Our Immoderate Daffs
At various time this phrase has taken on political and religious fervor, but that’s not where I want to go. Instead I ask you, “Really? Moderation gets us to awesome?” Just sayin’.
Immoderate White-tailed Deer
Perhaps before Terence’s death in 159 B.C.E., life demanded restraint. If you start your life as a slave as he did, that could bank your fires. It might have led to his early death, too. Plus those Roman robes required sweeping gestures and a measured pace. Still it’s tough to feel ardent about moderation.
Granted self-restraint’s necessary in any number of arenas—when you’re a martial arts expert, cleaning a garbage disposal, teaching a child, dealing with fringe elements…. I get that. Transplanting my seedlings takes self-control, although I’m more driven by reverence for life. How cool is it that entire forests begin with a seed?
When it comes to other passions like dance, writing, reading, or artwork, I’m more of a full throttle woman.
Immoderate Mountain Bluebird Male
Even when gaining competency, don’t you need to push yourself—immoderately? The sense of our firefly existence drives me. So many choreographies, stories and visual renditions percolate that I’d have to live another century or two to finish them. Besides how can anyone approach the work of completing entire novels or series unless your vision’s intensely engaged?
Thus let me modify Terence’s words to ‘moderation in those things necessary, exuberance in all else’. I don’t think he’d mind. His Woman of Andros (Andria) was a romantic comedy after all. As in most New Comedy, he relied upon frequent external solutions to smooth the path to resolution. Very soap opera, don’t you think?
Moderate Blue Grouse Female
So I leave you, dear reader, with another Terence quote that works much better for me as a world-building writer of fantasy:
“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto”
“I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me.”
With that you’re invited into my world with FORGED IN MIST, book 2 of MISTBORN CHRONICLES, coming soon to an e-reader near you.
Immoderate Blue Grouse Male
Janine Donoho 