Aphorisms

It's really funny how useless aphorisms are. There's always a true lesson behind each and every aphorism, but no aphorism is enough to actually teach that lesson.

It's basically a cryptographic hash function, if you think about it.* The profound lesson maps to some trite saying via this mapping we call an "aphorism". Yet the inverse function is ridiculously difficult to compute, unless you... learn the lesson through some other means. That is, the only way to figure out what an aphorism means is to actually learn the lesson behind the aphorism. Thanks, aphorism.

So what, exactly, has the aphorism taught you? What have you gained from the aphorism, besides a common way to express what you had to figure out yourself (with no help from the aphorism), and a sense of pride in finally having that a-ha moment?

Maybe it has some use in serving as a reminder for those who have already experienced it -- meaningless to anyone else, but poignant and deep to those who "get it". Kind of like a souvenir.

*I just realized that my reference to a "cryptographic hash function" is itself an example of this kind of phenomena for those who don't know what it is...