…..from an intellectual standpoint, she advanced further into that uncharted wilderness of ignorance than any human being ever had before her.  Not Albert Einstein, not Isaac Newton, not Stephen Hawking, not Friedrich Nietzsche, not……anyone.  She was a trailblazer nonpareil, plying invious intellectual territory no one had thought to explore previously.  And yet she received zero credit for her efforts.  Not minimal credit, mind you—NO credit.  And in the end that glaring lack of respect broke her spirit, left her depressed and embittered—a brainy Humpty Dumpty.  She had gone by herself cerebrally where no one else had thought to go before, but it meant nothing, counted for nothing, stood for nothing.  No one believed any of her discoveries anyway and, far worse, no one bothered to even take her claims seriously.  And then she thought to ask herself philosophically the most fundamental question of all:  In life, can happiness—the irrefutable currency of human sentience—be most relished as an inquisitive genius…..or as a blissful ignoramus who cares about nothing other than eating, sleeping, and fucking?…..

…..the bonds of love that held them together were tenuous…..inordinately weak…..made of sand…..and any amount of jostling, however small, risked severing them altogether.  Consequently, he resolved to sit her down upon an imperious throne and not do anything—ANYTHING, I SAY!!!—to disrupt those hallowed bonds, even it meant forfeiting all hope of happiness for himself in the indefinite future and beyond.  Said was not a particularly difficult decision for him, lest you’re thinking otherwise, because she was his undisputed princess who embodied the one true love of his life, and as such her undiluted happiness was infinitely more valuable to him than his own.  He would live his life for her from this point forward, and that would afford her the freedom to pursue interests she genuinely enjoyed sans the millstone of attending to a theoretically equal relationship hanging about her neck…..

The future is far more frightening from a distance.  Up close—when you’re finally there and caught up in the midst of it and it magically transforms into the present—that big bully off in the distance loses much of his mojo and suddenly appears quite ordinary and vulnerable and ripe for the taking.  Opportunities seem to cryptically manifest where once stood only an endless string of doubts and uncertainties.  Fear subsides and makes a mad dash for cover, while optimism and excitement wed to unbridled anticipation rush in to fill the vacuum it left behind.  Suddenly everything appears much more doable than when viewed through a telescope from ten miles away.  This is not because life inexplicably became easier; it hasn’t.  It is because life became more lucid and manageable when seen from close up.

…..they were all saying essentially the same thing; she just knew how to communicate the information in a better way.  She felt no need to apologize for this state of affairs either.  After all, she willingly deferred to others in areas where she knew she was not strong or gifted.  Others should do the same in return.  Pretending you are well-versed in areas you are weak is just a sham; nothing of benefit stems from such a dynamic.  Rather, cream always rises to the top of the vessel and dross settles to the bottom.  Of note, this is not meant as a general statement or an indictment.  It only means that in areas where one is wanting you should graciously defer to others who are obviously more talented than yourself.  Conversely, in those subject matters where you possess transparent proclivities, others should automatically defer to your judgment as well.  Without hesitation or question, too.  You intuitively know what those skilled areas are by now; as an adult, you don’t need to be educated about your own strengths by others.  And if someone less talented than yourself in a certain realm tries to invade your territory—attempts to usurp your personal domain, in other words—feel free to simply tell them to go “Fuck off, you bottom-feeding faker!!!”  Rigorously protect your own areas of expertise, and then don’t feel threatened or put off when others rightfully defend theirs…..

…..and the cowards will claim courage and move to take action only after the dynamic they face changes dramatically and  the very ground they stand upon shifts  markedly under their feet.  They will feign conscience and pretend moral fortitude only after the camel’s back has been broken and the rubber has hit the road and critical mass has not only been reached, but long since surpassed.  Cowards never act; they only react when faced with circumstances which they cannot in any way avoid.  Cowards do not require that any forward gears be built into their personal vehicles; they only need two gears with which to navigate life:  “Neutral” and especially “Reverse”…..

Life is a marathon, not a sprint—a sonnet, not some nondescript snippet of haiku.  A shooting star flashing across the night sky piques your senses, but a slow-moving comet inspires long-lasting wonder and awe.  A movie trailer may captivate for a handful of seconds, but that teaser falls promiscuously short of the full dessert yet to come.  A teaspoon of chocolate ice cream briefly charms, but a heaping bowl of the same pabulum enthralls.  The short haul generates excitement, but the long haul generates greatness.  Dig in and confront life directly; don’t go cowardly skirting around its fringes!

…..I don’t ever wanna go back to that innately beguiling place.  Yeah, yeah, it is alluring as all get out and beckons with the magnetism of a ravishing seductress, but the past is a fraud, a liar, a destroyer of youthful dreams.  It can never be trusted.  The circumstances surrounding me today are hopelessly fucked up and a complete mess and maybe beyond redemption, but the past is not the answer for any of that; it is no tonic or remedy or secret sauce.  Rather, the past grossly misrepresents—lies even—with regard to its true underlying character.  Things were never so good back then as they appear nowadays.  Not all roses and no thorns.  Not all laughter and no pain.  Not all days blessed with radiant sunshine and a pronounced absence of stormy nights showcasing howling winds and pelting hail as the house lights flickered on and off while mischievous electrical gremlins decided whether they wanted to pull the plug completely to create even more havoc in your personal life.  The past would have you believe that every day was a stroll through a redolent lilac garden and that no ill was ever visited upon anyone, but that is all a big lie.  A huge, disgusting lie!!!  Bad things did happen to you back then—Lots and lots of them!—but for some unknown reason a mammoth filter has since been erected between the past and the present which screens out all evil and leaves in its wake nothing but rosy memories and sweet reminiscences.  Forget that deceitful shit already!  It’s all a charade, a big fib, a house built of cards.  The past is quite simply a mirror reflection of the present, only it features a younger version of your present day self—and you are inarguably a substantially wiser, more enlightened, less naive individual now than you were back then—but with that aforementioned ginormous filter separating the two timeframes.  Nothing more and nothing less.  You are exactly the same person now as you were back in “the good old days”.  Same person, only living now in a totally different era.  So don’t hyperventilate over the past and believe that it is some sort of panacea for the present and a benign refuge from today’s nagging problems.  It isn’t and never will be.  The past will always look highly attractive and superior to the present—That’s just the nature of the flirtatious beast!—but don’t believe that nonsense for a second.  The past makes a habit of lying indiscriminately and today is no different.  These problems you are currently facing are uncommonly challenging, no doubt, but looking backward in time is not the solution for any of them.  Work on solving them on today’s terms only.  The present can be brutal and bleak and unforgiving, but at least it’s inherently honest.  The same cannot be said of that dishonest scoundrel going by the name of the past; it lies all the time and, what’s worse, it takes great pleasure in doing so and in the process inflicts a lot of needless pain…..

…..try as he might, he couldn’t hold a grudge against her for very long.  She was just too sweet, too forgiving, too innately likable.  Too perfect for her own good.  Too much of an angel.  Too made for him.  Until she changed.  Until she wasn’t any of those things anymore.  And then it became inordinately easy for him to hold a grudge—even a longstanding, bitter one—against the ungrateful wench he used to adore.  She had been a detestable, ungrateful harlot all along—Okay?!—and he had just been too big of a fool to recognize her for what she really was.  But now he understood, even though that understanding came at an exorbitant price.  He could never salvage the gobs of money he had wasted on the selfish bitch, yet that was the least of his regrets.  All of that money could be re-earned and replaced in not too great a period of time, but the time?  The myriad hours and days and months he had sacrificed to her in the name of “undying love” with the expectation of reciprocity and an idyllic lifelong relationship?  Never.  Never!  That time could never be recovered, and he was now doubtless smarter but also older and less handsome and less virile and balder and surely not better from a mile-high perspective.  And that was all her fault.  She was to blame for it!!!  She had ruthlessly stolen away some of the best years of his life and then casually tossed him into a figurative dumpster like a used latte container.  For that he could never forgive her, nor would he ever want to.  Hatred is what was sustaining him at present and for the foreseeable future.  He didn’t like the taste of it, for sure, yet the taste wasn’t so repulsive that he would willfully turn his back on it—at least for now….

I hear so many people disparaging the year 2020 as it nears its conclusion and just wishing for it to be over, and these people are not wrong.  2020 HAS been a horrific year relative to most years past, but what about relative to that other alternative?  To not being alive?  To being dead?  To not being around to complain and decry all the bad stuff that has taken place throughout 2020?  If one looks at 2020 through THAT relative lens, the year just passed has been perfect:  The luscious cherry atop the sundae, the runaway winner of the Westminster Dog Show, the winning Powerball ticket, the ideal lover who never once disappoints you in bed.  Relative to not being alive to experience events throughout this tumultuous year now nearing completion, 2020 has been a sublime blessing from above and a reason to celebrate sans inhibitions and caveats as we enter 2021.  For lest anyone forget and begin to take life itself for granted, one year of being alive on the face of planet Earth is the rough equivalent of being dead for one thousand years, ten thousand years, one million years, a googolplex of years…..for an infinity, at the bare minimum?  Because such is the mystical, transcendent nature of life when contrasted with the unimaginable, indescribable, amorphous riddle of what MIGHT exist after we perish and our earthly bodies eventually rot away to the basic carbon molecules from which they originated.  For after 2020 fades into the history books and everyone looks back and over time understands that it really wasn’t so bad after all, the alternative to having been alive in the year 2020—the alternative to being alive in ANY year or millennium or epoch—is not something one wants to think about for any length of time simply because that concept is something which totally defies rational thinking and totally defies human comprehension.  2020 may not have been a pleasurable year by classic standards, but it was always there and it always provided us puny human beings with some degree of solace against the unknown.  Against the greatest abyss of all.  Against nothingness.  So gratefully accept the year 2020 and appreciate it for that elementary characteristic if nothing else, since that elementary characteristic means everything to any living organism, regardless of phylum or family or level of sophistication.  To use just one example, Kobe Bryant—who along with his daughter Gianna and several others perished tragically in a helicopter crash in January of 2020, long before all of the alleged “horrible” stuff began happening in our country and in our world—don’t you think he would have willfully—Rapturously!—traded the many inconveniences we all experienced as the result of a worldwide pandemic and a grossly erratic presidency just so that he and his young daughter and his friends could have remained alive throughout this past year??  This is a rhetorical question, of course, inasmuch as we all instinctively know what the rapid-fire answer would be.  Kobe Bryant would have cherished remaining alive even in a world teeming with inconveniences, the others who were accompanying him on that fateful morning would have cherished remaining alive under the same conditions, and anyone reading this should cherish remaining alive as well and not take that seminal fact for granted for even one second, one month, or one particularly malodorous year.  2020 may have been bad by relative standards—Agreed!—but by absolute standards, which are inarguably the only standards that really matter when the issue of life assumes center stage, the year 2020 has been pluperfect and without question the best year any of us denizens of Earth has experienced to date deriving solely from the fact we survived all twelve months of it and are still alive to bemoan each of them.  WE are the gilded survivors—the chosen “few”—and that fact alone puts anyone reading this essay a leg up on countless other people and a promiscuously lucky winner in the game of life—the only game that really matters from a cosmological perspective.

…..history will remember you; you can’t run away from history.  Or in the interest of accuracy—to recite a nauseatingly overused bromide—“You can run from history but you cannot hide from it”.  History will unfailingly find you and subsequently pass judgment on you and your behavior  irrespective of whatever seemingly impenetrable temporal hiding place you decide to take refuge in now.  History is indefatigable; don’t ever forget that!  You may be able to fool the present and however many simpletons inhabit this temporal fortress, but history is a different specimen altogether.  History will remember you.  And history WILL pass judgment on you for the sheer reason it has no other choice.  History never forgets and, what’s more, if you have applied multiple layers of glossy polyurethane over your being to artificially gussy up your appearance, history will strip away those fake layers of persona with greater efficacy than the staunchest solvent known to mankind.  In the end, your legacy will be laid bare for all the world to see and judge for time immemorial.  You may be able to fool the gullible present, but that gambit never works with succeeding generations, especially the further one moves into the future……