Burning bridges is not necessarily a bad thing.  You’ll run across a lot of bridges in life that are rotten to the core and deserve nothing better than to be annihilated as quickly as possible.  Individuals who chronically scramble to preserve all their “Plan B’s” never achieve their “Plan A’s”; it’s way too easy to unloose your grip on the bowstring if anything less than a perfect kill shot presents itself.  That’s not to say you should burn every bridge once you cross over it—to do so would be reckless and woefully myopic—but certain bridges are not worth keeping and therefore should be immediately destroyed.  And for those well-intentioned but imbecilic recreants who insist you should leave every bridge you cross intact lest you may want to cross back over it again someday, I would say this to them: You’re looking in the wrong direction, Dear Fool; you’re gazing in the arrantly wrong direction!  The future rises brightly and boldly on THIS side of the bridge that you just traversed, not back on its distant side. Do you want to explore the awesome thing we call the future…..or do you honestly want to double back in time and relive the past? The future is a sublime gift and that’s why the Arrow of Time runs in only one direction—FORWARD AND TO THE RIGHT!

Just as bad times never last, in all honesty…..neither do good times.  Everything in life is perpetually in a state of random flux.  Change is the only real constant in this universe of ours. Hence if your life seems too good to be true during a particularly enchanting moment, it probably is and change of the negative variety is already in the offing back in the locker-room. This is inevitable, no different than the metronomic arc of a pendulum or the steady rhythm of the ocean tides. But always remember this: The opposite is likewise true, so don’t get too dejected and quickly give up hope when the pendulum swings once more to the left and sinister clouds move in and take up temporary residence directly over your head, something I guarantee will ineluctably happen to you in time—many times over! This compromised condition is temporary as well; the pendulum won’t remain stuck in a pejorative position permanently and it’ll work its way back toward you in time. Why? Because it will. No one knows why, or at least no person rightfully claiming prudence can offer a plausible explanation. Life is structured in a rhythmic, oscillating pattern for no apparent reason.

…..we don’t see eye-to-eye on most things. I believe in the future; he lives in the past.  I believe in investing in humanity; he believes in investing only in himself.  I see my descendants as being proud torchbearers of our family name; he sees them merely as creditors who owe him a lifetime debt of gratitude. I recognize mortality and am at peace with the relative brevity of a human life; he fights mortality like it’s a Mephistophelian villain and is of the strong conviction the world would be a fantastically better place perchance he lived forever.  I believe I owe humanity a dowry purely for the privilege of being alive; he believes humanity owes him a colossal debt because of his simple presence and incomparable amazingness. I respect life as the ultimate gift; he does not and continually chooses to abuse it.  Yes, all things considered, I guess you could rightfully say we–my longtime husband and I–are not too similar in our governing philosophies, but other than that we get along fine and dandy…..

…..theoretically, this could be accomplished—–but life is not a theory.  Hypothetically, this may happen—–but life is not a hypothesis.  Conjecturally, this is possible—–but life is not a conjecture. Life is not to be lived in a test tube with possibilities bubbling to the surface every other second, yet with one’s lone reaction to this smorgasbord of possibilities amounting to nothing more than mental games.  No, life itself is right HERE and right NOW—a dynamic, gyrating, flesh-and-blood-and-guts entity demanding immediate action.  Overanalyzing life totally misses the point; lives are meant to be spontaneous and lived on the run, not architected and examined on some bland whiteboard in a squeaky-clean office as the prelude to extensive rehearsals beforehand. You can’t live a life like that, but you sure as Hell can die as a result of overplanning and overanalyzing in the long run. Oh, and by the way, there is no long run in nature; death happens randomly, unexpectedly, instantaneously and it is the great ruiner of the most elaborate, well-conceived plans. The future, when all is said and done, is nothing more than a highly seductive mirage. Anyone who argues otherwise possesses an IQ that wouldn’t even register on the Richter Scale…..

…..the “Glory Days” didn’t seem so glorious back when they were happening, back when he was constantly being bullied by that fuckin’ musclebound prick Dan Dickhut, back when his face waged incessant war with itself in the guise of nonstop eruptions of unsightly acne, back when the prettiest cheerleaders in school stared right past him as though he didn’t exist and focused their gazes on the star athletes instead, back when high school cliques were more prevalent and demanded greater loyalty than notorious street gangs, back when you were either “cool” or “uncool” and there was no wiggle room for hybrids between the two classifications, yet everyone kept insisting they were inarguably the best years of his life, so all those purveyors of common knowledge must be right, of course; why, pray tell, would they NOT be telling the truth?  Forget the legions of onerous memories; his memory must’ve been betraying him all along; yes, the blame HAD TO lie with his own faulty memory! Those teenaged days of yore HAD to have been the best, most joyous years of his life and he’d just somehow lost sight of this obvious fact during the long ensuing interval. After all, why else would wunderkind troubadour Bruce Springsteen keep paying homage to them as the “Glory Days”?…..

If you don’t want to be tempted or risk the possibility (Probability?) of succumbing to temptation, just make a point of avoiding that temptation altogether.  Nothing too nuanced or complicated about this observation.  If you don’t stray into the lion’s den, you don’t run the risk of being devoured by the lion.  If you make a point of staying a safe distance away from the wolves’ lair, you probably don’t have to worry about becoming the wolfpack’s next supper.  If you don’t wander into the whorehouse down the street, you probably don’t have to be concerned about bringing syphilis home with you as a surprise present for your wife.  If you don’t meander aimlessly into the nearest Kwik Trip store when the Powerball jackpot sits at half a billion dollars, you won’t have to rationalize later why you spent fifty dollars on a whole shitload of suckerfish lottery tickets. And so on and so on and so on. The exact same principle applies with any ill-advised temptation.

Dream big or live small!  Cinderella stories rarely happen by accident.  Setting fairytales aside for a moment, inspirational paeans far more commonly happen by design and as the direct product of wildly creative thinking in the beginning, augmented later by hard, targeted labor. Reach for the sky, not for that low-hanging apple branch just over yonder.  The only way you can accomplish great things is by dreaming great things.  Don’t set stout boundaries on your imagination because boundaries are by definition self-limiting and then you wind up placing firm, infrangible constraints on the life you want to live. If you only color within the lines, you’ll never know what exists outside those lines. Setting definite life parameters is not exactly a recipe for grand success. Instead, it’s a recipe for a miniature, truncated life lived exclusively inside one of those cute, shake-me-up snow domes sold at Christmastime.

Every block you lay, however tiny, means the redoubtable wall you’re building is now that much closer to completion.  Never forget this simplistic yet transcendent truism!  Tiny steps do matter; each one represents an integral constituent to the final sum. Although admittedly not the equivalent of gigantic leaps, tiny steps nonetheless bring you closer to your ultimate destination.  For this reason, never discount them. Do not belittle them. Do not minimize their importance. Do not take them for granted. Remember, we’re not always in the proper frame of mind to make those aforementioned gigantic leaps. During stressful times, settle for lesser steps and then be exceedingly grateful for them. You cannot climb a mountain in leaps and bounds, and you likewise cannot summon the same prodigious amount of energy to address a daunting project every day of the week. So don’t, and rather gladly default to lesser increments on those occasions when your mind demands such.

It is NEVER about the words and creeds you outwardly profess; it is ALWAYS about the actions you take and the examples you set for others, especially youngsters or naïfs who—oftentimes unbeknownst to you—may be closely observing you and holding you up as an exemplar. Show me, don’t tell me!  Act, don’t mime!  Lead, don’t follow!  Do, don’t talk!  Run, don’t walk! Words may have unsavory consequences, but they are not lasting ones; those disreputable varmints are mere puny surrogates wobbling precariously about on spindly rhetorical legs.  Contrarily, the consequences stemming from actions can be significant, long-lasting, life-altering, and occasionally even permanent. Never forget this!  Words may help shape opinions, but actions undoubtedly shape lives; therein lies a googolplex of difference.

There is no sadder or more wistful time than when beginning insidiously transitions into ending and the interval separating those two benchmarks evaporates into thin air as though said time never existed at all; once essential memories are no more and it’s like they were never even there. No bold pronouncement is made when this event happens; it’s an invisible bridge that you cross in the middle of the night sans clanging bells, blaring trumpets, and tickertape parades heralding your silent passage. Yet you can almost always viscerally sense when this ghostly segue occurs, little different than when you first become aware that the glue holding an erstwhile close relationship tightly together begins to dissolve. You subsequently feel waves of longing, sentimentality, and regret washing over your body while a melancholy mindset of finality gradually takes control over your sensibilities when you suddenly realize that the past is only an illusion and the future is a promissory note held by Someone far greater than yourself. And THAT, Dear Reader, is the day when bona fide wisdom found or will find you.