…..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 cerebral Humpty Dumpty.  She had gone by herself 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 and, far worse, no one bothered to even take her claims seriously…..

HEY, DIDYA HEAR THE BIG NEWS????? The “Good Old Days” officially start tomorrow!!!  At least–and I can guarantee you this point with one hundred percent certainty–such is the perspective you’ll embrace if you are thirty years out from now and looking backwards in time.  This phenomenon, this involuntary adjustment of our broader lens on life to ensure the past always looks notably more attractive than the present, serially occurs with every individual–NO exceptions!!!  But why wait thirty years to adopt the proper attitude insofar as the myriad opportunities available to you today?  Why wait so long to finally admit the times you are living in right now are in fact pretty damned good and fraught with adventure, excitement, and–most importantly–nearly infinite possibilities for the pursuit of happiness?  Because they are…..but only to earnest individuals who are eternally grateful for the transcendent gift of life and recognize said as every bit as precious this very moment as it will be thirty years from now.

A giant bear had been terrorizing the primitive, Third World village for several months now, marauding for food on a nightly basis and mauling any person who dared stand in its way. The townspeople grew weary and finally had enough of this continuous torment; they arranged a communal powwow, and from this freewheeling confab an ingenious solution was hatched.  Which was?  Well, just outside the village on the route the monstrous bear religiously followed during its pillaging missions, the menfolk of the village dug a massive hole in the ground approximately twenty feet deep, or just shallow enough to avoid the subterranean water table.  After completing this arduous task, the men of the hamlet next dragged fallen trees and fallen branches and anything else that would burn up to the hole and pitched the flammable stuff into the huge depression in the ground.  Finally, these same men lit the humongous pile of brush in the hole on fire and allowed the debris to burn for several days thereafter.  The end result of this peculiar activity?  When the fire was ultimately done burning, a mammoth pile of ashes was left standing at the very bottom of the hole.  Well, as it turns out that very evening the villainous bear came wandering along the well-worn trail on its way to the village to do some marauding and, as it approached the gigantic hole in the ground, curiosity naturally got the best of our massive beast.  It walked right up to the lip of the hole and peered straight down at the enormous depression carved into the soil.  Big mistake, Bruin!!!  Because at that exact moment a brave villager–the guy had been selected beforehand in a democratic show of hands–snuck up behind the troublesome bear and gave it a swift kick in the ash-hole!

You can’t plan for opportunities to come along; they happen purely by chance. Thus, to say “I’ll take advantage of the next opportunity!”  after missing out on a recent one is rationalization to its nth degree.  The same tentativeness which caused you to miss out on that most recent glorious opportunity will still be present the next time around, hence you will almost certainly miss out on the next one as well, along with the one after that and the one after that–ad infinitum.  Opportunities nearly always materialize quickly, they hang around for but a moment in time, and then they disappear just as hastily and mysteriously whence they came.  You cannot PLAN for them to happen; the best you can do is react expeditiously and intelligently when they do appear, because sequential planning and execution simply takes too long and the opportunity will swiftly pass while you are busy doing all of your calculating and logical analyzing.  So be on guard at all times, and react with lightning rapidity and ferociousness when an opportunity does appear.  An opportunity is akin to a one hundred dollar bill spied lying on the sidewalk.  If you don’t snatch it up immediately, the person right behind you most assuredly will.

Nothing lasts forever…..  Not happiness.  Not love.  Not life itself.  And not even sadness, as furiously as it so often tries.  Transience rules supreme, and temporariness ultimately carries the day.  The only thing that truly lasts forever is change…..variance…..instability…..unpredictability.  In light of this fact, never get settled too comfortably into an embarrassingly pleasing lifestyle, and don’t ever fret too egregiously about a bad twist of fate either; neither situation will last indefinitely.  Life is an obstacle course strewn with multiple barriers along its way, but there are unfailingly a multitude of convenient open spaces and rest-stops located between the various obstacles.  Take full advantage of these guaranteed respites before the next barrier unexpectedly pops up.  Avoid emotional peaks and valleys, and you’ll be able to enjoy life–both the bright spots as well as the rough spots–considerably more than if you blithely ride the crests of life without acknowledging its inevitable troughs.

NOTE:  The following humorous essay is drawn from the non-fiction book “A Family United Amongst Itself” and was authored by Barb (Blahnik) Smalley.  Said book was edited by Fred Blahnik and published in 2012.

 

One would think that having seven older sisters in my immediate Blahnik family–while acknowledging the fact twin Bonnie is only a few minutes my senior–as well as a mother, someone would have taken the time to explain and prepare me for the mystery and myriad physical demands attendant to reaching puberty.

NOT!!!!!

Seems that as I physically matured from a girl into a young woman, I was left to figure out for myself and subsequently handle solitarily every one of my body changes……like SHAVING, for example!!  Although in fairness I should be forthright with my readers and confess this point right up front:  I did enter puberty pretty early and was an exceptionally hairy young lady.  Sadly, my overly vain Blahnik older sisters did not even want me to borrow their sweaters and tops because I perspired a lot secondary to all the hair under my armpits.

The only bathroom in our leviathan house near Spring Valley, Minnesota while I was growing up was square and tiny, and was of course used by our whole Blahnik family.  There was a little shelf in one corner of the oversized cubicle where Dad kept his anachronistic shaving mug; inside it was an old steel razor that looked to be of about Civil War vintage.  I took keen note of the fact there was a shiny, very sharp blade mounted inside that razor.

Well, one evening when our Blahnik house seemed a bit less hectic than normal (Was it real or just my imagination?!), I crept into the bathroom and took Dad’s razor down from its perch in the corner.  Unbelievably, it only took a couple of swift strokes with that sharp instrument to remove all the hair from under both my armpits.  I hurriedly put the razor back where I found it.  Immensely relieved, I could now raise either arm fully in class to answer questions put forth by the teacher or play ball in gym class minus inhibitions due to the fear of being arrantly ashamed of my troublesome hirsutism.

As we all know, hair does grow–oftentimes very rapidly–so a couple weeks later I waited until no one was around and helped myself to Dad’s razor once more.  Although my confidence level was sky-high following my earlier conquest, for some reason this time the razor did not glide quite so smoothly over my pubescent skin–the blade actually seemed a bit duller than before–yet I still managed to finish shaving my armpits without undue incident.  But instead of stopping with those smooth armpits and quitting while ahead, I made the fateful decision to proceed onward with shaving my legs for the first time.

BIG MISTAKE, BARB!!!!!

The first leg went reasonably well, although that aforementioned blade seemed to be getting duller with each passage over my tender skin.  I stretched out my second leg to shave the hair on the front of my calf–my shin, in other words.  And then…..the combination of a woefully dull blade and unintentionally turning the primeval razor a bit on its side while I applied downward pressure forced it to slip, cut deep, and slice a sizable strip of skin from the front of my leg…..

JESUS, MARY, AND JOSEPH………OH MY GOD DID THAT SUDDEN INADVERTENT INCISION HURT AND NEXT BLEED LIKE HOLY HELL!!!!!!!!!!!

I still tremble and it gives me goosebumps today when I think about that sharp, dirty old razor cutting so deep into my puerile flesh.  The reader should further remember at this point, though, that I was doing my clandestine shaving without anyone else in our Blahnik household knowing about it; therefore I could not complain to anybody or seek out sympathy, even from my conjoined-in-spirit twin Bonnie.  Accordingly, for several days thereafter I had to baby my wounded leg, wear long slacks wherever I went, and take great pains to not let anyone witness the almost constant blood flow oozing from the long, macabre laceration.

Yet to make a miserable situation even worse, Dad got upset with brother Joe one evening and accused him of using his(Dad’s) razor.  Dad said he did not have enough money to purchase additional razor blades right then……and now his lone remaining blade was inexplicably dull.  Dad went on to roar that he could tell someone had been using his razor without his permission, and I imagine he thought carefree, easy-going Joe–a prolific blame magnet if ever there was one–was the only possible candidate in our female-dominated Blahnik household.

Despite the inherent logic of this argument, I still do not think Dad believed Joe and instinctively thought he was fibbing.  It didn’t help matters one bit that Mom decided to enter the fray at this juncture, piling on Joe and maliciously haranguing him about borrowing Dad’s razor without first seeking permission, and then compounding the magnitude of his original sin tenfold by blatantly lying about it. To his eternal credit, Joe fought back gamely and aggressively in defense of his honor.  He insisted to Dad that he had never used his razor, that he had one of his own–so therefore why would he have any need to be borrowing Dad’s?

I just stood quietly by in the background and took all of this in.  And, yes, Reader–I DID feel terrible about the volcanic, emotion-charged atmosphere I had personally created.  Certainly I felt bad letting the clueless punching bag Joe take all of the blame for a mess of my making, yet at my young age I still did not possess the requisite courage and character to speak up and admit any guilt, and besides…..I was more than a little embarrassed to talk about something as personal as feminine hygiene with my Depression-era father!! 

So, after all these years, allow me to start making amends:  SORRY, JOE, for the copious amount of grief and verbal missiles you undeservedly absorbed back then!!!  I never did tell Dad the truth regarding this misunderstanding and subsequent flare-up.  If it is any consolation, however, the shame I felt at the time did prompt me to speak with one of my older sisters about hygienically appropriate female shaving.  She then helped me purchase the supplies I needed so I thankfully did not have to sneak into our tiny bathroom and “borrow” Dad’s venerable old razor anymore in the future.

 

NOTE:  The following poem is borrowed from an anthology of poetry entitled “The Changing Seasons of Life”, which was penned by Fred Blahnik and published in 2017.

 

Tomorrow…..

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

 

Tomorrow is a gift, not a promise…..

A wish, not a right…..

A prayer, not a belief….

A dream, not a plan…..

A miracle, not an assumption…..

I thank God for each new tomorrow that comes my way…..

 

Tomorrow is a ghost, not a flesh-and-blood body…..

A mirage, not an oasis…..

A hope, not a certainty…..

A desire, not a realization…..

An endowment, not a legacy…..

I thank God for each new tomorrow that comes my way…..

 

Tomorrow is a favor, not an obligation…..

A vision, not a photograph…..

An idea, not an action…..

A premonition, not a revelation…..

A bullet still lodged in a loaded chamber, not a bullet spent…..

I thank God for each new tomorrow that comes my way…..

 

Tomorrow…..

 

Just the sound of the word offers the promise of hope and redemption and renewal for anyone who has ever lived and breathed and experienced human thoughts, but made some mistakes along the way.

 

And when the tomorrows one day stop coming, as I know they inevitably must and will—expectedly or unexpectedly, deservedly or undeservedly, painfully or with indolent ease–I will not despair and curse the many foibles of human mortality.  Instead, I will bow down and enthusiastically praise God for all those twenty-four gifts I was blessed with during my privileged tenure here on Earth’s verdant surface…..

There are two very different types of stubbornness: “Smart” stubbornness and “stupid” stubbornness.  “Smart” stubbornness is when you are absolutely certain you are right and hence refuse to budge even one millimeter in the name of compromise and “being reasonable”.  And why should you?!  Oftentimes the truth lies in a nebulous gray area and cannot be reliably discerned, but on other occasions it is as black and white as the stripes on a zebra.  When this is the case, stick to your guns; compromising in the name of avoiding conflict and appeasing wrong, bullheaded people is definitely no virtue.  Good commendable stuff, “smart” stubbornness is.  “Stupid” stubbornness, on the other hand, is when you only THINK you are right, yet nonetheless refuse to budge even one millimeter because you are mightily concerned that you would subsequently look like a lesser person and a weakling.  But in actuality, the opposite is true.  Self-assured people can readily admit when they are wrong and usually do, whereas fools insist on projecting an image of perfection, even when it is clear to everyone around them such is only a laughable façade.

NOTE:  The following piece is excerpted from the unpublished essay “A Manifesto on Time, Mathematics, Infinity, and Related Issues” by Fred Blahnik.

 

If we as humankind cannot grasp the numerical relevance of infinity, then how can we grasp the concept of infinity per se?  How can we smugly assign a descriptor to something we do not come close to comprehending?  How indeed??  It is one thing to say that something goes on forever, but “forever” is an undefinable concept that we as men and women can never come close to comprehending.  What exactly is “forever” anyway?  How can we possibly conceive of something that abstract?  How can we know there is not a termination point at some undetermined juncture on the number line or at some point in the future?  Humans are adept at describing entities with distinct boundaries, but less so—wholly incapable, in fact—at describing entities that do not fit within bounded sets and subsets.  Infinity obviously falls within this grouping.

Case in point:  We do not even possess names to designate numbers beyond a certain threshold on the number line.  If one cannot fathom or ascribe a definitive word to represent a certain quantity, how can we then say such a quantity even exists?!  Numbers hold relevance only if they can be suitably pigeonholed and described.  You cannot say an impossibly large number exists if you have no way of accurately identifying same.  At that point we are little different than toddlers or Tourette sufferers, i.e. people who routinely invent silly words on the fly with no thought to meaning.  Short of this absurd juncture, and we are left staring into some amorphous abyss where everything is indescribable and nothing therein has any shape, mass, or texture.

…..she didn’t believe in the concept of time, inasmuch as prior to the Big Bang everyone–including the scores of prestigious bigwig astrophysicists regularly featured in those esoteric scientific journals no one ever reads–agreed that such a thing couldn’t have possibly existed. And if that were true, how then could such an entity not only exist now…..but arbitrarily rule every facet of life for the human inhabitants who call the small satellite planet Earth home?  She didn’t wear a watch on her wrist for that inherently sensible reason, but everyone around her thought it was because she was a comely, strong-willed young lady who was making a powerful fashion statement regarding the silliness of jewelry…..