Author: Fred Blahnik

• Ironically, true knowledge works in reverse. When you first enter adulthood in your early twenties, you are bursting with confidence and there is really nothing that you don’t know or can’t figure out by yourself.  And then over time—as you gradually grow older and mournfully see more and more years receding in your life’s rear-view mirror and theoretically acquire greater and greater “wisdom”—you gradually begin to lose some of that transcendent earlier confidence, piece by piece, as you begin to discover how little you actually know.  And then by the time you reach late middle age or early old age, you realize gray is the primary color that suffuses virtually every solution to a problem and subjectivity unerringly reigns supreme over objectivity in a referendum that isn’t particularly close.  Authentic wisdom, you climactically come to recognize, represents the complete opposite of society’s conventional definition and more closely approximates ignorance.  True wisdom is coming to terms with how little you actually know relative to this big world we live in and, more importantly, humbly accepting the infinite number of things you will be shielded from learning in just one lifetime.

• …..and then, straight out of the blue—in the midst of an otherwise enchanting evening—a text message from our next-door neighbor back in Minnesota arrived without warning and struck with the raw power of a thunderbolt. And in its wake?  That evening post-message was the best of times, that evening of October 25^th, 2019 was the quintessential worst of times.  That evening was insanely incongruous and surreal…..zany…..extraterrestrial even.  My emotions were put aboard a roller coaster that dispiriting duskingtide—an unexpected, bumpy journey which tested one’s soul and belief in God and all things wise and wonderful.  The dinner entrée at Bordeaux’s Cajun Grill consisting of blackened catfish smothered in crawfish ettoufe lying atop a luscious bed of brown rice, fitfully complemented by a small bowl of fried collards—served while my longtime soulmate and I were sitting jacketless on the restaurant’s patio deck immediately adjacent to the delta backwaters of panoramic Mobile Bay in extreme southern Alabama, with late season dragonflies flitting around and swooping about aimlessly as sandhill cranes strutted along on cartoonishly spindly legs searching for maritime prey in the swampy morass not more than a long stone’s throw away to our west—was at once the most delectable food I have ever tasted and the most bland food I have ever stuck inside my mouth too.  The company I had that fateful evening—Carla, my enamoring wife of thirty two plus years—was at once the most interesting person in the whole world and the most petty, distracting individual known to inhabit our region of the cosmos as well.  The prevailing weather that evening—with newly formed Tropical Storm Olga raging and dumping torrential rain just off to the west near New Orleans even as that same late season storm system mischievously spawned multiple small tornadoes in our immediate Mobile, Alabama vicinity—was at once the most exhilarating weather pattern I had ever experienced in my life, but also the most treacherous and deceitful and loathsome.  The wait staff that evening at Bordeaux’s Cajun Grill was unfailingly polite and helpful, yet at the same time those inveterately friendly people were cloying and annoying and overly intrusive under grim circumstances they could not possibly even have imagined.  Nothing made any sense that fateful evening……NOTHING, I TELL YOU!!!  Incongruity ruled the day, and for all I knew in the next instant I might be snatched up by a squawking pterodactyl, stripped of all my clothing, held for public ridicule over downtown Mobile, before finally getting ignominiously deposited in the nearly Gulf of Mexico and, honestly, an event that farfetched and ridiculous wouldn’t have come as one bit of a surprise to a traumatized and shell-shocked Fred Blahnik given the abominable news my wife and I had just received from a thousand miles away…..

• The young are naturally gung-ho and adventurous, and the old are naturally overly cautious and conservative. No surprise there.  No profound revelation.  But how do people arrive at these predictable stations in life?  Why does it happen as reliably as clockwork?  Well, the obvious variable separating our two aforementioned demographic groups is accrued experience and the impact that factor must have on our collective psyches.  Akin to a tortoise which has been confronted by a hungry fox one too many times, we learn to instinctively pull our heads in at the first sign of danger and keep it tucked inside our protective, imaginary shells for a long while afterward.  Daring behavior?  Heroic behavior?  Stellar, lead actor behavior?  Of course not on all three counts.  But immanently sensible.  Given the fact every species of animal, including and especially our own, has its DNA encrypted with the transcendent desire to survive in order that they can subsequently propagate and resultantly avoid extinction, learning from mistakes while simultaneously adopting a more conservative posture toward life in general is a totally understandable reaction to crises, both real and perceived.  Add to that the fact this survive-at-all-costs behavior becomes more and more ossified and entrenched over time, until it ultimately morphs into the very real definition of a “generation gap” which serves to rigorously repel opposite poles of the human age magnet.  That said, this paradigm doesn’t make overtly reactionary behavior amongst the great majority of the geriatric population sexy and enviable, nor does it even make it socially acceptable in a host of instances.

• Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m intimately familiar with the old adage “If you wrestle with pigs, you are bound to get dirty!”, and I stand in general agreement with the veracity of this cliché. Yet, in the interest of truth but chiefly practicality, one cannot hope to ever subdue a pig if you are not ready and willing to stoop down to its reduced level and wrestle with it in its own environment.  That is the only way you can hope to defeat a despicable beast–by grappling with it at its own stratum and beating it at its own game.  Perpetually taking the high road may be divine and meritorious and biblically recommended, but such a saintly course of action will never force an opponent to pound the mat in submission.  Only facing him/her mano a mano in hand-to-hand combat in their chosen place of reckoning will tip the scales and ultimately yield this match-ending objective.

• …..and so he sold a piece of property that he dearly loved for an extremely handsome profit and was feeling really good about himself and full of himself for a short while afterward until he started thinking about what he was going to do with the windfall he had received in exchange for that property. Yes, what indeed was he going to do with this new, handsome cache of money?  Money in and of itself is worthless–ugly in nature and intrinsically no more valuable than the greasy paper it is printed upon–and its only real value thereby comes when it is exchanged for either material goods or pleasant, memorable experiences.  Well, he had just gotten rid of one of the all-time favorite material goods he had ever “possessed”, so what was the point in rushing out to buy another object in a frantic attempt to replace it?  And that’s assuming he could find something that he genuinely liked better, which quite frankly wasn’t likely in the short term.  Pleasurable experiences?  Yes, that idea sounded enticing, truly–parlaying a material object for time rapturously spent is almost always a winner in the “big picture” school of thought–but he had already gone on a host of enviable vacations in the past year and wasn’t particularly inebriated with the proper spirit to go on another so soon afterwards. Ergo, what exactly should this guy do with his newfound bonanza?  Any ideas?  Yes…..no??  About “ownership” then.  No one genuinely owns anything secondary to our ephemeral stay on Earth.  At most, lucky individuals live until they are approximately one hundred years old, and incredibly lucky hominid dinosaurs might live until they are one hundred and ten. The Earth itself—that’s right, our endearing home planet allegiantly revolving around the Sun—including its surface array of chemical components that cruise through recent terrestrial times in the vainglorious guise of personal “material possessions” for individuals of the Homo sapiens species, has been around for roughly four and half BILLION years.  I asked Alexa, and she dutifully informed me that 100 divided by 4,500,000,000 is 2.2 to the minus 8^th power, in other words a nearly infinitesimally microscopic figure.  And earthlings then actually have the nerve and audacity to claim ownership over portions of the cosmic spaceship on which they transiently reside as passengers, if only for a celestial nanosecond?  Yes, truly a mind-boggling, asinine thought, I know!  In any case, the paladin at the beginning of this dissertation sold his valued property for a fistful of money, felt smug for a smattering of days over his cleverness and entrepreneurial acumen….but then what?  What is the next logical step for him to take?  If you don’t ultimately convert the money you hold in your pockets into shiny toys and brag-worthy possessions and extravagant vacations, what good is it?  That’s right, no good.  Let’s be completely honest here:  Money merely gathering interest in a bank account or C.D is about as sexy and glamorous as a bad case of hemorrhoids, but unlike those hemorrhoids, you won’t be taking any of the money or financial instruments you own now or in the future to your gravesite, crematorium chamber, or whatever option you choose to initiate your conversion back to the stardust whence you came.…..

• Do NOT offer advice if it is not requested. All advice offered without solicitation is BAD  advice.  Mind your own business unless someone invites you into THEIR business.  Running one life–your OWN life–is complicated enough and a fulltime job, and few of us ever progress to the point where we are truly proficient at that “job”.  Do not make this personal task unnecessarily more complicated by sticking your nose in where it is neither wanted nor needed.  You don’t have time for it and other individuals don’t harbor a desire for such nonsense either, although myriad people are too polite to inform you of their true feelings and will thus tacitly default to your judgment merely to avoid awkward situations.

• “If you build it, they will come…..” “Critical mass……”   “The tipping point…..”  In a final accounting, these expressions all amount to the same thing:  An overriding, fanatical belief in one’s self, a belief that superior quality will invariably win out in the end, this despite the potentially astronomical odds one may be facing at the outset of any quixotic quest.  Ya just have to cling to an infrangible, almost cultish, belief in your natural abilities and subsequently never lose confidence even in the face of numerous, numerous setbacks.  Ya havta stay the course–ALWAYS!!!–even when that course winds around insanely like the arms of a writhing octopus, climbs to preposterous elevations before dropping precipitously with nil warning, and is littered throughout with sundry, behemoth obstacles.  Quitting should never be an option, and Plans A, B, and C (and D, E, and F as well) should all be identical in nature and nomenclature.  Only the utilization of this egregiously narrow-minded mindset will allow you to achieve your loftiest objectives, but even then–most unfortunately–there are no guaranteed outcomes.  That’s the sobering part of this equation.  Success is never guaranteed.  NEVER!!!   Fanatical singlemindedness only enhances your odds of success; it surely does not deputize them and stand as some sort of sacred decree from above.  Other factors completely beyond one’s control, oftentimes the much-maligned “bad luck” (which is actually code for destiny), play a leviathan, frequently disproportionate, role in undermining any dynamic involving members of the Homo sapiens species.  Having said that, taking shortcuts and slacking on one’s passion and goal-setting, sometimes to the minutest extent, will almost always sabotage one’s effort to the point of irrecoverable failure.

Excerpted from the book “Brothers and Sisters” (Edited by Fred Blahnik)

The following condensed essay was written by Betty Pestka.

 

Don and I took over milking duties when Fran went into the Army in the spring of 1968.  The two of us were understandably as nervous as hogs in a transport truck inheriting this important job which Fran had conscientiously discharged for so many years. Knowing there were two of us sharing the workload and responsibilities was at least somewhat comforting and helped defray my anxiety.  Don and I worked well together and had many nice long conversations before, during, and after our milking chores.  Notwithstanding the fact the disingenuous poltroon tricked me into sharing intimate information with him on one infamous occasion and then failed to reciprocate as he had previously promised, I nonetheless cherish those long-gone times hanging out together in our archaic barn swapping stories and impressions with my beloved older brother!

I strongly remember when Don moved to Winona, Minnesota to attend Winona State University in the autumn of 1971, after first completing a two year stint at Rochester Junior College.  I had already been in Winona for a year attending the now-defunct College of St. Teresa, situated about a mile away from the W.S.U. campus; hence I was experienced at being away from home and had grown accustomed to the freewheeling college lifestyle and living in a distant city.  Don resided in Richards Hall that benchmark year, and could be found every evening for the first several months of the school session with his rear end parked steadfastly in the TV room of his designated dormitory.  I would walk over to see Don pretty frequently just to check in on him and always knew exactly where to find my older sibling—perched mesmerized like some sort of automaton right in front of that communal television set.

My raven-haired brother surely wasn’t the best cook in college either!

This statement calls to mind walking into Richards Hall one day and smelling this horribly putrid odor extending all the way down into the lobby of the humongous dormitory.  I followed my nose and–not surprisingly–it led me straight to my older brother Don’s messy room.  It seems Don had attempted to boil some eggs that day and then transiently left the area to do something else, totally forgetting about the eggs he had sat on the stove.  The water from the pan quickly evaporated, but the eggs obviously continued to cook despite the absence of water.

The end result? 

The witless Don definitely did not make any new friends on that occasion; the malignant smell from those overcooked eggs lingered throughout the entire dormitory for several days thereafter!

Another time, gourmet master chef Don Blahnik resolved to channel his erstwhile undeveloped culinary abilities…….and master the art of making macaroni and cheese!

What, the reader is probably asking, could possibly go awry in preparing this gallingly simple entrée?

Well…..…nescient Don didn’t know the pan of water should be boiling BEFORE you dumped the noodles in!!!  Therefore, he brought the innocuous noodles to an excruciatingly slow boil as they gradually lost shape and decomposed into amorphous yellow globs.  Predictably, the well-intentioned but overmatched gourmand wound up with a strange-looking, discolored mush that was anything but tasty–in fact it was scarcely edible…….yet I think chronically starving Don eagerly wolfed down the god-awful concoction anyway like it was some sort of French delicacy!!

Don also expeditiously learned his younger sister could magically grow a written report for one of his classes that wasn’t quite the required number of pages into a longer, more professional official version, so my assistance with a few of those assignments came in very handy to the rakish but lovable slackard.

Rudyard Kipling’s “If” Revisited

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

 

If…..

By Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream- -and not make dreams your master;
If you can think- -and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on! ‘

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings- -nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And- -which is more- -you’ll be a Man, my son!

 

If…..

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

 

 

If you continue to dream big

Even when but a trifling of your dreams ever come close to reaching fruition and those that do are ultimately blown to smithereens…..

If you insist on anonymity for glorious deeds performed in service to the underprivileged

Even as other faux “humanitarians” slyly go about making their good deeds known to the public and then stand back waiting for plaudits to flow in their direction…..

If you never lift a fist in unrestrained anger…..

But do not demur from violence if all evidence indicates that it is the only recourse to a just settlement

If you finally manage to summit that far-off, unclimbable mountain you’ve dreamt about all your life…..

Only to discover sans too much disappointment that it was an illusory molehill all along.

 

If you can adhere to the strictures of the Golden Rule…..

Even when no one else does and they are laughing at you and calling you a sucker and an ignoramus and a fantast

If you are willing to accept the risk of offering your own life in a calculated gamble to save that of another whom you don’t know personally, purely because you recognize your life is no more vital to humanity’s future than theirs

If you are not afraid to boldly say “No!” on principle when everyone around you is screaming out “Yes!”, and the clamor keeps getting louder and louder and the pressure on you becomes greater and greater…..

Yet you nevertheless choose to stand your ground and not back down even one inch to placate the screaming masses

If you are not afraid to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…..

Even when such blunt honesty means you will wind up losing all of your so-called “friends”.

 

If you choose to be on the side of right early in the game…..

Even when others of lesser scruples coolly wait before casting their lots as they cynically estimate who the likely winner will be

If you listen to your brain but ultimately follow your heart on matters of conscience

If you treat the leper in exactly the same manner as you treat the prince

If you fall down, fall down, fall down, fall down…..

But never once fail to get back on your feet so you can determinedly continue onward with your Sisyphean march.

 

If you are wrongfully accused and thereafter shamed by the masses…..

Yet still manage to wear a big smile on your face and maintain your undying faith in the underlying fulsomeness of humanity

If Heaven incinerates and Hell freezes over…..

Yet your faith in good and steadfast opposition to evil never wavers one iota

If you march to the beat of a distinctly different drum…..

Yet don’t try to use that as an excuse to drown out the beautiful music created by the assembled symphony with your singular cacophony

If the light at the end of the tunnel proves to be the proverbial onrushing train…..

Yet you nonetheless stubbornly refuse to give up even after being run over and crushed by the locomotive for the forty ninth time and counting.

 

If God or fate or whoever or whatever oversees our daily existences scorns you time after time after soul-testing time…..

Yet you still refuse to take the bait and angrily renounce Him and His strangely punitive ways

If good people curse you while wicked people praise you…..

Yet your inner compass bearing remains as fixed on True North as when normalcy reigned and will undoubtedly reign again in time

If you continue to fight the good fight…..

Even when no one ever explained to you what the rules to the fight were in the first place

If you can honor consciousness as a daily gift rather than a daily burden.

 

If you confront the bully in no uncertain terms even when the bully is your physical superior and you know for certain that he is going to whip your ass

But making a stand on principle shall forever remain an inviolable tenet to you

If you do not feel too insecure to always apologize for harmful deeds done, albeit unintentionally

If you value the future—mankind’s future–more than the past and use that philosophy as the foundational benchmark for every action you take

If you find yourself surrounded by fools, but they think they are geniuses and mock you for your actions yet you don’t strike back with logic and thoughtfulness because those are foreign languages they don’t understand and never will.

 

If you can leave the Earth a better place than you found it, irrespective of how tiny that improvement may be

If you can dispense more love than hatred every day you walk the face of this planet

If you recognize and embrace the fact you are a privileged visitor to Earth as well as to the realm of consciousness—no more important and no less important than every person who preceded you and every person who will succeed you

If you truthfully don’t know whether God or a Supreme Being exists, yet can eternally exercise proper patience and restraint with those who hold strong and diametrically opposite opinions without even a shred of evidence to support their positions

Then, my friend, the Earth and everything associated with it will be yours to savor for the remainder of your time upon this grandiloquent little satellite of the Sun

And—what’s more—you will be, not just a man, but–far more importantly–a noble, reverent exemplar for all of humanity to look up to and mimic.

• After careful consideration, he decided to forgive with however much sincerity he could conjure despite the fact he hadn’t really done anything wrong and was not the principal instigator and party to blame insofar as a grossly overblown misunderstanding. This was quite simply the easiest course of action for him to take even though it may not have been the technically correct one, and it did inarguably make him feel better and did resonate better within the hallways of his conscience. That does matter in the big picture. That should count for something, shouldn’t it? Peace of mind cannot be easily corralled or quantified, but it does exist just as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning in the east or Donald Trump will tell another lie.  Carrying around massive guilt akin to a three hundred pound yoke weighting down one’s shoulders for twenty four hours of each day can be exhausting as hell, both physically but especially emotionally.  The avenue of action he was considering was therefore preferable to him; this way was better.  Simply apologize and relieve himself of the tranche of guilt he was feeling, despite the fact that guilt was ninety nine percent artificial and he had done nothing egregiously wrong to incur such disproportionately harsh punishment from the other individual.