The truth is just like any other valuable commodity; it should be used judiciously and thus oftentimes sparingly. Honesty is an inherently plastic characteristic and should be treated as such.  For example, it is perfectly okay–even recommended–to omit known details from a recitation if one knows in advance that information will hurt or offend the party you are talking to.  The truth is surely a double-edged sword, but it pays to use only one of those edges when circumstances dictate prudence and compassion.

Once in a while in life–not often, but every now and then–you just have to take a deep breath, close your eyes…..and dive into the deep end of the pool off the high board! Throw caution to the wind.  Defy rationality.  Veer off the safe, beaten path.  Follow your gut instincts.  Trust in your inner self.  Cast aside your strict, oppressive budget.  Above all else:  BELIEVE in yourself!!!  If all you ever do is chase after convention, you are no better off or more refined than one of the multitude of Holstein-Friesians that obsequiously follow the bell cow in from pasture every evening.  But, trust me, you are better than those mindless, docile beasts!  You have been blessed with a strong sense of free will; do not squander this gift by being afraid to take chances.  Life is all about making choices, but if you allow society and others to blindly make every one of those choices for you, then you slavishly deserve the boring, pedestrian fate that invariably awaits.

When is a life fully lived? When is enough “enough”? ……….  When you have been allowed to experience happiness for more than a week straight?  When you have parented a child and thus ensured your future physical legacy will continue to exist on this planet’s surface even after you are gone?  When you have helped make a thousand people happy?  A hundred people?  Ten people?  ONE person???  When you have made a million dollars with your own hands or your own brain?  When you have made sufficient money to retire early?  When that early retirement proves to be less challenging and overall less satisfying than the years of intense effort required to reach such an “idyllic” milestone?  When your children grow up to have children of their own…..and you become a grandparent for the first time?  When, indeed, is a life fully lived???  There is, of course, no true, universally accepted answer to such a basic question, other than this one:  A LIFE IS FULLY LIVED WHENEVER THE PERSON INHABITING A BODY DECIDES THAT IT IS.  Everyone has wildly different standards for satisfaction, and accordingly you should WITHOUT EXCEPTION follow your own inner compass as it relates to pursuing happiness, while reaping the tangible and intangible rewards that will invariably accompany this remarkable temporal journey you have embarked upon.

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 of their “Plan B’s” never achieve their “Plan A’s”.  That is 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 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 return back over it some day, I would say this to them:  You are looking in the wrong direction, Dear Fool; you are gazing in the arrantly wrong direction!  The future rises bright and bold on THIS side of that bridge you just traversed, not back on its distant side.  Do you want to explore this awesome thing we call the future…..or do you honestly want to turn back and relive the past…..?

…..the sky split open, thunder roared, and the Most Almighty God overseeing the length and breadth and depth of our most peculiar cosmos descended to Earth from the heavens astride a lightning bolt that was encased in a blazing cloud of glory, only to be arrested minutes later by vigilant local law enforcement officials, summarily thrown in jail, and booked for disorderly conduct and creating a public spectacle. Next He was appointed a public defender in accordance with established legal protocol, since the eccentric fellow claimed to have no money for staging a viable defense if His weird transgression was ever brought to trial…..

NOTE:  The following poem is borrowed from an anthology of poetry entitled “The Changing Seasons of Life”, authored by Fred Blahnik and published in 2016.

 

A Tiny Piece of Flotsam

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

I am just a tiny piece of flotsam, trying valiantly to navigate this vast river of life.

The further I float downstream, the nearer I come to the river’s sprawling delta……and the mystical mouth at its end.

In the beginning, the river’s current was swift and carried me along rapidly.

No thought was ever wasted on what lay beyond the horizon.

Now, as I advance further and further downstream, the current is gradually slowing down.

And the possibility of a terminal point and complete cessation of the river seeps ever more aggressively into my evolving consciousness.

 

I can navigate just a wee bit on this languid body of water, yet I certainly cannot turn around and go back wherest I came.

Or even stop to rest my weary bones for a few minutes on a convenient sandbar.

No, the river’s current keeps carrying me downstream–slowly, inevitably, inexorably, determinedly…….

‘Til one day, totally unannounced, I will glide into that unseeable gulf, thoroughly exhausted.

The waterway of life will stop flowing altogether for me then, and eternal rest will be mine to behold and savor.

 

I will finally be home……..

If you believe in something badly enough or want something to happen badly enough, that wish will probably come true! The five senses with which every human body naturally comes endowed subliminally shape themselves to accommodate what we are expecting or longing for.  A strongly held belief is akin to a detailed road map which will religiously lead us to the destination of our choosing.  Ergo, a strongly held belief is equivalent to probably ninety five percent of the so-called “knowledge” we carry around with us in our brains.  When you know precisely what you are looking for–be it a gold keepsake locket in a dresser drawer, the freshest watermelon in a bin overflowing with them at the local supermarket, the proverbial needle in a haystack, or–And here’s the crux of today’s lesson, Children!–“factual” and/or sensory data points to support a powerfully held belief, finding that desired item pursuantly becomes immeasurably easier.  We inveterately see only that which we are looking for, and in the process generally disregard or ignore any observations and information that might obfuscate our Holy Grail of thought.

NOTE:  The following short story is drawn from the as-yet-unpublished anthology of short stories entitled “Third Time Lucky”.

 

The Last Monarch

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 The last monarch perched on a solitary milkweed plant and laid a fresh batch of eggs.  The last monarch was confident this final act of hers would help perpetuate her species for time immemorial.  How naïve of her!

How perfectly stupid indeed!!

Little did the last monarch know the milkweed plant she currently rested upon would be mowed down in less than a week’s time by an obsessive/compulsive county employee, and that none of her eggs would ever hatch.

Not even one….. 

No, the last monarch was just relieved to have performed this instinctive duty in deference to the survival of her species, and had nary a clue that she was the last of her kind…..now and forever.

The last monarch launched herself from the milkweed plant and flew off in a southerly direction with no particular destination in mind.  She had done her part to honor nature’s undeviating call and perpetuate her kind; she could do whatever she pleased now.  There were no others of her species in the air as she aimlessly fluttered along, but she wasn’t especially troubled by this fact.  Truth is, she hadn’t seen any others of her ilk in the past few days….no, it was more like weeks if not months.  But the last monarch had grown somewhat used to this unrelenting solitude.  Didn’t like it, mind you, but she had begrudgingly grown accustomed to it.

The last monarch spied a rural farmstead in the distance and took aim for it.  She knew there always seemed to be more excitement anywhere human beings congregated, and she was a big fan of excitement.  The last monarch settled on an exposed leaf of a lilac bush—one of many planted in a neat, perfidiously straight row–and spread her wings to luxuriate in the warmth of a late afternoon sun.  She had nary a care in the world; her eggs had been laid, and the remainder of the time she had left to live was all hers.  The last monarch allowed herself time to doze for a few seconds, to relax and take a brief break away from her woefully short, predetermined butterfly life.  She switched off her vision momentarily and rested fitfully.

The next recollection the last monarch had was waking to the tumult of a young boy screaming with pleasure as she felt herself being rushed along.  The last monarch found herself painfully entrapped within a cloth mesh net, sans the ability to flap her wings or move about at all.  The aforementioned boy was racing along at breakneck speed and squealing with unrestrained glee, boisterously celebrating his conquest over another strain of animal.  The two of them were moving inexorably toward the entrance to one of those big buildings where human beings gather and make lots of noise.

Once inside, the last monarch found herself being transferred into an empty one-quart mayonnaise jar, and next its metal cover–which the boy took a few seconds to puncture several holes through with a claw hammer and rusty nail–was screwed tightly onto the small glass receptacle.  Finally, the boy hurried upstairs and deposited the jar containing the last monarch on top of a wooden dresser, far away from the lone window in his bedroom which of course was responsible for the preponderance of sunlight filtering in lazily through the rectangular opening at a steep, forty-five-degree angle.

And that is where the last monarch spent the remaining days of her life—trapped forlornly within a glass jar in a dark corner of a long forgotten boy’s bedroom, light years away from the wind and sunlight and roadside patches of milkweed that she so dearly loved.

The last monarch died shortly thereafter as a misbegotten trophy–as stark testimony to mankind’s unique crusade to exercise absolute control over his surrounding environment.  The jar she was imprisoned in was eventually tossed into a glass recycling bin with the body of the last monarch still lying motionless within it.  And that was it.  No one mourned her loss, few bothered to notice, and nobody even seemed to care.

There is never a “perfect” time to do anything. There is never even a “right” time to do anything.  There just comes a time when you should act, and you must thereupon avail yourself of the opportunity lest the situation evolves/devolves into there being no time left at all.  Life has never been about achieving perfection or walking on water or capturing lightning in a bottle.  Rather, it has always been about innately sensing when that gigantic boulder is going to dislodge and come rolling down the mountainside, and parlaying this intuition into life-saving action.  No one told you that boulder was going to break free and assault you; you just sensed it was time to take evasive action and move out of its way.  And so it is with regard to key decisions in life.  The time will never be “perfect” or even “right” if that is what you are impatiently waiting for.  There’ll just come a nondescript moment when you will need to make a decision or–by not taking any action–that crucial “decision” will be made for you by circumstances beyond your control and, throughout this, time will just continue flowing along like Old Man River, same as always and wholly independent of any calculating or long-term planning on your part.

Today is a new day, unlike any that has come before it. It is a completely blank slate, and as such I can do whatever I want with it provided I don’t violate the rights of others.  This new day comes unencumbered by past fears, prejudices, and mistakes.  It is an opportunity to reinvent myself if I don’t like what I see in the morning mirror.  It is like heading off into an inscrutable and unexplored wilderness, with all of the anticipation and excitement such a journey should engender.  Today is a new day to explore–all by myself if I so choose–and I feel undeservedly blessed to have been handed something this sacrosanct.  I understandably and thusly do not plan to waste it.