Author: Fred Blahnik

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.

…..she was one of those people who think they know everything and that their shit don’t stink. I’m sure you’ve encountered and know the type by now:  Loud, bombastic, conceited, obnoxious, rude–the whole detestable ball of wax squeezed into just one opinionated body.  These individuals never have to be asked to share their opinion on any given topic; they go ahead and share it regardless. These despicable louts cut speakers off in mid-sentence, they talk five decibels louder than everyone else involved in a conversation, they laugh at the wrong times, they blow their noses like a foghorn, they use a condescending tone with people they deem less intelligent, they pick their noses when they think others aren’t watching, they insult and attempt to bully every person around them…..they more or less behave abhorrently throughout and repulse everyone within a stone’s throw distance of their presence.  And so why am I reciting this litany of complaints to you today?  Simple.    The hideous wench I referenced in my first sentence—for whatever reason, real or contrived—chose to feign friendliness with Yours Truly and I was thus forced to make a difficult decision as to how I would respond to her faux civility……

• …..one instant she was alive—laughing, smiling, joking, talking, loving.…living, yes, living life to the fullest!!!…..and then in the next instant she was not. Just like that.  No advance warning whatsoever.  No premonitions or anything stereotypical like you always read about in the literature.  No NOTHING, I tell you!  She was here one second and then in the next instant she was gone.  And life, yes, life–that mysterious thing (???) that somehow differentiates us from rocks and houses and fences and swing-sets–disappeared at that moment as well, never to return.  Just went away with no warning and no fanfare.  Like…..Presto!!!  And the slippery little entity we worship and know as life was thereafter gone in a heartbeat and the blink of an eye.  So now I ask of you:  How on Earth can one realistically deal with the gut-wrenching suddenness of something happening like that?  Yes, tell me, how can you possibly be expected to rationally cope with a separation that earthshaking and abrupt?  How can you realistically digest it?  How can you intelligently explain it?  I sure as fuck don’t have any answers for you, I’ll freely admit that.  Because if I did know how–If I accidentally and blindly stumbled onto even a whiff of an explanation for the Mephistophelian turmoil I am presently experiencing–I sure as hell wouldn’t be falling apart at the seams as I sit and write this now……agonizingly wondering why I was put here on Earth in the first place if only to be forced to stand by powerless and slack-jawed just to witness an event so viscerally heart-rending and dream-shattering and…..and…..utterly nonsensical…..

…..while he wrung his hands and sweated profusely and worried about the logistics of the challenging situation, someone more enlightened and neurotically unencumbered swooped down and exalted in taking full advantage of the amazing opportunity that presented itself.  He obsessed over the complicating details attending the transaction; the interloper looked easily beyond those pesky minutiae and recognized a sublime twist of fate just sitting and waiting to be gobbled up by a person with the intuition and courage to act swiftly…..

• …..she thought fame would be the answer to her litany of ailments, but she soon learned otherwise. She discovered fame was a prison every bit as constraining as the poverty and anonymity she had serially grown to loath in her youth.  Return to that pitiful station in life?  No, she didn’t want to turn around and go backwards in time either, even if she had been able to, which of course she wasn’t.  And then a bolt of wisdom struck her–a bolt that had been hiding inside her body all these years, lying low while skulking about in some previously unexplored dark chasms–and she realized that people aren’t meant to live blissful, happy lives.  They just aren’t!  Happiness is at its very core a grand hallucination.  Such is merely the winsome, unrealistic stuff centerpiecing political campaigns, bridal showers, and fairy tales……

 

Embrace your eccentricities!!! There is something wholly ennobling and liberating about being different from the rest of humankind.  Who wants to be the same as everyone else, “the same” in this instance defined as boring and predictable and blindly conforming?  Sure, that’s the safe route in life if your only objective is to pass unnoticed and avoid ridicule, but there is nothing wrong with aspiring to standards loftier and more cryptic than mass acceptance.  Safe isn’t always best; in fact, it rarely is.  Charting a different course and striking out in a markedly different direction may not win you praise and popular acclaim, but then again you only have your own life to navigate and account for, not everyone else’s.

One day at a time, and one day only, not to be rushed or minimized or subjected to any form of degradation. All days are created equal at their outset, although upon their conclusion obviously the same claim cannot be veraciously made.  Yet you don’t have access to this critical information in the beginning; the future is an amorphous, inscrutable vacuum.  Each and every day presents in exactly the same fashion, and only when finished are you able to rationally assess them and assign these rascally temporal capsules a grade.  Thus don’t rue any particular day at its genesis or shackle yourself with preconceived notions with regard to what path it might follow; at such an early juncture all days are the same–identical twins, clones, cut from the same cloth…..virgins in time…..

…..it was all she knew. Being without money was all she knew.  So when rumors started circulating that some people actually had more than others—that their personal possessions far outstripped their basic physical needs—she was amazed by this startling revelation.  Why did certain people feel they needed more than the basic necessities?  What was wrong with these individuals?  Could they not harness their greedy impulses?  And she continued to ponder this question interminably, rolling it over and over in her brain while futilely seeking a solution.  She was perfectly happy and content living with only the bare essentials.  Why couldn’t others feel the same way?…..

Sometimes you’ve just gotta take that rightfully prescribed, horrible-tasting medicine–whatever it might happen to be–inhale a deep deeeeep breath, scrunch up your face some if that helps at all…..and subsequently swallow the awful stuff down with nary a complaint; that is the right and manly (or womanly) thing to do. Let’s be one hundred percent clear here:  Ya ain’t always gonna get your way in life, nor should you!  You can’t always behave like a spoiled brat.  You shouldn’t feel one bit self-entitled.  You are not exceptional to the exclusion of everyone around you.  Sometimes you’ve just got to bite down hard on the bullet and accommodate those around you.  There are over six billion other denizens sharing this planet’s increasingly crowded surface as part of one leviathan humanoid family, and you’ve gotta take their welfare into consideration part of the time too.  Cuz if you don’t, if you’re constantly only looking out for Number One—if you prioritize your personal interests over humanity’s on each and every occasion that not-rare conflict arises— I hereby label you with total honesty and sans one scintilla of sarcasm the most selfish, despicable, narcissistic son-of-a-bitch who ever inhabited our unique solar satellite.

Very rarely do you make a product, system, or process better solely by making it more complicated. That ordinarily makes things worse.  Less is more.  Brevity is beauty.  Simplicity is saintly.  The more moving parts you incorporate into a product or process, the greater the likelihood of a breakdown.  But wait…..there’s more!  Once this Frankensteinish monstrosity does break down, you then find yourself faced with substantially greater difficulty in fixing the damned, uber-complicated, over-engineered thing than had it been properly crafted and sensibly engineered in the first place.  In other words, showboaty complexity bites you in the ass every time and you lose all the way around.