“Make Hay While the Sun Shines”

If you think you are having a bad day, click on Al Jazeera News and just get a glimpse of the state the world is in - in 2011.
I think without a doubt 2011 will go down in history as a very bad year!!!

This being the reality – this ancient proverb by Aristophenes the Athenian uttered some 1500 years ago – “Make hay while the sun shines” – is as valid today as it was then.

In essence, it means make to the most of what you have while you still have it… that’s assuming you still do have ‘it’ and not living in one of the world's many hot spots of 2011.

Anyway, just as a diversion, I thought I would expound on the origins of this phrase.
Given that Aristophenes was a comic playwright, I do find the context interesting and somewhat humerous and at the same time, kind of sad but true!!!

“When the soldier returns from the wars, even though he has white hair, he very soon finds a young wife. But a woman has only one summer; if she does not make hay while the sun shines, no one will afterwards have anything to say to her, and she spends her days consulting oracles that never send her a husband”.

Hmm, but I suppose it could be well said that we all may have ‘only one summer’ given the present state of humanity in 2011. Yes, make hay while the sun still shines as I don’t think we need an oracle to tell us that ‘winter’ is coming …just sayin’