…..he, unlike the overwhelming majority of his brethren, instinctively understood there are causes bigger than life itself, and that those causes transcend the importance of valiantly fighting to preserve the existence of just one puny individual on Earth’s forever surface.  And I’m not referring exclusively to blind nationalism here either and irrationally defending some piece of ageless land against perceived invaders at the cost of one’s own life when the transience of life itself is so frighteningly short and therefore disproportionately valuable relative to dubious “national” crusades. No, I’m referring instead to lofty, ethereal causes which have nothing whatsoever to do with material ownership of anything, let alone outlandish claims of “ownership” over something as permanent and preternatural as cosmic dust temporarily masquerading as Earth’s soil.  These causes I speak of are grounded in figurative bedrock considerably more powerful than mere oxygen and topsoil, namely human exceptionalism and nobility and allegiance …..

What she learned from her harrowing brush with mortality was all of the cliched stuff you’re already nauseatingly familiar with, namely that life should not be taken for granted, that one should unfailingly “live in the moment”, that personal relationships are the most important glue informing humankind, that the here and now is all that matters, and so on and so on and so on.  But she knew all this tripe anyway—ad nauseum—which then begs the question: Why does one have to tiptoe along the boundaries of consciousness in order to appreciate life to a greater extent?  Why does one need to creep up to the very lip of the abyss and stare down into the bottomless void just to feel the sense of wonderment attending sentience?  Why challenge mortality prematurely when even the world’s biggest fool knows full well it will prevail in the end anyway?  You shouldn’t have to, and yet almost everyone who does walk that existential tightrope comes back with the same boring story to tell and the same “lesson” purportedly learned.

I never got a shot off; my gun never even left its holster.  It is impossible to be an apex predator if your gun never leaves its holster.  That little bastard got away from me today and I feel like an impotent piece of shit as a result.  “Next time!”, I could blurt out of course as many people (A majority?) are obtusely wont to do, but who really knows if there will be a next time?  Very often—amazingly often, exasperatingly often—there is not.  And then one is left to rue your inadequacies and grind one’s teeth over the single occasion when the opportunity was there—albeit not a very good or likely instance but an opportunity nonetheless—and you were too hesitant and encapsulated by perfectionism to even take a shot.  Shame on you!  Yes yes yes, SHAME ON YOU FOR BEING SUCH A CONCUBINE TO PERFIDIOUSNESS, DUFUS MAN!!!

Context is EVERYTHING!  Perspective is EVERYTHING!  Frame of reference is EVERYTHING!  Relativism is EVERYTHING!  And do you know what isn’t “everything”?  Absolutism.  Ignorant certainty.  Arbitrariness.  Cocksureness.  Flexibility is key to living a happy and successful life, while rigidity predisposes the opposite outcome.  And yet even as I go to great lengths to emphasize this seminal lesson, there is and will always remain a shocking percentage of the general population who will never understand this simple message, let alone live by its creed.  They don’t understand and, what’s worse, they don’t give a shit about being mordantly ignorant either.

There was no light in our Universe for the first two hundred million years after it was created, only darkness.  The first stars didn’t “turn on” until fully two hundred million years had elapsed.  That’s right, you heard me correctly—Two hundred million years!  For two hundred million years, the place we now inhabit and call home was nothing more than a vast expanse of Negro nothingness—a pitch-black vacuum devoid of anything to illuminate our cosmic landscape.  And then—as though by “black” magic—the first stars started blinking on to show the way for everything that followed.  Think of said scenario the next time your future looks so bleak there doesn’t appear to be even so much as a soupcon of light entering your life.  Because if you had been alive at a much earlier time in the history of our Universe, there was no light and consequently no dreams or visions to usher in mankind and henceforth carry it forward into the unknown, unmapped future.

…..he is readily able to separate the man from his core beliefs; I am not.  He trolls glibly along the ripple-free surface without ever plumbing the depths of the man’s character.  He either doesn’t care what lies deep beneath the surface or he is terrified of what he might find if he belatedly scoured those unseen depths.  Ignorance is bliss.  Denseness is Shangri-La.  Knowing nothing is better than knowing something.  Maybe that makes him a better person than myself; I just don’t know for sure.  All I will swear to for certain is that in my mind a person IS the sum of their strongly held beliefs.  An individual is equal to the convictions they hold onto the tightest—no more and no less.  I submit that It is impossible to cull a person apart from their belief architecture and pretend that they are naturally good and jolly and altruistic when the opinions that same person publicly espouses to like-minded reprobates and during radioactive Facebook rants represent a stark antithesis to the aforementioned redeeming qualities.  Call me over-reactionary, or call me right.  But just for the official record, I don’t really give a shit about your uninformed opinion anyway and will continue believing as I do.  That is called being principled, although some people mistakenly call it being stubborn…..

…..and so she committed the same mistake for the umpteenth time and then reflexively and flippantly “apologized” for the umpteenth time sans any discernible actual remorse for the umpteenth time without apparently even comprehending the incongruity and absurdity of what she was doing for the umpteenth time:  Using a faux “apology” in the hope of protecting herself from the victim’s wrath without making so much as a token effort to learn from a mistake that she refused to honestly acknowledge and thus continued committing on a semi-regular basis.  This situation was frustrating…..inexplicable…..pathetic…..all of those things plus however many other adjectives the human mind can conjure to symbolize a  preposterous dilemma with no obvious solution.  Bottom line, it just goes to further illustrate the abject worthlessness of boilerplate apologies…..

Is it beneficial to know the future, even something as trivial as the weather which we in our positions as feckless human beings can do absolutely nothing to alter?  I don’t think so.  Where would the excitement be…..the anticipation…..the piquancy…..the implicit romance…..if we knew in advance events which were about to occur? The vibrancy would be weirdly absent from life, and substituted in its place would be rote routines and vapidity and insipidness.  Say what you will about the unexpected, but no one can rightfully dispute that it keeps us on the edge of our seats and adds a razor edge to future moments as they unerringly develop and unfold.  Predictability is boring, as are predictable circumstances and predictable people.

The line separating courageous behavior from stupid behavior is oftentimes so narrow and fuzzy that it is indistinguishable.  Therefore and wholly unsurprisingly, these two seemingly polar opposite character traits are nearly synonymous in meaning.  Courage cannot normally be distinguished from stupidity and stupidity cannot normally be distinguished from courage, and don’t allow some schmaltzy so-called “expert” convince you otherwise.  What is the only factor that sets them apart?  Circumstances.  Circumstances alone will determine whether you are a hero or a fool, a paladin or a buffoon, a swashbuckler or a clown, an exemplar or a poster child for malfeasance…..and nothing else.  I know this truth is counterintuitive and sobering, but then again so is life. 

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 at that juncture.  Each and every day presents in exactly the same fashion, and only when one is finished are you able to rationally assess it and assign the rascally temporal capsule 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 point in time all days are the same—identical twins, clones, cut from the same cloth…..virgins in the space/time continuum.  Only in hindsight will distinguishing features emerge, consequently allowing you to form and voice an intelligent opinion on that newly expired portion of your life.