Author: Fred Blahnik

• Religiously follow the pathway (roadmap) leading to happiness! Do what needs to be done NOW, not sometime in the future.  The future, remember, is little different than a mirage in the wayward desert—something you dream about incessantly, but minus any evidence that it even exists or ever will.  If you are truly banking on the future and feel that you are immanently entitled to generous portions of same as a natural endowment, you are just plain stupid and own no more right to that beguiling province than a hungry bat stripped of its radar flying crazily about in a chandelier showroom.

• People communicate as much and as honestly by what they DON’T say as what they do. A failure to “gush” and to provide more than feeble, rudimentary information is a frank indictment of a specific situation or individual.  If someone is authentically impressed with a person, place, or dynamic, they will quite willingly let you know with a frothing torrent of words; such constitutes basic human nature.  In the stark absence of that type of candidness, however, the impression the individual fails to convey is almost always of the negative variety.  You don’t have to be an astute student of human nature in order to accurately “read between the lines” and rightfully interpret taciturnity as silent disapproval.  And if you fatuously decide to ignore this unspoken cue, proceed with caution because your back will be fully exposed.

• We’re all just here on Earth as renters; we don’t truly own anything we come in contact with. Human lives are frighteningly transient; the world we leave behind less so.  How can you claim ownership over something that will outlast you by millennia, if not longer?  The logic doesn’t add up.  Human beings are by nature parasites.  Do the fleas own the dog?  Do the barnacles own the ship?  Do the remoras own the shark?  Do the lice own your skull?  The thought of these paradoxes and others like them is silly and undeserving of intelligent comment.  The only thing we genuinely “own” are our flesh-and-blood bodies, yet even those are left behind to rot once we die and our souls take forever leave of their organic captors.  A feeble case could be made that we as human beings own the moment, but I believe destiny could present a much stronger argument.

• There are always consequences in life no matter where you go or what you do, and no truism is more critical to remember than this one.  Life comes with consequences; always has, still does, always will.  There are no free lunches and free fucks and free passes to Heaven.  Everything comes with a price tag, although that tag oftentimes is not emblazoned on a huge banner fluttering out in the wind for all to see.  Quite often the price tag is well concealed and one is required to do some delving in order  to determine what the human cost will be for performing an act or pursuing an endeavor.  But this investigative work must be done regardless.  Learn to accept this basic fact, and your life will “suddenly” become simpler and markedly easier to navigate.

• A gift only becomes a gift when it is used for the first time. Prior to that point in time, a so-called “gift” is nothing more than an official transfer of a commodity; usage is what confers value to an item.  So too with natural talent.  If or until a natural gift is utilized, it is nothing more than a latent ability lying dormant just waiting to be ignited by a catalyst—normally the beneficiary’s inner drive—although there is no guarantee such a thing will ever happen; too frequently it doesn’t. In truth, squandered natural abilities are more commonplace than grains of sand on a three-mile-long ocean beach.  The fact someone is born with immense talent does not mean that talent will ever be realized.  Potential does not equal fruition.  Fire requires a match to ignite it, and minus that match oxidation and the phenomenal power contained therein will never occur; it will forever remain just so much untapped potential energy.

• …..what are you waiting for exactly?!?! Is there a better time to do what obviously needs to be done?!?!  Huh?!?!  Well…..is there?!?!  I think not too!!!!!  So get your ass in gear right this minute and do what needs to be done!!!  Enough already with the goddamned all-day procrastinating!!  That important job is waiting for you and, trust me, time by nature is NOT a very patient entity! Time does not stop moving simply because you do.   Hence just go and do the work now and get it over with, lest someone else or—more likely—fate intervenes and ultimately denies you the opportunity.  Yes, distilled down to its barest essence, that is actually what this whole fucking thing inherently represents:  An opportunity, and if you don’t grab that elaborately disguised opportunity by the horns right now and wrestle it to the ground and pin its shoulders to the mat you will then have a lot of explaining to do to Someone far greater than myself or your exasperated friends and family members…..

• Permanence doesn’t exist. Doesn’t.  Never has.  Never will.  The concept of permanence is impossible.  Nothing lasts forever.  Not we humans, not the Earth we live on, not our sun, not our galaxy, and not our universe either.  Certainly not the batch of dreams we hatched and pursuantly incubated when we were only knee-high to a grasshopper and still fervently believed in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the benevolence of government and the intrinsic equality of all human beings.  In terms of theory, permanence and infinity belong in that same conversation, in the sense neither can be understood or logically explained with this feeble entity that passes for human intellect.  On metaphysically complex issues such as those referenced, we of the Homo sapiens species can only speculate and make unsupported guesses, rendering us little different than the yak, the ostrich, and the ring-tailed lemur.

• There is a learning curve associated with EVERYTHING in life. No shortcuts. No dazzling end-arounds. No stunning pole vaults. No warp speed time obliterators. No catapaulting over the gathered masses. No unobstructed pathway to the finish line. No sirreeee, there is a learning curve for EVERYTHING you encounter or will ever encounter in life, and the sooner you accept this fundamental truism when starting a new endeavor, the more satisfied and better grounded you will be. Please understand and commit to memory this salient truth, Readers: Proficiency and expertise do not happen purely by accident; you habitually and with only rare exceptions have to pay a steep premium in the guise of sweat equity and a significant time commitment in order to reach those enviable objectives! Anyone who insists otherwise and touts shortcuts to the top is a dullard of colossal dimensions.

NOTE:  The following narrative is excerpted from the book “The Hardest Life I Could Ever Love”, written by Mary B. Blahnik and extensively edited by Fred Blahnik.

 

My new “career” was poised to change dramatically yet again……and it would forever thereafter be referred to as motherhood.

On May 16th, 1940, Jimmy warned of his pending arrival. My placenta had already ruptured previously, but Jimmy understandably decided to wait a while longer for a warm, sunny day to make his grand earthly debut. The “Icemen Days of May”–well known to the ethnic Czech people clustered in our immediate region akin to ants in a colony–were at last over.

In the darkness of the morning on May 17^th, Dad drove over to our close neighbors Souceks in order to call Dr. W. B. Grise so he could inform the good doctor his medical assistance would soon be required. Mama came to be my midwife, and Jimmy was triumphantly born at approximately 10:00 a.m. on a Friday morning with a swelling–or exaggerated bump—prominently displayed on his head resulting from his contumacious refusal to cooperate with the birthing process.

Dad beamed proudly and rivaled any peacock in flamboyance; the brand new father now boasted a slightly greater than eight pound son. Jimmy’s birth served to somehow validate Dad in his own eyes; he seemed to feel it made him just as good—in some instances perhaps even better–than many of his neighborhood friends and acquaintances……dare I say unspoken competitors? My naturally humble husband now stood more erect, there was a new steeliness in his eyes, and he walked with a decidedly new bounce in his gait.

The name James Peter had been waiting patiently for our firstborn if the youngster turned out to be a baby boy. That name was in honor of the newborn’s deceased Grandpa Blahnik—James–and an uber-proud Grandpa Peter Snyder, since this was his first grandchild.

The sun shone brightly that day, Fred was planting corn in the fields, and several neighbors stopped by to see if our new baby had arrived yet…..and then to pointedly inquire what sex the infant was. A new era had inauspiciously dawned on the nondescript Blahnik farm northeast of Austin, Minnesota, even though the buildings and fields and trees appeared exactly as they had the day before…….the week before……the year before.

No, things would never again closely resemble the way they had stood previously at the carefree “Blahnik Boy’s Place” in the days and weeks and years which followed this landmark birth.

Incidentally, during that mid-twentieth century era babies born at home were weighed on a small household scale which had a ring at the top for the “weigher” to hold onto, as well as a hook at the bottom for attaching to the baby’s diaper to suspend the infant in mid-air while it was being weighed.

Jimmy spent his earliest months in a baby buggy we bought from our neighbors immediately to the south–the Watkins. As he grew older Jimmy graduated to a wooden playpen Dad’s nephew Earl Ondrick had designed and built. The contrivance could be folded up conveniently to shuttle around our house and yard as needed.

Aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins watched admiringly at each new accomplishment Jimmy mastered, since he was the youngest member on both sides of our expansive family and represented the hopes and dreams and promises of an entirely new generation.

As Jimmy grew a bit older and could skitter around outside by himself, he soon developed a wanderlust feeling on nice temperate days. Quite frankly, the impish little fellow could no longer be implicitly trusted when left alone outside.

One bucolic Sunday afternoon little Jimmy disappeared from our farmyard. Dad and I searched desperately to find him……in vain; Jimmy could not be located anywhere, and as a first-time and probably overreacting mother I was rapidly approaching hysteria!

Finally, we spotted a Lilliputian set of footprints in the dusty field drive that led over the railroad tracks to Fred and Catherine’s place. Sure enough, we followed the tracks in that direction–and found Jimmy perched in their kitchen, serenely munching on one of Catherine’s delicious cookies just like the cat that swallowed the canary…..and wondering what all the fuss was about!

Yet another time, those telltale miniature footprints led me to our neighbors’ house across the road from where we lived—the Larsons. Alice Larson later confided to me that Jimmy showed up on their front doorstep—totally “out of the blue” and not scared in the least—and loudly and belligerently demanded, “WHERE ARE THE GIRLS?!?!”

A true Casanova was unmasked that day, and I had a minor epiphany and realized with a somewhat sinking heart that Dad and I would be sharing living quarters with a natural-born lady-killer from that point forward.

By this juncture in my life, I had finally learned to partition my time so that I could be—simultaneously–a successful homemaker and a doting mother.

 

 

• With life comes risks; you cannot have one without the other. Happiness—the unquestioned currency of life—is best measured by how one chooses to address those aforementioned risks and how much you allow said risks to dictate the trajectory your life will follow. Bottom line, you can be as brave or as cowardly as you want to be. You can live loud and brazenly like a lion or silent and timidly like a field mouse. You can roar in menacing fashion or you can go hide inconspicuously in a darkened corner and eschew any and all risks. No one else can determine the level of courage you choose to employ during your journey through life. That decision–easily the greatest and most transcendent decision any of us is ever asked to make–is entirely up to each individual. Thus, if you don’t like the direction in which your life is headed, for God’s sake don’t blame fate for it; blame yourself instead. You can exist at a stunningly rudimentary level analogous to a single-cell amoeba or you can proudly carry the banner of supernatural consciousness forward as a member of the human race. But you cannot do both at the same time; you cannot straddle this fence indefinitely; you ultimately have to choose between the two…..