A cartoon sketching of  a fool can be found in the dictionary right next to the definition of stubbornness; the two inextricably go hand-in-hand.  The quintessence of intelligent people, other than a requisite turbo-charged memory, greased-up neural circuits, and acute senses, is flexibility.  Yes, flexibility!  An individual who does not consider all available possibilities—who hurriedly makes up his/her mind based on limited data and then intransigently sets this opinion in concrete—can never be labeled as intelligent.  Intelligence demands a certain level of flexibility, of malleability, of plasticity…..and stubborn people obviously do not meet this fundamental prerequisite.  You must consider all possible options—not necessarily form a consensus from them, but consider all of them nonetheless—before arriving at a fact-based conclusion.  Stubborn people are unable or unwilling to do this, and that’s the reason you’ll never find a connaturally bullheaded person on the list of our planet’s most intelligent individuals.

In most instances, perception matches reality.  Do not be shocked or even surprised when this happens; there is no good reason to be.  You can always dress a skunk up in a tuxedo, bowtie, and stylish fedora and pretend that you have succeeded in fabricating a handsome, plausible fellow out of a miscreant and that all is well, yet indifferent bystanders nonetheless aren’t rigorously challenged to recognize a stinky varmint hiding out beneath your full array of fancy regalia.  And, for better or worse, this fact holds true of most other things in life as well.  What you see is what you usually get.  The sum equals the parts.  Honesty is more transparent than mendacity. Why delude yourself?  Why should you expect otherwise?

Today’s regrets are tomorrow’s opportunities.  That’s right, today’s failures—if appropriate lessons are taken to heart—lay the foundation for tomorrow’s accomplishments.  Thomas Edison once said—and please understand I am very much paraphrasing here—that there are no such things as failures, because a so-called “failure” should be rightfully regarded as the unmasking of one potential solution that was not workable.  I think, notwithstanding Edison’s well-documented vulgar, petty personality, that his shot hit close to the target regarding this particular observation.  A failure is not some impenetrable wall that can never be breached.  Rather, it should alternatively be regarded as a portal opening into tomorrow’s success story, and if not tomorrow’s then next week’s or next month’s or next year’s.  Success will come your way if only you learn from past mistakes and don’t quit on the process.

…..she is scared of the future.  Scared shitless of it.  Terrified of it.  And for that reason and that reason alone, she clings tenaciously to the past like it is some sort of all-encompassing security blanket embroidered with warm fuzzies.  Forget for a minute the past is gone forever and can never be reclaimed or relived or recycled.  Forget too that the past was rife with problems and injustices and inequities unique to its epoch, all now conveniently glossed over and buffed up for these pitiful patrons of antiquity by dint of their viewing it through a distorted, rose-colored lens.  Yet turning to the past for comfort and as a fount of solutions for the full array of today’s complex problems will never bring it back.  Ever. Not in anyone’s lifetime, including hers and mine and Donald Trump’s and the Man on the Moon’s.  The past is gone for good.  The past is as non-existent and impossible to access as toiling to faithfully re-assemble that breath of air molecules that you just expelled into the surrounding atmosphere; recovering the past as an intact entity is equally futile i.e. impossible.  Good thing too, because the past is a natural chameleon and devious as hell; it’s little different than a patch of well-camouflaged quicksand if one suffers the gross misfortune of falling into the heinous clutches of same.  The nefarious stuff never forgives, it never relents, nor does it ever release any of its unfortunate prisoners once it has seized control over them.  The past is an unapologetic impostor. The past is nothing more than a giant ruse structured to frustrate and torture imperfect mortals.  That being said, though, I can gladly point to one bright spot:  The past is every bit as extinct as the dinosaurs and the dodo bird and systemic female subjugation. One never has to worry about it because by definition time to our arrears can never return to haunt us other than in our nightly dreams, and those are of course no more real than a Donald Trump promise or the Minnesota Vikings one day winning the Super Bowl.   Still…..still…..still, amazingly, this fact didn’t matter to her one scintilla because—And this point you need to clearly understand since it speaks to the crux of the issue!—in her mind all those years and decades which have preceded the day we are presently experiencing maintain a familiarity—a sheen, a luster, an irresistible glossiness—that she so desperately craves during these  turbulent modern times.  Uncertainty—masquerading unashamedly in the mien of what lies lurking unbeknownst and adventitiously in the days to come—are what she absolutely loathes and, yes, fears more than any person or thing in the world.  And hence she invariably turns to the past whenever she feels her pulse quickening and her blood pressure skyrocketing and her spirits drooping, because that is simply her natural reaction; the past is the only timeframe she feels genuinely comfortable inhabiting.  Tragically, the passage of time,  employing cold hard logic, and utilizing gentle, comforting words targeted in her direction will never change this unmalleable facet of her persona.  She is a helpless creature hopelessly beholden to another era.  What more can I say?  To borrow an inane, nonsensical, way-overused bromide for lack of a better explanation:  It is what it is…..

Nothing gets better with age other than cheese, champagne, and fresh cowpies left out under the hot summer sun to ripen into suitable, albeit not ideally aerodynamic, Frisbees.  Everything else just grows older and more brittle and more decrepit.  More disheveled and more shambolic and more…..just worse overall!  Including and especially human bodies and the human spirit, so don’t even THINK about wasting your youth on trivial shit that can be accomplished just as easily much further down the road when your capabilities and faculties become diminished with age.  Youth must be served when it is blossoming, otherwise it is irrevocably forfeited.   Fried eggs cannot be unfried, sour milk cannot be refreshened, and youth can NEVER be relived despite raucous protestations to the contrary from balding, beer-bellied lechers driving uber-pricey foreign sports cars while caught in the grips of a florid middle-age crisis.

The Travelers’ Prayer courtesy of Fred Blahnik:  As I now embark on this lovely journey of a lifetime, I realize there is a strong possibility that I might never return home again.  And yet I choose to go anyway.  Why, you no doubt ask?  Simple.  Because the potential rewards of this trip far outweigh the risks.  I could play it safe and remain at home—remain safely ensconced in my cozy cocoon over the next few weeks or even lay low for the rest of my life, if I so decided—but what purpose would that serve?  Yes, what transcendent purpose??  The element of danger is what makes life exciting and ultimately worth living, and hence it isn’t something a person should consciously eschew in the name of increased longevity.  Leading a safe, sheltered life may lead to more years on the surface of this planet, but those additional years scarcely qualify as living in a Homeric sense.  A single-cell amoeba could rightfully claim the same amount of pleasure, yet leave behind no less a permanent legacy than human serial safe-seekers when both anticlimactically die and are thereafter flushed into a time-bereft oblivion they so richly deserve.

…..the earth wobbled on its axis and the mammoth black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy instinctively shied away from the Lilliputian terrestrial domain spinning determinedly way out at its furthest outpost, yet his volcanic temper still raged on—completely and irrationally out of control.  He took another wild swing at the petite woman—his allegiant wife of thirteen years—but this time, unlike the others, he connected solidly and she flew against their bedroom wall, her head slamming against its unmalleable sheetrock with such force she left  a circular impression the size of a small pie in the gypsum board.  Next, and with an exaggerated slowness that suggested Einstein’s elegant theories regarding the relativity of time must be completely askew, she toppled over on the carpeted floor—face first—and afterwards there was no movement from any part of her body as a pool of blood rapidly collected under her attractive, but badly bludgeoned, face.  He glanced down at the floor briefly then, but only long enough to ensure he wouldn’t trip over the motionless body as he silently made his way out of the room…..

Good times cannot last forever, and they don’t and won’t.  There is always a dark cloud hovering over your head, typically invisible to the naked eye but following you around wherever you go nonetheless, and on multiple occasions in your lifetime that cloud will burst open and shower you with icy rain coupled with other unwanted detritus.  Guaranteed to happen, and on select instances you just have to persevere and trudge forward into a severe headwind with your head bowed down—being brutally pelted with miniscule, razor-sharp, icy projectiles all the while—your forward progress undeterred and your commitment unwavering.  I know it is cliché and vogueish in today’s world to say you don’t want to include merely “settling” on the roster of choices available to you, but realistically that is what you’ll have to do during certain trying periods of your life, and hopefully their duration will be short-lived and relatively glitch-free:  “Settle” between an assortment of lesser choices, since the ideal one doesn’t exist—never has and never will.  The sooner you come to grips with this stark reality—the reality of non-perfect yet non-lethal choices—the sooner you’ll find happiness begin creeping back into your everyday life.

…..he found himself wandering aimlessly through this thing called life, lost without a roadmap, unsure what his purpose was for being alive, conjecturing about possibilities yet woefully nescient when it came to probabilities, stumbling clumsily through every happenstance he encountered not unlike a drunk in an opera house…..and he didn’t have one fuckin’ clue what the next day might hold in store for him and, what’s more, he really didn’t give a roaring shit either.  Because, after all, without a plan for life—without goals and dreams to objectify and then target as part of a much greater mission…….what is the value of owning a life anyway?  What is the transcendent purpose of it?  None that I can think of…..

Eliminate as much worry and angst from others’ lives as you possibly can, especially as it may relate to those individuals you most love.  Worry is the most worthless, cannibalistic emotion known to mankind, so why burden the people you love the greatest with this miserable scourge if you can keep the reasons which are driving it secret from them?  In other words, allow those you love to remain unburdened worrying about YOUR personal problems (typically health related), in order that they can focus on more fruitful emotions like happiness, love, and altruism and not waste any of their invaluable time on you.  There is a good reason why these are called “personal” problems and not family or communal problems, thus resolve to keep them personal!  Be a strong enough person to shoulder one hundred percent of the worry and pain yourself and spare those around you; doing so is indisputably the right thing to do and clearly the logical, mature course of action as well.