Aged Beyond Prime

Stuff gets old.  It decays.  It crumbles.  It falls apart.  It gets dingy and dirty and worn.  No matter what you do, you can never restore what was.  Time passes, and everything ages beyond its prime.

I live in an old house that has been restored.  It looks great.  It looks modern.  An 80-year-old home brought into the 21st Century.

But I know the truth.  I’ve looked in the attic.  I’ve seen the hole underneath the kitchen sink, the cupboard under the stairs, the drain out behind the house.  You can replace this and replace that, but, fundamentally, at its core, the house is old…80 years old.  Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but some day, this house will be aged beyond prime.  

Ideas work the same way.  They get old.  They become outdated.  They grow irrelevant.  At their core, ideas become aged beyond prime.

I think a great skill to develop is recognizing ideas that have aged beyond prime.  I think institutionalized hatred would qualify.  Recreational rioting would be another.  Basically, anything that promotes doing harmful things to other human beings…those things qualify as aged beyond prime, in my opinion.  

Recognize ’em and dump ’em.  There’s too much good work to be done in the world.