Author: Fred Blahnik

If you don’t want to be tempted or risk the possibility (Probability?) of succumbing to temptation, just make a point of avoiding that temptation altogether.  Nothing too nuanced or complicated about this observation.  If you don’t stray into the lion’s den, you don’t run the risk of being devoured by the lion.  If you make a point of staying a safe distance away from the wolves’ lair, you probably don’t have to worry about becoming the wolfpack’s next supper.  If you don’t wander into the whorehouse down the street, you probably don’t have to be concerned about bringing syphilis home with you as a surprise present for your wife.  If you don’t meander aimlessly into the nearest Kwik Trip store when the Powerball jackpot sits at half a billion dollars, you won’t have to rationalize later why you spent fifty dollars on a whole shitload of suckerfish lottery tickets. And so on and so on and so on. The exact same principle applies with any ill-advised temptation.

Dream big or live small!  Cinderella stories rarely happen by accident.  Setting fairytales aside for a moment, inspirational paeans far more commonly happen by design and as the direct product of wildly creative thinking in the beginning, augmented later by hard, targeted labor. Reach for the sky, not for that low-hanging apple branch just over yonder.  The only way you can accomplish great things is by dreaming great things.  Don’t set stout boundaries on your imagination because boundaries are by definition self-limiting and then you wind up placing firm, infrangible constraints on the life you want to live. If you only color within the lines, you’ll never know what exists outside those lines. Setting definite life parameters is not exactly a recipe for grand success. Instead, it’s a recipe for a miniature, truncated life lived exclusively inside one of those cute, shake-me-up snow domes sold at Christmastime.

Every block you lay, however tiny, means the redoubtable wall you’re building is now that much closer to completion.  Never forget this simplistic yet transcendent truism!  Tiny steps do matter; each one represents an integral constituent to the final sum. Although admittedly not the equivalent of gigantic leaps, tiny steps nonetheless bring you closer to your ultimate destination.  For this reason, never discount them. Do not belittle them. Do not minimize their importance. Do not take them for granted. Remember, we’re not always in the proper frame of mind to make those aforementioned gigantic leaps. During stressful times, settle for lesser steps and then be exceedingly grateful for them. You cannot climb a mountain in leaps and bounds, and you likewise cannot summon the same prodigious amount of energy to address a daunting project every day of the week. So don’t, and rather gladly default to lesser increments on those occasions when your mind demands such.

It is NEVER about the words and creeds you outwardly profess; it is ALWAYS about the actions you take and the examples you set for others, especially youngsters or naïfs who—oftentimes unbeknownst to you—may be closely observing you and holding you up as an exemplar. Show me, don’t tell me!  Act, don’t mime!  Lead, don’t follow!  Do, don’t talk!  Run, don’t walk! Words may have unsavory consequences, but they are not lasting ones; those disreputable varmints are mere puny surrogates wobbling precariously about on spindly rhetorical legs.  Contrarily, the consequences stemming from actions can be significant, long-lasting, life-altering, and occasionally even permanent. Never forget this!  Words may help shape opinions, but actions undoubtedly shape lives; therein lies a googolplex of difference.

There is no sadder or more wistful time than when beginning insidiously transitions into ending and the interval separating those two benchmarks evaporates into thin air as though said time never existed at all; once essential memories are no more and it’s like they were never even there. No bold pronouncement is made when this event happens; it’s an invisible bridge that you cross in the middle of the night sans clanging bells, blaring trumpets, and tickertape parades heralding your silent passage. Yet you can almost always viscerally sense when this ghostly segue occurs, little different than when you first become aware that the glue holding an erstwhile close relationship tightly together begins to dissolve. You subsequently feel waves of longing, sentimentality, and regret washing over your body while a melancholy mindset of finality gradually takes control over your sensibilities when you suddenly realize that the past is only an illusion and the future is a promissory note held by Someone far greater than yourself. And THAT, Dear Reader, is the day when bona fide wisdom found or will find you.

…..and the new reality quickly became the old reality, and things that just days ago seemed fresh and exciting now seemed dull and unbearably tedious.  Why is this so?  Why do things become humdrum and pedestrian so quickly?  How can one life morph into a dreary existence after but a handful of spins on the carousel?  Once the shine wears off an apple, it no longer begs consumption.  Once you’ve been to Paris, your second and third and fourth views of the mythical City of Lights are not nearly as special.  Once you move past that nuclear first impression of her unparalleled beauty, her warts speedily become apparent and that lustrous sheen reflecting from her hair transforms into a seedy oiliness.  Once that first swallow from a premier imported bottle of French wine goes cascading off your palate and down your non-gustatory gullet, you may as well be drinking Cousin Jethro’s homemade beet wine. Same thing with life.  Once an experience has been sampled for the first time, it no longer holds the same allure that attracted you to it in the first place. The shine is gone, the piquancy is gone, the thrill is gone.  I guess you could say life is coldhearted and eminently lackluster because of this, yet that characterization doesn’t do it sufficient justice and greatly oversimplifies life’s ethereal underlying meaning. Life is pluperfect unlike any other entity in our known Universe, but only if your expectations of it are reasonable and remain grounded in reality …..

Spitefulness leaves a bitter residue in the quintessence of one’s soul.  Forget the ephemeral gratification you may, and probably will, receive as a “reward” for being spiteful.  That feeling swiftly slips away as though it’s riding the crest of a spunky vernal zephyr, never to return.  It’s rapidly replaced by a pervasive sense of guilt, and this ubiquitous guilt will gnaw away relentlessly at your innards worse than any peptic ulcer that you may have experienced in your lifetime. Good thing, too, since cruel, vindictive behavior should never go unpunished and it surely doesn’t. There are invariably consequences to be paid for ANYTHING you do in life, even if those consequences are largely invisible and may not always be broadcast to the world on a fifty-foot-high billboard surrounded by red-blinking neon lights. Spitefulness certainly qualifies as consequential behavior.

Is lying supine thinking—just thinking…..pondering…..contemplating…..assessing…..nothing else!—an innate waste of time?  Must one be physically or intellectually active to justify one’s earthly existence and in the process avoid societal scorn? I don’t know for certain, but I suppose not. Genius and orthodoxy are not compatible and never have been.  All novel, groundbreaking ideas irrefutably originate in the mind first, not when one is feverishly washing the car or shopping for groceries or punching a timeclock as you struggle mightily to earn a regular bi-weekly paycheck. Unimpeded thinking is the seed for inspiration.  To wit, do you REALLY think theoretical physicist extraordinaire Stephen Hawking would have realized his full genius if he had been physically whole and thus fully capable of pursuing any number of bodily endeavors?  Of course not!  Like it or not, Hawking had all that free time on his hands to just think and conjecture, and the remarkable profundities that came gushing out of his brain as a direct result of his unencumbered musings were downright astonishing. Thinking while doing nothing else has acquired a bad reputation for perpetuity and is commonly derided as a sanctuary for the slackards and bohemians and silver-spooners of the world.  Yet it’s undeserving of this putrid reputation.  Absolutely. Actions are a crucial part of any real-life equation, unquestionably, but nonstop actions sans a reasonable amount of forethought are intrinsically foolish and emblematic of beautiful time wasted.

Any journey, however long, begins with a single step.  Any enterprise, however daunting, begins with a single action.  Any book, however voluminous, begins with a single word.  Any movie, however classic, begins with a single scene.  Any relationship, however involved, begins with a single glance…..followed by a single touch…..followed by a single kiss…..followed by a single consummation…..followed by a single engagement…..followed by a single marriage…..followed by ?????  One is ALWAYS the most critical number in life, because in order to count to one million a person must first start with one and henceforth proceed from there.  You cannot count past one without properly recognizing it in sequence.  The number “one” holds disproportionate power—ultimate power, actually. Zero has no inherent value because it equates with utter nothingness, and infinity lies well beyond our human ability to comprehend, let alone appreciate. “One” is the critical and essential steppingstone to infinity, if that makes any sense owing to the fact counting to infinity is impossible, hence any percentage of infinity–however miniscule like the number one–is an undefined, incalculable entity as well.

…..truly, words—almost as much as tears—hold people back from doing whatever it is they want to do, thus I will stop speaking this instant, dry my eyes, and allow you to go on your way into this great big, uncharted world we share to accomplish grandiloquent things sans the burden of personal guilt hanging about your neck. To follow any other course of action would be inordinately selfish of me and unfair to you, and—gratifyingly—my enormous unspoken love for you would not abide such callous selfishness on my behalf for any significant length of time.  You go, I’ll stay behind to hold down the fort, and our lives will now diverge—in all probability on a permanent basis—even though my feelings for you have not abated in the least nor, likely, will they ever. Yet, paradoxically, the immense unrequited love I feel for you is the very reason I mustn’t stand in your way and attempt to influence your lifechanging decision in any way, shape, or form. If love means not having to say you’re sorry as legend holds, then it also means accepting outright rejection if that’s the way the dice happen to land. So go now, my body will stay behind right where it currently resides, but rest assured you’ll never be able to outrun the love I send along with you today even as you grow increasingly impatient with me and obviously are not currently feeling the same emotions as me…..