is harder. I go roll a little bit in jiu-jitsu and it's like, ah, ah and that hurts more. It's like before before I was like, I was doing this all the time. So that's what came to mind for me is with health and especially as you're aging, if you can keep the movement going and the activity level high,
00:09:00
Speaker
I think you're you're not going to gather that, the bad moss. Yeah, and they and right. there it's it's a It's common enough that it's kind of a kind of a joke. you know like the guy The guy who retires and you know dies shortly after he retires because he's just kind of sitting around, he's not active anymore, um or at least is too Too creaky to really start moving again if he stops and so yeah, you you want to keep moving you want to that's something something my dad does that I appreciate he's a good example as he's like basically his retirement is Seeing his personal trainer a couple times a week and nice and and working out and stuff and so that like that staying active is is important and
00:09:52
Speaker
Yeah, i yeah um I love that man, especially having a personal trainer, ah not even ah just only as you age, but I think it's a really good idea for a lot of retired folks because typically retired folks have a hard time staying active and usually they have money. So if if you're like, it's a good way to spend a little bit of it.
00:10:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's and that's that's what we talk about. like I mean, I can't think of a better way to spend your retirement money than on staying active and and keeping your body in as best shape you can. that That's a great ah great investment. 100%, especially when you figure you know the cost of a broken hip or something you know in a surgery and all that. like If you can just stay a little bit more active and avoid a fall or avoid something bad,
00:10:37
Speaker
and heart health and energy level and all sorts of stuff. i mean the The benefits are endless. i Good for you, Dad, man. um but yeah ah it's it i mean Even at my not that old age, it's ah it's already starting to I'm starting to notice that when I'm active and moving around,
00:10:56
Speaker
that kind of motion begets more motion, whereas sitting around begets more sitting around. Yeah. And then your body starts to kind of just get used to it and you start growing into the couch. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to, you know, doing the the the New Year's resolution, so I'm back at the gym.
00:11:18
Speaker
ah And yeah, i've been I've been going last year, I was mostly just doing like the cardio stuff, but this year I was like, well, I'm gonna try and get back into into the weights, it's been a while. nice And man, man that that atrophied fast. I'm there doing very, like fortunately, you know i'm I'm old, so I don't have to worry about the,
00:11:44
Speaker
So not to worry about the pride of it with yeah all the young people all the young people like the the college girls squatting more than me next to them.
00:11:55
Speaker
But yeah, we'll we'll see how much of it I get back. We'll see. But fortunately, the knees are happy in there. and So that part's going great. That's great. It is funny, though, that the pride thing is totally real. Because I remember before, I'd be like, no, I've got to lift more. Now I'm just like, I don't care. like I'm going to lift as much as my shoulder can handle. And if it starts popping and clicking on me, I'm done. Exactly.
00:12:17
Speaker
but Yeah, and I've got stairs to go up and down. i don't i don't have time to I don't have time to overdo it at the gym. Absolutely. Oh my gosh. Yeah, seriously. Just one day of like being hurt from you know causes all sorts of havoc when you're in the stage of life that we are. but um But yeah, I kind of want to talk a little bit about the other side of that. That was kind of an interesting piece that I thought is probably new it was new to me and probably new to a lot of our listeners, um not to be a rambling man, as it were. Yeah.
00:12:48
Speaker
yeah What do you think of that? um
00:12:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think um ah think a lot of this is around like being um kind of the expectations in in the the broader society, in in Rome, and in in Europe in general, in the medieval. and afterwards kind of eras, I mean, up until pretty recently, I guess, like, um, your measure was a lot, you know, largely reputation. And that meant where you lived around your family, around people, you know, families that your your family has lived around for, for years and years and years. So, um, being, being a productive, a productive person is, was valuable and, um,
00:13:44
Speaker
and kind of a status thing, I guess. So, you know, this like other versions of this, let's see here. um There's another one that is basically like ah a frequently replanted tree or a tree that, um tree that yeah yields less fruit than, let's see here, sorry.
00:14:13
Speaker
I'm trying to, I'm trying to read the Latin here. So, planta, kuai, saipus, unquote. Yeah. So basically like a freak, this version is a frequently replanted tree. um Doesn't, ah doesn't produce as much, right? Yep. For those of our listeners who don't know, Andrew speaks Latin. So that's, he's trying to translate it in his head. Give him a break. Okay.
00:14:36
Speaker
um And, and, ah and then another, like another version, like a Scottish version in the 1800s. um kind of tick took the moss in the sense of ah like cutting Pete moss in the bogs. all yeah And so basically like you can't you you can't even bother to spend your day, to spend a day cutting cutting this moss for you know fuel for the winter. right You can't bother gathering moss. You're not really useful to the community. So yeah, these these senses, I think. I think overwhelmingly looking at it like this is the sense that it was it was meant in and um the way people understood it for for centuries. Yeah, the the tree one resonates. We had we planted a few apple trees this year and.
00:15:32
Speaker
When you put a little sapling in the ground and you have a dog, the dog thinks it looks like a stick sticking out of the ground and dogs like sticks. And so my dog pulled this little apple tree out of the ground like seven times. And I was like trying everything and she's a clever dog and everything I tried, she'd figure out a way around it.
00:15:50
Speaker
Finally, I just put chicken wire around it, and I staked it down and went nuts. It's fortified it, yeah. Yeah, that seemed to work. But by the time I did it, the one of the trees was just dead. like It was gone. So I think one of them survived. It's winter now, so we'll see if it rebounds in the spring. I think it was looking OK. But the other one was for sure dead. So yes, if you plant a tree too many times, it won't take root. And you know there's there's a lesson there, too. If you're bouncing around too much, I mean,
00:16:18
Speaker
i'm a bad offender of this. we we My family, i'm I've always like you know been on the lookout for the new adventure, and we bounced around, and and it does kind of put stress on your kids and your family, and it's tougher to to have that that state that stability that you and I were just talking about, that routine. And it's hard, especially for kids, um and and some more than others. even even if Like me, I'm a little bit more adventurous type. I don't mind that as much, but you don't you can't pick what kind of kids you have, and they might
00:16:49
Speaker
be a little bit more on the other side where they need a little bit more of that stability. But I think all kids do, but I mean, some more than others. So so yeah, I mean, I think that's sound advice as well.
00:17:02
Speaker
Yeah, i I wonder about, i was thinking I've been thinking about that, you know, just the the idea of, you know, the the ancestral home and and whether that's, you know, you're talking about a house or ah or a town or something, right?
Family, Stability, and Modern Mobility
00:17:18
Speaker
And how that's very difficult to to do now.
00:17:23
Speaker
It used to be much more common um when you made your living from the land to be connected to the land. um And they still have the issues of inheritance and stuff, right? Like if you have too many sons, you gotta...
00:17:40
Speaker
send them off to the army or the church or whatever. But yeah um but really, I mean, that's that's pretty rare now. And people people making money off their off their land or people who are, I guess, wealthy enough that they can stay in one place and don't have to. But for anyone else, um you've kind of had to go where the work was. You had to go where the opportunities are. And maybe now it's just starting to shift. ah We could maybe move back depending, you know, with with remote work and everything people have been in the last five, 10 years, a lot more free to, to uproot away from work and go where they actually want to live. h um But I don't know, and it's, it's, I think it's kind of a foreign thing to, to most people. And I don't, I don't know if it's something and we can get back. So like, well, how do you get,
00:18:36
Speaker
um Is that sense lost to to Americans, like now that we don't have that ah chance, do we miss it? I don't know what that looks like. yeah it's So it's just something I've been thinking about. I don't know if it's something you've considered. I mean, probably since you've moved around a lot like I have. Yeah.
00:18:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, for sure have and um ah we we talked about this a little bit last week with Michael Peroni, we had him on. Yeah, we talked about how like, it'd be cool to build something for your family have like that family business or your kids could have a place to work if they wanted to. um Yeah, I don't want my kids to move on. I'd like to have our little town that we moved in to be kind of our our family town going forward and have our kids live nearby. and But you know they're going to marry people from other families, and their family might want them nearby too. So unless they marry someone from the town, which you know could happen. So yeah, I mean, it's tough. but But yeah, like you said, who knows? Because history, if there's the one constant, it's changed, right? And so we have seen that drift away the last couple of generations, but there's no reason why it can't come back.
00:19:44
Speaker
the the The remote work is a great point because that's actually what brought me to this town. I just was you know i was living in a bigger city working from my house. There was no office there. I was working for a big company in a big city.
00:19:56
Speaker
sitting in my ah home office and I was like, well, if I can live anywhere I want, why don't I live where I want? you know and so We just started thinking, where do I want to go? you know where If we could live anywhere, where would we be? and so We were just looking around and we had a few different criteria and we settled on this little town of 900 people in Idaho. It's been great. This is yeah is where we're at now. so but But yeah, man, I i mean, ah having that that kind of central place where where your family is, and friends and my kids are kind of going to be especially the younger ones are going to experience something that I didn't because I moved around, not just as an adult, but as a kid, too. I mean, their teachers remember their older siblings, and they're they like, you know, yeah, we've had all the pain kids coming through, right? And then
00:20:43
Speaker
They remember them and then they have their same little friends growing up and all the people in church and everyone kind of knows everyone. And we've only been here a few years, but we've already started to see that. And we're like, man, this is ah kind of a kind of a special thing. Yeah. but you What about you guys? You ah kind of where you want to be permanently? I know you kind of toy toyed with the idea of moving.
00:21:05
Speaker
Uh, yeah. And that's still kind of on my mind and I'm still up for it. So I guess not, I guess we don't have, you know, kids, your kids are still young though. They're still young. So we've got a little bit of time that we could figure it out. I guess, yeah, maybe more, maybe more than, you know, depending depending on how, how the kids are and, um, how attached they are to things like you said. Um,
00:21:32
Speaker
But yeah, I mean, but the question is where and I don't know that we've got a great answer to that. Like Utah is great. um you know have my My larger family has a lot of history here and, you know, extended relatives that I but i never see are around here. and no yeah but um But our particular town is, we're I mean, we're kind of like in the middle of a pretty fairly dense area. And I think we both like being a little more closer to ah closer to nature, closer to some outdoor adventure stuff. So, you know, we think about the Northwest a lot since that's where I grew up.
00:22:12
Speaker
And, uh, my wife likes it a lot up there, but I don't know. It's, I guess another, the other aspect is, you know, when you think of the, you know, the sleepy countryside in Europe type type thing, um, yeah there's a little, it feels like that's not really a thing here in, in the U S it feels like, you know, state to state politics are so different and, and, uh, and just, uh,
00:22:42
Speaker
any, you know, real I mean, just real estate in general is is pretty crazy, especially in the Western US. So it feels it feels ah discouraging right now thinking of of trying to move somewhere that we want to be more permanently and have kind of the spread we wish we had and and you know, build the house and that all that stuff. I don't know, man, with with your house, I mean, you own your house where you're at, don't you? So you, but I mean, that i'm not along that Wasatch front, anywhere if you sell, you could basically retire, can't you? Same way the house prices are going.
00:23:19
Speaker
Well, yeah yeah, yeah, it depends. Like the West Coast just ekes it out a little worse than in here. That's true. Yeah, it's been it has blowing my mind looking at some of those some of those house prices. And it makes me kind of wonder about you know how the the next generation is going to make it. so But well we'll see how things go. And and ah kind of going back to the proverb, I think,
00:23:45
Speaker
um you know, but the first meaning, the kind of more common contemporary meaning, ah you know, maybe just keeping keeping things in motion can help with that. If, you know, staying staying not just physically active, but mentally and for work and all the things, as long as you're you're continually moving and continually doing stuff,
00:24:11
Speaker
better things can happen, right? So and that's probably ah definitely a ah lesson I want my kids to learn as they grow up because that's something I didn't always get when I was a young adult, you know, I'd sit around for days, play video games or do whatever if I didn't have anything to do. Like, sweet, I got nothing to do. But it's like, good things really do happen when you're active.
Instilling Habits and Family Activities
00:24:32
Speaker
Yeah, I i i sat down and and played an old video game like I found like an old computer game I enjoyed when I was like a teenager.
00:24:39
Speaker
And I was playing that for a while, you know, neglecting some of my goals here. But man, I... I used to just be able to play that for hours and hours and hours. um Like we'd get yeah home from church on Sunday, I'd fire up the computer and just play until dinnertime. And yeah and now I'm just like, man, how can't I can't afford that much ah that much time on something like that. It's just a very different mindset I can't go back to. Yeah, for sure. for sure it's um as you As you age, that definitely changes. so
00:25:12
Speaker
um yeah i i mean i think ah
00:25:19
Speaker
um Yeah, like I said, it's it's an one that I would want to instill in my kids. It's tough, though, because like you said, kids are just a little wired a little different, like they'll just play for hours. um What are your thoughts on and teaching that to kids? I know but part of my thought is you got to be a little bit forgiving of them because they are kids and kids are just going to have to learn that on their own. But any any thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, ultimately,
00:25:47
Speaker
like with With how distraction, like heavy our culture is and media and stuff, seeing seeing a kid be hyper-focused on something, i'd I would actually really think that'd be awesome. you know like even if it's something i mean you know my My oldest, she'll just sit down and draw and stuff and and she's still pretty young, but I could see her when she's a little bit older just sitting and doing that for hours and I would i really hope she does. and um because you know you you kind of you explore one thing maybe you burn out on it you move to another thing as a kid and you're learning about it we're learning what you like learning what you're good at um and and not bouncing around immediately I think is is good and and not having to go by the clock just letting yourself kind of naturally explore something and and have fun with it so um I hope
00:26:42
Speaker
I hope my kids have that kind of focus on um things that they like. Yeah, yeah for sure. And and you know for for kids, like play is kind of their work. So yeah it's kind of important to remember that. You do want to teach them good work ethic and everything, but you got to remember that playing is what they're going to be doing most of the time. And seeing them you know engaged in some passionate play is is a good a good thing for for their development, ultimately. and And like you said, as you age, you kind of just naturally drift away from that. um and you can't I mean, I can't sit and play video games for six hours now either, whereas I used to be able to.
00:27:21
Speaker
but But yeah, that that and and something we try to teach the kids and then just the physical like activity as well. That's one of kind of our family mantras is to is to exercise our bodies and take good care of of you know ah the bodies that God gave us and try to eat healthy if we as best best we can and try to keep moving. And and that can be hard with kids with in the age of screens, but we do what we can.
00:27:46
Speaker
Yeah, we try and we try and do something, especially after dinner to get to burn off energy so that they will sleep. yeah yeah they did so It is a practical ah practical thing too that it also happens to be good for them and a good habit for them to set.
00:28:02
Speaker
Um, doing something active as a family. Like we went to the, you know, the rec center pool, uh, tonight, uh, just to, just to play around in the big, you know, indoor water park they have there and stuff and flash around. So that's a good way to.
00:28:19
Speaker
good Good thing to do as a family. Yeah, today was our first day up skiing. And like my son, they do a ski day through this elementary school here. And so he went up with the school and then my wife and my other son went up and skied with them and stuff. and And they went all day till like the end of school. And then they all got on the school bus and went back to the school and then went home. And once he got home, he's like, hey, we, you know, our passes are good to the end of the day. Can we go back up for a couple hours? I'm like, geez, man, you've been up all day. Like this, like the crazy energy that these kids have, they just want to do something like, you know, you know, skiing is you're like beat up and you're, you're, you know, sore. I'm like, I want to go soak in a tub. But the kids are just like nonstop go. So we can learn something from them too.
00:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's ah that sounds exhausting, but good good for him. Makes you tired just thinking about it. Well, hey man, this is a this is a good one. ah Rolling Stone Gathers No Moss, good one to remember, good one to live by, trying especially in the new year, trying to do your resolutions, keep active at them, keep keep rolling so that your Your, your streak doesn't end. What's the, what's the date which most people quit the resolutions by? I forget. I was about to say, I was about to talk about that. I think it's, I think it's tomorrow. I think the second Friday in January is kind of when people give up the most. So when this goes out is the day, right? So, um, so don't quit, go back on Monday.
00:29:45
Speaker
Don't give up, yeah go back to the gym on Monday. and We expect to see you there, at the gym. Keep going, yeah. Okay, love it. Hey man, thanks this is a really good one, and thanks everyone for listening. We will see you guys all next week. All right, we'll see ya. Later. There are only four things certain, since social progress began, that the dog returns to his vomit, and the sow returns to her mind, and the bird pulls Bandic's finger, goes wobbling back to the fire.
00:30:16
Speaker
and that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins, when all men are paid for existing, and no man must pay for his sin, as surely as water will wet us, as surely as fire will burn, the gods of the copy will hideous, with terror and slaughter at earth.