The sayings older people absorbed young, from waste not want not to big boys don’t cry, sank below thought and became the quiet architecture of how they see the world, each one carrying both hard-won wisdom and a lasting cost

Every generation grows up steeped in a handful of sayings, repeated so often by parents and grandparents that they sink below conscious thought and become the quiet architecture of how a person sees the world. For those who are now older, many of these maxims…