But in the spirit of what you've said, I try to avoid doing dumb, damaging, or boring things twice.
In all seriousness, I liked that line you quoted in the song. I wonder if there is a literary term for that repetition. It's not alliteration I don't think as the words themselves repeat.
Chiasmus?
Why are all rhetorical devices given such arcane names?
That's why they're magic! If people used these words every day they'd end up starting fires or summoning demons.
Scremaèlitude?
We're just making up words at this point, right?
Or maybe just, like many readers, I love buying new books almost as much as reading them, and this is just an excuse to buy more... :)
As a parent I tell my kids: "Make lots of mistakes. Learn from them and don't repeat them; avoid the fatal ones". Then I try to remember my own words before I chastize them for their multitude of dumb decisions (teenage boys)...
I mean, in the long we are all dead, but we have to say that there can be ultimately fatal decisions made in which the person does not immediately die.
There’s always a reason to say no, and it’s probably bullshit.
It also has the added benefit of uplifting others - it transforms their idle thought into something that actually happens.
Maybe at the end of the day simple platitudes only work for the lucky.
> Isn't this also just a form of survivorship bias? You wouldn't be posting this from prison for example.
Note that "pretty much everything" is a proper subset of "everything" and could well be defined as "everything except the obviously stupid stuff that's highly likely to lead to bad outcomes", and this from a sample that's already biased in your favour -- e.g. the vast majority of places you can go in the universe would kill you instantly, but the vast majority of places someone might suggest going to, or offer to go to with you, won't.
If you filter out the "let's go see the Titanic in my home-made submarine" ideas, your odds are actually quite good.
But sometimes you can move out of a chain of bad luck events by doing something else and not repeating the same stuff while hoping for change.
That infamous quote typically attributed to Einstein notwithstanding, really most of learning and progress is done by doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different outcomes.
Thing is, when you start saying yes to stuff, and start finding yourself in new places with new people, new opportunities present themselves. I am much materially wealthier now than I ever was when I worked for a living, partly due to income through new connections, partly due to a vastly decreased cost of day to day living by emigrating, and travel has become considerably cheaper as friends I made along the way make for happy hosts, or travel companions to split the cost of something outlandish with.
For example, I invested in an Australian I found wading in the mud at Aralsk, I befriended and helped out a PMC owner I met in Antarctica, and I robbed a Russian oligarch I met on a megayacht, in that order. All were lucrative. One of those falls into the “probably shouldn’t have” category (no prizes guessing which), but is still a “wait, I actually did that?”, and taught me more about myself and this strange world than I anticipated.
Time remains a luxury, but life is short, and easily squandered, so I spend it thoughtfully.
Hearty agreement, from the experience of both the receiving and offering ends of that gesture.