The concept of trying is undoubtedly the most misunderstood one governing human inter-dynamics, chiefly because “trying” cannot be measured empirically.  As such, results matter but trying doesn’t.  So there!  Allow me to explain:  Trying per se is great.  Obviously, trying is the only bridge that leads to concrete results in the end.  Yet trying is such an elusive, amorphous little creature, in the sense that the intensity and sincerity of any and all attempts cannot be reliably measured.  The concept of trying is so relative as to render any attempts to measure it virtually worthless.  I think I can better illustrate this point with a couple of salient examples.  Two fat men decide to go on a diet.  The first fat man cuts his calories intake to 2000 calories a day and runs a mile every day.  The second fat man “cuts” his calorie intake to 4000 calories a day and walks twice around his block for his requisite daily exercise.  Now, both men are undisputedly “trying” to lose weight, but who do you think will be the most successful?  In this instance the second fat man is indeed trying to lose weight, but his results are obviously going to fall far short of the first man’s.  As such, it can be fairly stated that the first man “did”, while the second man merely “tried”.  Second example:  Two bright high school seniors fervently want to be accepted into a prestigious Ivy League college.  The first youngster not only hits the books hard during the regular school week, but she also studies hard on the weekends and signs up for an ACT preparation course in order that she will be better prepared when it comes time for her to sit for the seminal admissions requirement.  The second senior—equally bright as the first one and no more financially disadvantaged—simply works really hard during the school week and posts sterling grades to show for it, but does nothing over-and-above that to promote his credentials.  When admission letters are ultimately sent out, not surprisingly the first senior is accepted into the elite educational institution while the second misses out. Now, truthfully, both of these young people tried—some might even say tried hard—but the first youngster’s effort was markedly more impressive.  As such, the results tell the story.  Bottom line to all of this?  Trying matters, of course—that is the only bridge which connects one with success—but results ultimately and logically quash any amount of trying.  In the end, results matter and trying doesn’t.  Doesn’t sound right or especially fair, I know, but such is the arbitrary way of the world.  Ours is a results-based culture, and merely trying in any of its almost infinite range of gradations just doesn’t cut it.  Try, yes, but focus majorly more on succeeding.  If all you can ever claim credit for is trying, that probably means the sincerity or intensity of your effort—or both in conjunction—was sadly lacking.  Serial trying without ever actually succeeding reflects back on you personally; society or government should not be blamed for deficiencies stemming from your paltry effort.  So let’s go back to the very beginning now:  Whenever a person tells you that they will “try” to do something without making a true commitment to accomplishing that task, you may as well throw their words in the wastebasket and assume the task will not be accomplished.  Their response is purely a lazy, stunted way of saying they will not promise a determined effort, and—let me ask you now—what good is any sort of effort short of that desired gold standard?  Long story short,  serial tryers strive to try and serial doers strive to do, and the results achieved by both cohorts consistently reflect the legitimacy and earnestness of their efforts.

…..how cruel the gods!!!  How fickle is fate!!!  How confoundingly tragic the fabric of life!!!  If one could possess only a trifle of the knowledge one accrues with advancing age to complement the surfeit of confidence one is invested with in youth, that lethal combination would create a gigantic, unstoppable, irresistible force!  There is nothing—Yes, positively NOTHING!!!—a person weaponized with both prescience and brimming self-confidence would be forbidden from accomplishing, oftentimes with astonishing ease.  Yet sadly, just as the one quality boldly advances, the other lets out a plaintive whimper as the antecedent to a disheartening, irrevocable retreat.  How terribly unfortunate and ironic this pitiable situation truthfully is!!!  Or…..could it be the two traits are somehow directly inter-related, and that their relationship is by nature an inverse, interdependent one…..???

…..supposing the world was coming to an end soon, she resolved to buy a RV and see as much of the planet as possible before Armageddon ultimately arrived.  It became her life’s mission; it became an obsession with her.  Ten years later she was still out on the highway, still doggedly chugging along from town to town, from national park to national park, from one alleged tourist attraction to the next, still executing the same game plan as before, still adamant in her belief that the end was near and she must therefore hurry about her business like there was no tomorrow.  Time must not be wasted.  She was vehement about seeing EVERYTHING on Earth’s surface before the dreaded apocalypse arrived.  Everything, that is, except the trivial mundane minutiae which serves as the glue holding one’s life together and seamlessly binds the past to the present and to the future without an individual every being consciously aware of its presence…..

…..a shard of information adventitiously came my way last evening, and although it definitely wasn’t information I welcomed or could readily embrace, I nonetheless had to acknowledge its veracity and take steps to appropriately address it.  The receipt of information oftentimes works in this fashion, that is, it is frequently malodorous and undesirable in nature, but our sentiments regarding said information does not alter the underlying scaffolding and superstructure on which reality is constructed one iota and we henceforth have to accept any “new” data at face value and do our utmost to be flexible and hastily rearrange our lives to accommodate constantly changing circumstances.  Absolute rigidity in the guise of “principle” is unacceptable; moral victories count for no more than humiliating losses.  Hubristic steadfastness amounts to a death sentence in the arena of sound judgment…..

Your problems are as unique to you as the color of your eyes, the undulating squiggles of your fingerprints, and the curvature of your body.  It serves no worthwhile purpose to trouble other people with them, so consequently just keep your difficulties to yourself and DON’T!!  Trust me, everyone has their own set of problems and issues to deal with on an hourly, daily, and weekly basis.  They don’t need (or want) the additional nuisance of some thoughtless person hosting a pity party and pig-piling on top of them with a teeming litany of irrelevant ones.  A gold-plated word exists in the English language to describe people of this ilk:  Selfish!!!

…..silence was the language he embraced above all others, and he instinctively understood that a dearth of words spoke far more forcefully and elicited much greater attention than loquaciousness and a raft of long-winded soliloquies gushering forth from low-horsepower, half-empty minds.  And hence he never opened his mouth unless he had something authentically important to say, even as he risked being drowned each day in a tumultuous sea of words spewed into the surrounding atmosphere by those around him who were markedly less confident in their abilities and therefore sought to compensate for this deficiency the only way they knew how.  He had been taught from a tender age by canny parents that empty wagons rattle the loudest, and every succeeding day now brought forth further irrefutable evidence of this sage adage…..

Tomorrow is no less than one night’s sleep away.  That’s right, although tomorrow seems so close that you can almost reach out and touch it and possibly even give it a monstrous bearhug, it remains at the bare minimum one departure from regular consciousness away, and those transient nocturnal departures from sentience can lead us down some very peculiar and life-altering pathways that can change our whole manner of thinking.  Sleep takes us deep into a rabbit hole fraught with unexpected surprises and wrinkles and obscure characters from one’s past, and when we awake in the morning from said slumber our prevailing mood and outlook on life may have executed a one hundred and eighty turn in a matter of a measly six to eight hours; one just never knows what to expect from your psyche upon waking in the a.m. hours.  Sleep refreshes our souls as much as it does our physical bodies, and nagging problems you take to bed with you the preceding evening can be subliminally solved or bludgeoned away after being exposed to the raw, incomparable power of our subconsciouses for a goodly tranche of hours.  On the other hand, those same problems can look exponentially worse and unsolvable upon waking too; one just never knows what to expect from a fleeting encounter with your inner gremlins, and that is the “beauty” of a good night’s sleep, I guess.

Everyone seems to applaud the concept of living life “on the edge”, of doing daring and innately dangerous things purely for the sake of gusto.  But what of those who die prematurely as the result of such recklessness?  Was it really worth it for them?  Was gutsy bravado a worthy trade-off for a half or even two thirds of a normal, albeit somewhat mundane, life?  Adrenaline junkies surely draw a lot of predictable envy from boring, stolid watchers living their boring, stolid everyday lives in their boring, stolid, cookie-cutter communities, but that envy comes to a screeching halt when the daredevils die a premature death and unwittingly forfeit a surfeit of good years they might otherwise have savored as inhabitants of Planet Earth.  Just remember this:  You don’t get any mulligans on living; one life is all you get; consciousness belongs strictly to those who are alive.  Adventurism is great and intoxicating and as a whole something to be commended, but there is a razor-thin line separating adventurism from recklessness, and reckless people typically wind up meeting their Maker far sooner than everyone else.

Many, if not most, investments will not turn out to be big winners.  That’s just common sense wed to simple arithmetic; if investing was simple, everyone on your block would own a palatial mansion with two Maseratis and a luxury speedboat parked conspicuously in its driveway.  But they don’t, of course.  You have to accept this stark reality straight up front if you decide to run the risk of investing some or all of your money in entities or instruments which run some degree of risk.  Yet never forget the flip side of the coin, which is this:  All it takes is one or two or three big “hits” to offset all the losses you may be forced to absorb on other investments in your financial portfolio.  Said is purely the price you have to pay for being in the game—the “cover charge” to gain entrance into the financial world, in other words.  Because if you don’t want to run any risk whatsoever—if you wanna play everything perfectly safe and be guaranteed that you will never lose one penny of value—go and “invest” all of your earnings in a commercial bank savings account, but then don’t let me hear you complaining one peep as you go about collecting a whopping one percent interest bonus on your “investment” at the end of the calendar year.  Better yet, why don’t you follow Gramps’ savvy investment lead and stash all of your earnings in a coffee can as a prelude to venturing outside to bury it in your backyard for long-term safekeeping.  Your money will doubtless be secure and risk-free hidden there beneath the soil as it shares space with nightcrawlers and grubworms and their ilk, but a solid hunch of mine keeps insisting that the cash you hid away probably won’t grow too much in value over time.  Truthfully—even assuming a low rate of inflation, which is never an ironclad certainty—any money you have hidden away in your coffee can will depreciate in value with astonishing rapidity not unlike the once-new car sitting in your driveway or the year-old appliances anchoring your kitchen.

Not Like I Used To Be

By Frederick J. Blahnik

I found a note sitting in my mailbox today…….

My class reunion is coming up next month.

Ten years ago but it seems like an eternity;

When I was walking down that aisle and my life was all ahead of me.

I’m still young but not like I used to be……

Those ten years are both yesterday and a lifetime.

Everything is clear, like I’m peering back through a shimmering window.

Racing away, reaching back desperately for things that once were a part of me.

Wanting to retrieve them, but they’re moving too fast for me.

I’m still young but not like I used to be…….

Ten years ago we marched triumphantly out of that old brick building.

Early June evening–The air was cool and so amazingly crisp you could slice it with a butter knife!–late lilacs still magisterially blooming.

We were hugging and dancing and hatching plans to change the world forever.

We were young then, but more than that we could not see.

Oh yeah, the life we were leaving behind would finally set us free.

I’m still young but not like I used to be…….

I suppose I’ll attend the reunion next month.

Bullshit with old friends; find out who’s married and who’s not.

I wonder if any of them will have the same feelings as me.

When we all get together, will it be the same as it used to be?

Can we make ten years disappear for just one night?

Just one measly little night?!?!

We’re still young but not like we used to be……

The life we were leaving behind would finally set us free.

I’m still young but not like I used to be……

We’re still young but not like we used to be……