• I have but one moment I can exert some degree of control over, and that moment is NOW. Ominous storm clouds loom on the horizon, the future looks portentous, my stomach roils with anxiety, and I know not which direction to turn for help if any even exists, but those problems—however real—are for another time and another place.  All I have before me is the moment at hand, and I absolutely do not intend to waste it obsessing over a shapeless future that manifests only to those who are inherently lucky and kissed by the gods.

• At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeonly old fogy, why is that good customer service–not great, just good–comes as an utter surprise nowadays, when not that long ago it was expected?   A cheerful smile accompanied by a rudimentary level of competence elicits surprise and wins praise in today’s average world, whereas considerably more than that was needed to engender compliments just a few decades ago.  We live in an average world today, and thus average is the low-bar benchmark we use for measuring anything and everything.  Climb slightly above average, and you are automatically regarded as “good” at what you are doing and feted for that.  Relativity indeed, but surely not as the estimable Einstein theorized the matter a century ago.  Quite a shame when you stop to think about it, but in the big scheme of things culture shapes us; we don’t shape culture.

• ……I was sure he was gonna die last night, but I prayerfully had another whole day with him today. A whole day of companionship.  A whole day of sharing the sublimity of consciousness.  A whole day of co-existing with a creature I love versus the backdrop of an endless Universe with no true beginning and no true end.  That’s worth something, isn’t it?  Actually, it’s worth a lot.  A helluva lot!!!  It means the world to me, just as each successive day that he continues to be alive will mean the world to me as well.  Life is lived in bits and pieces–in tantalizingly small fragments akin to slowly savoring your way through a package of M&Ms–and every additional fragment that I can get with him now and over the next handful of days–however small and however short-lived those turn out to be–will warm my soul and feel like an earthshaking moral victory…..

 

• ALL KNOWLEDGE IS GOOD KNOWLEDGE!!!!! Ignorance may be bliss, but–Truthfully!!!–would you rather be informed and thus somewhat armed…..or blissful like a chicken striking out to cross a busy interstate highway without a care in the world?  Knowledge, even knowledge of the distasteful variety, is a potent weapon in the hands of an intelligent person, and when squared up against a worthy opponent we surely need all the weapons we can muster.  So don’t mimic an ostrich and shy away from receiving news, even if you fully expect it to be of the negative variety.  You may not be able to avoid immediate pain in concert with whatever hideous detritus may accompany same—granted—but in the long run this new knowledge could very well prove to be invaluable and serve as an informed launching pad for effective ensuing action.

• …..nothing could prepare him for the day when HE—the undisputed Master of the Universe, the King of Kong, the Boss of Bosses, the Great Knower of Everything, yes, he…….THE Superman among Supermen……suddenly grew feet of clay in the presence of his teen-aged children and fell permanently from his lofty pedestal. The demigod who could never do any wrong now could do no right in their newly insolent eyes, and this abrupt transformation and subsequent fall from grace left a gaping hole in his erstwhile teeming self-confidence, a hole that ensuing time could never hope to refill…..

• Many of the so-called “dark clouds” that supposedly follow us around are of our own making. That’s right—they aren’t real.  They are figments of our imaginations, nefarious ghosts hiding out in our cerebral attics, mere fleeting apparitions meant more to scare than to actually inflict injury.  They are no more real to a learned eye than the existence of the Tooth Fairy or the probability of a balanced federal government budget in the foreseeable future.  Hence, move on with your life and quit inventing feeble excuses for remaining average!

• …..it had now only been five days since he died, yet she no longer felt an affinity for him or the phalanx of shared memories he left behind. That was a different time—a different era almost—and she found that her life since his death had veered off on a whole new trajectory…..an exhilarating trajectory she never even could have anticipated just weeks ago.  A part of her still felt gnawing pangs of guilt that she didn’t feel more remorse over his sudden and violent passing, but her stronger inner self reassured her conscience there wasn’t anything more she could have done to dissuade the bullheaded bastard from his serially self-destructive behavior.  Death was imminent for him, just as unfettered happiness would be for her now and extending indefinitely into the future……

• Do not expect more happiness out of life than it is capable of giving. Happiness is without doubt the greatest blessing to be found and nurtured in life but, like anything else worth pursuing, it comes in finite quantities that are inelastic in nature and firmly bounded on all sides.  Expecting more from life than it is able to offer and not knowing when to gratefully settle for something less than that is the greatest mistake a surprisingly large number of people make.  Do not be overly rapacious and find yourself emotionally drowning amongst this dumb, Panglossian majority!!!

• …..from a moment to a memory…..that’s all it was…..one second it was out in front of me and highly tangible…..and in the next second it was filed away in the back of my brain, as inanimate and unchangeable as the color of my skin. The bridge between a moment and a memory is teensy indeed—almost infinitesimal—indeed no longer than the attention span of an average human being, but depending upon its import what transpires in that span can easily last a lifetime—or cut short a lifetime—and possesses a transcendent power more mind-boggling than the splitting of an atom…..

• Whatever looks too good to be true, or seems too good to be true, or feels too good to be true…..IS too good to be true, you guileless fool! Always!!!  Every fuckin’ time!!!!!  There are no exceptions to this cardinal rule and there never will be, despite the googol of meager attempts at rationalization we inevitably struggle to make to justify our naturally avaricious impulses and to partially sate our raging earthly desires.  Nothing is given free in life; you have to go out and earn everything.  To think otherwise—to think shortcuts and faux miracles will unfailingly be available to lessen our work burden and assist us in securing benefits and largesse that we have offered no personal sacrifice to deserve—is a fool’s errand and a fool’s mentality.