A Supreme Character Test

By Frederick J. Blahnik

March xxxxx, 2020

                April xxxxx, 2020

                Let’s consider for a moment this real-life scenario:  What if someone offered you a bounteous sum of money which you neither earned nor deserved…..with absolutely no strings attached?  Would you go ahead and keep that money?  Would you celebrate your “good luck” and maybe thank God for His benevolence and charitable nature?  Might you convolute logic and rationalize that you were somehow entitled to it after all?  Might you use as your justification for keeping this undeserved bonanza of money the fact that untold others had similarly been offered the too-good-to-be-true financial package…..and then—following a not-long period of introspection–you subsequently discovered that you lacked the moral strength to instinctively do the right thing and emphatically turn down the offer of a “free” dowry?  Yes, what WOULD you do with an unsolicited gift of money that one day just showed up in your mailbox or was anonymously deposited into your bank savings account?

                A true character test.

                Yes, this “dilemma” poses a true character test to any individual who finds themselves in a similar situation.

                And yet such a thing has just happened throughout the length and breadth of the United States.

                Just as Adam and Eve had their moral resolve tortuously challenged in the mythical Garden of Eden eons ago, so too has the entire retired population of the United States (along, in total fairness, with myriad others who are currently younger and working) been ethically tested over the past several months.  And how each member of that aging demographic responded to the welfare payment (Forget “stimulus check”; “stimulus check”, my ass!; “stimulus check” is just a pitiful euphemism meant to conceal the ignominy of doling out gads of welfare money to undeserving citizens for anemic, immaterial reasons) they were proffered by a panicky, incompetent federal government says everything one needs to know about that individual’s  underlying character.

                During my first day spent in Economics 101 at Winona State University with blonde-maned Dr. Ellis many, many years ago (I minored in Economics in college), our classroom full of wide-eyed matriculators was taught that there is no such thing as a free lunch; you never receive something for nothing; if something looks or sounds too good to be true, it IS too good to be true.  I, like all of my classmates, was taught this basic tenet of economics the very first day of class, and then the professor proceeded to hammer the point into our heads for virtually every day of the following semester given its foundational importance.  Yet if you never had the privilege of sitting through a formal Economics class for an entire semester (or were forced to do so, depending on your point of view), do not feel left out:  Experience teaches us the very same lesson over time.  Everyone learns—or at least everyone SHOULD learn unless they are an incorrigible imbecile—that there are no “free lunches” in life.  Nothing comes free.  If you do not go out and earn something with either your muscles or your wits or some combination thereof, you are not deserving of it.  Experience is irrefutably the best teacher, especially when it stems from mistakes made along life’s serpentine pathway, and over the course of many years of living everyone should become well aware of the seminal economic lesson I was taught in my first day of Economics 101.

                There are no “free lunches” in life!!!

                NONE!!!!! 

Long story short, if someone is ostensibly receiving an item, a service, or just plain money for “free”, someone else will invariably be forced to pick up the tab for that gratuity somewhere down the line in either direct or indirect fashion.  Nothing in life is free; someone is always left holding the tab, whether that individual is a direct beneficiary of receiving an object or service or, alternatively, an innocent third party who was not directly invested in the transaction but winds up being charged for it anyway.

There are no “free lunches” in life!!!

THERE ARE NO “FREE LUNCES” IN LIFE!!!!!

                HAVE YOU ALLOWED THAT CARDINAL PRINCIPLE TO SINK IN YET?!?!?!

                But let’s set abstract concepts aside now and move forward to the present time period, a volatile era that features desperate conditions facing American society secondary to the coronavirus pandemic which is ravaging our country and the world as a whole.

                Offering so-called stimulus money to aggrieved parties is a good strategy and sensible government policy—Agreed!—but the crux of this matter lies in determining who in fact is an aggrieved party.  Not everyone is; not even close to everyone is!  Rather, that number is majorly closer to a minority of the adult American population than a majority of same.  A government that is presently in debt to the tune of multiples of TRILLIONS of dollars should understandably be prudent in their distribution of welfare checks and not go crazy, panic, and consequently just start mailing out thousand-plus dollar checks to virtually  every citizen of adult age regardless of need or circumstance.

Including and especially retirees.

These people have not been forced into perilous financial straits as a direct result of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic like hordes of their younger, actively-working compatriots have been, therefore the elderly should not be gifted with lavish welfare checks under the guise of some undefined, illogical “need”.  Doing so is not responsible governance and it is not right.  Need should be the sole criterion for determining who will be receiving stimulus checks from the federal government, and I am still waiting for someone to explain to me how the vast majority of senior citizens living in the United States today have been uniquely victimized and plundered by the ongoing pandemic.  The reason no one has come forward with a rational explanation for this query is because none exists.  Retirees, and the elderly population specifically, have not been unjustly burdened by the ongoing health crisis and hence there is no earnest reason why they should be financially rewarded as though they have.  It follows then that to accept welfare checks from one’s government at any level with no justification for receiving said largesse is just plain dishonest and unethical.

The solution?

Inordinately simple.

If you have not been adversely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic but have received a government stimulus check regardless, either forward it to someone who you know has been directly hurt by current circumstances or just give it back to the federal coffers and indicate that you want your share of the pie to be dedicated to paying down our astronomical national debt; this decision will honor future generations while simultaneously burnishing your legacy.  You wind up creating a “win-win” scenario, in other words, the gold standard in any and all arenas of strategizing.  Either of these solutions is honest, creditable, and easy to facilitate.  The only way you can go wrong is by choosing to keep money you neither earned nor deserve.  That action would basically define dishonesty and is only marginally better than frank larceny.

So what will your decision be?  Will you choose to be honest or dishonest?  Veracious or mendacious?  Principled or unprincipled?  Ethical or unethical?  A hero or a villain?  A giver or a slimy taker?  Your thoughtful response to receiving a stimulus payment from the federal government in the mail will unequivocally answer all of the preceding questions.

I can only hope you make the proper decision.  If so, I can hereby guarantee that you will be able to comfortably co-habitate with your conscience afterwards.  And if not—NO!!!

Doing constructive things—Always!—is vitally important.  They don’t have to be big, bold, monumental endeavors, but you should never allow yourself to just lie around reading, watching television, and contemplating the meaning of life non-stop.  An element of work and physical creativity and corporal engagement must enter the equation at some point.  Domestic livestock may be afforded the “luxury” of a life predicated upon, no…..showcasing lassitude and abject detachment and utter uncaring, but I feel safe in saying we humans were created for reasons far more ennobling than mere existentialism.  If you want to live the life of a cow, be prepared to submit to being milked twice a day every day of the week…..before being summarily sent to the slaughterhouse the minute your daily production begins to drop off.  You say you’re a bull so you don’t have to worry about that heinous fate?  Well then, your visit to the slaughterhouse will arrive much sooner!

KNOW WHEN TO QUIT!!!!!  Sometimes it may be when you are ahead, sometimes it may be when you are behind, and sometimes you may have just broken even…..but there will never be a time when a little angel will come and tap you on the shoulder to inform you that you should stop doing whatever you are doing.  NEVER!!!  You have to figure out that bit of information by yourself and, granted, oftentimes it is the most difficult and elusive decision to arrive at amongst a veritable battalion of daunting ones.  Ceasing whatever you are doing, especially if you have invested mucho time into a venture, is never easy but sometimes necessary in deference to the “Big Picture”.  Ergo, I reckon “knowing when to quit” and intelligence should stand side-by-side as synonyms in the wise man’s thesaurus.

Try your hardest at all times.  If that isn’t good enough to merit a brief mention in your local newspaper or a ringing of the bells atop the steeple on the cathedral down on Alder and Sixth—well, that’s okay too!!  At least you’ll be left with the giant consolation of knowing you did your absolute best and had no more left to offer and, believe me, that’s worth a lot too.  One should never fill a car up with gasoline before taking it to be scrapped at the local junkyard, and you likewise should never hold back in effort while vainly hoping for a second or third or even fourth chance to succeed at whatever endeavor you may be pursuing at the time.  Oftentimes one opportunity is all you get, and—truth be told—one is all you should ever rightfully expect.  To assume more than that is simply being avaricious.

“Could’ve”s, “would’ve”s, and “should’ve”s don’t amount to a wheelbarrow full of cowshit after the fact.  You’ve gotta pull the trigger when the gun is in your hands—when you have unquestioned possession of it.  Because once a weapon leaves your hands, commiserating and second-guessing yourself on alternate courses of action is as meaningless and useless as a Donald Trump promise or a fart into a forty mile per hour gale.  You consistently have to leverage power when you possess the means to do so; such won’t always be the case; such is oftentimes definitely NOT the case!  If you choose to not leverage power for whatever reason when you have command over it, trust me on this:  That power will automatically transfer to someone else, and if that individual is astute he/she will make dazzling use of the potency that you were too ignorant and meek to wield yourself.

After careful consideration, he decided to forgive with however much sincerity he could conjure and even go a step further and apologize 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, mile-high picture; that should count for something—some small thing, perhaps—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 J. Trump will tell yet 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 in his mind; this way was undoubtedly better and would serve as salve on his restive soul.  Simply apologize and relieve himself of the tranche of guilt he was feeling, despite the fact said guilt was ninety nine percent artificial and he had done nothing egregiously wrong to incur such disproportionately harsh punishment from the falsely aggrieved individual.

…..they kept her alive because they had been granted stewardship over her medical care and had the capability of keeping her alive; this small subset of individuals possessed the means and the knowledge and the wherewithal. That’s it.  Nothing more.  There was no better reason than that.  No valid reason and certainly no defensible reason.  Capability equaled a mandate in their over-educated, faux compassionate minds, thus they exercised this godly “right” of theirs and insisted on keeping her alive in a semi-vegetative state for an indefinite period of time, all while there remained no realistic hope for a return to a quality lifestyle for the gravely ill patient and even as the hospital cash registers continued to ring “Ching-ching-ching!!” non-stop throughout the day—day after day after tedious day…..night after night after tedious night.  Immoral?  Inappropriate?  Grossly irresponsible?  One could make a stalwart case to support such semi-obvious assertions, but who other than God can truly answer that sort of question?  Certainly not this scribe, although I am sure you can readily deduce by this point where my heart stands on the matter.  Living and existing are not the same, especially if that existence is totally dependent on external equipment and nearly fulltime nannying.  There is a right time for everything—being born, being parented, maturing, copulating, marrying perhaps, pursuing a career, parenting, getting drunk as a skunk, kicking the kids out the house, growing old (If you’re lucky!), and, finally…..dying.  It is no shame or abject embarrassment or evidence of a character defect to accede to Death’s pernicious clutches when that cryptic entity comes banging ferociously on your front door.  Contrarily, fighting like a crazed maniac at prohibitive expense just to (re)claim a few more days or weeks or months of compromised “living” is far more indicative of significant character deformation, namely selfishness and blind narcissism.  The planet Earth can get by just fine without your saintly presence; it did in the past and it will in the future too. No single person is indispensable, and that’s the way the world should operate. Therefore when death comes to embrace you and lead you home and the arguments it makes are unerringly strong and persuasive, just submit to the obvious and agree to accompany the Grim Reaper to wherever it chooses to lead you.  Granted, no one wants to die, but no one wants to go to the dentist for root canal work or pay exorbitant taxes to a pitifully underperforming government or host your impertinent mother-in-law for a long weekend either, yet those are odious things we must do regardless when the moment calls for it.  Same thing with imminent death.  Accept it when said becomes the obvious outlook, both for yourself but especially for someone who may be immoderately close to you and whose health you have taken ultimate responsibility for or been similarly invested with this improbable power.  Don’t fight death irrationally just to claim a moral victory and to earn an additional pittance of time spent on compromised “living”, if one should even dignify artificial, kept-alive-only-by-the-miracles-of-modern-medicine purgatory by referring to it as that.  You were not responsible for your creation, and you are not the architect who will orchestrate your eventual demise either.  To think otherwise is risible.  You don’t own your life; someone far mightier than puny, fatuous human beings rightfully lay claim to that distinction.  Yes, you admittedly can delay the onset of death just a little bit, but at what cost?  Yes, indeed, at what cost(s), both financial and otherwise???  Just so your loved ones have to worry ceaselessly and wind up being responsible for footing the mindboggling expenses and labor investments attendant to caring for an invalid or semi-invalid for a few more weeks or a few more months or—at the absolute best—a few more years?  And that’s just you personally.  I neglected to mention the gargantuan financial stake society is forced to shoulder in the form of Medicare subsidies (Yes, Medicare is for all practical purposes a federal government welfare program for all but the healthiest geriatrics) just to appease your blind intransigence and honor your foolish desire to mimic Ponce de Leon and start chasing after the Fountain of Youth at a point in time when, ironically, all hope appears (and realistically is) lost.  So go ahead and believe that you are a hero for fighting like a grievously wounded tiger to live for every last day and second that you can coax out of your exhausted, irreparably broken body, but just don’t expect—Nor should you expect!—plaudits and thank-yous from those people and deities whose opinions matter the most…..

…..while it is a well-known fact everyone’s eyes are mysterious and the true windows into one’s consciousness, hers very easily exceeded that basic standard.  Peering into their depths was exactly as one would imagine it would be like staring into the Stygian abyss of a crevasse bisecting an Arctic ice-field, knowing that there has to be an end to it somewhere…..but not having any clue whatsoever where that end might lie.  Such was the nature of her bedazzling, inscrutable eyes, and they immediately took me hostage and drove me absolutely crazy with desire.  Those dark brown windows which served as portals into her inner consciousness were the most enigmatic, unrevealing things I have witnessed in forty-plus years of living, and I can easily surmise they are what made her the most intriguing person I have ever known as well—by a country mile!  Doubtless they were the chief reason I fell hopelessly in love with the beguiling tramp, a love that went forever ignored and unrequited despite my humiliatingly persistent entreaties. Do understand though, Reader, that for as mind-bogglingly deep those enchanting eyes of hers were, the wench’s personality and intellect were commensurately shallow…..

And now I sit trapped—a prisoner of both distance and time—a thousand miles and three and a half days away from my best friend of nearly fifteen years, who lies slowly dying on a grassy patch of land back in Minnesota as the outside temperature prepares to plummet to winter-like levels and the days shorten by leaps and bounds, ostensibly still on “vacation” even as I was assailed by horrific news and the proverbial walls came crashing down around me the evening last.  And what viable options remain open to me now?  Really, what options of helpful consequence?  None that matter, I tell you.  None that would make any sense to a person who is thinking rationally, which I currently am not.  All I can think of now is getting back to Minnesota as expeditiously as possible to nurse and attend to my dying friend, but expense and logistics render that option grotesquely impractical and therefore not worth pursuing.  And so I sit here in a seedy motel room in downtown New Orleans, Louisiana, rhythmically clenching my hands into balled fists and gnashing my teeth for want of anything better to do, wishing like a lovelorn sailor that I could immediately be back home in Minnesota but grudgingly resigned to the fact no amount of such wishing will alter this dreadful fuckin’ predicament that currently holds me hostage, at least until my wife’s and my regular airline tickets become valid in three plus days. And at that point in time…………..….well, by that point in time my quest to see and console my old comrade one last time will undoubtedly be too late…..

…..no one makes an indelible mark on humanity.  We only think we do.  Humanity is bigger than any single person.  Our lives—even those of mankind’s greatest recognized icons—are like sand castles on the beach, standing proudly for a little while before the next incoming tide washes them away.  But remember, the sand comprising a sand castle is not destroyed, it is simply redistributed elsewhere, and thankfully so are we.  No one ever truly disappears; their essence is merely reconfigured in a different form.  Trust me, we’ll always be around somewhere in the Universe.  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…..no truer words were ever spoken.  Greatness is overstated, overrated, overly deified.  People are not connaturally great; it is the world around us that is.  People come and people go, but the world around us forever remains the same.  No one makes a permanent mark on the world, because humanity and permanence are diametrically opposite concepts.  The best anyone can hope to do is to try to positively influence the direction humanity is headed during that ludicrously brief sojourn of time one is granted an audition on Earth’s surface.  Any pretensions bigger than that—greatness, lasting marks, legacies, etc.—are nothing more than that…..hubristic pretensions.  The root word for pretensions is of course pretend, and those who ascribe anything more to mankind than temporariness and cosmic insignificance are just horribly naive pretenders lost in a world of make-believe…..