Being a tiny minnow testing your wits against the mighty ocean is far preferable to being a big fish claiming dominion over a tiny pond. One takes a large measure of courage; the other–a pronounced absence of same.  Obviously one’s comfort level holds at a steady equilibrium when you settle into constantly familiar surroundings, but that lazy condition also defines the word “stagnation”.  Limited or no personal development is the obvious outgrowth of a sheltered, static existence.  Just as a stagnant backwater breeds all varieties of pestilence, a stagnant, never-changing existence breeds ignorance, bigotry, and closemindedness.  The only way to truly challenge oneself is to put your head right on the chopping block and pursuantly not flinch even one iota when the dreaded ax begins to fall.

…..Don Henley’s classic paean “The Boys of Summer” was playing on the radio as she drove east along Interstate 90, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the way her own summer had gone. Away from home for the first time, out on her own, testing her wings for air worthiness…..and then—like a lightning bolt from out of the blue–she had met HIM.  She hadn’t planned on that happening, not planned on something like a serious relationship developing at all.  This was to have been her summer dedicated to experimenting with independence for the first time, not with dependence on others as had so often been the case at home.  Yet she had quickly fallen under his spell, grew to need him more than she had ever needed anyone in her entire life, and the summer had flown by in glorious fashion with its three months seemingly condensed into three short days.  Now as she was headed back home while Labor Day rapidly approached, and he was headed off in the opposite direction–Don Henley was still waxing nostalgically about the importance of “Don’t look back; you can never look back!”–she began to cry—giant involuntary crocodile tears–for she knew the troubadour on her car radio was absolutely right, and that she would never learn nearly as much about herself in any summer yet to come than the one which had just passed and was currently receding ever further in her Elantra’s rear-view mirror as she continued driving eastward toward home…..toward a fresh year of college life…..toward a newly found level of independence…..toward a future, heartbreakingly, without HIM anywhere in it…..

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

 

I Did Nothing…..

By Frederick J. Blahnik

 

He was hurting…..

And yet I did nothing…..

He was in desperate need…..

And I wasn’t there for him…..

He was being tormented…..

And I stood by and watched…..

The bully was real…..

But my response was virtual…..

His eyes were haunting…..

Yet I paid them scant attention…..

I had an opportunity to do right…..

Instead I did nothing, which is the same as doing wrong…..

We crossed paths for but a few minutes…..

Yet that was plenty long for me to shirk my duty to mankind…..

He was in need of an ally…..

But I didn’t step forward to offer a helping hand.

 

Today I faced humanity’s most crucial test…..

And I failed…..failed it miserably.

 

And now I have to live with my unforgiving conscience; it is as relentless and constricting as a Burmese python…..

But I deserve this fate……

I really really do…..

I will be punished severely by my moral compass, by my inner conscience, by my metaphysical weather vane, by my avatar of God…..

As well I should be…..

Absolutely I should be!!!

 

Inactions can be every bit as sinful as forthright actions.

The bully was very real, but my response was virtual…...

NOTE:  The following essay is excerpted from the incomplete, as-yet-unpublished treatise entitled “A Manifesto on Time, Mathematics, Infinity, and Related Issues”, authored by Fred Blahnik.

 

A human egg cell and sperm cell unite in a female’s birth canal—inarguably a purely biological act—yet somewhere during the midst of this strictly procreational requirement sentience is magically created and a soul—sentience’s inseparable hand-mate—likewise forms from what was previously nothing.

How can this be???  How can this “miracle of life” occur?

Scientists struggle mightily to discover the source of consciousness, but their determined effort is invested far more in academic duty and vanity than pure logic.  They will never succeed in this quixotic quest.  They will never find the “source” of consciousness, never succeed in solving this most transcendent of “puzzles”.

How do I know this?

Because the weapons they employ within their arsenal–mathematics, metrics, equations, rational thinking–are not relevant when one is talking about emotions, feelings, and inscrutable human urges.  Emotions are not quantifiable.  Feelings are not quantifiable.  Loyalty is not quantifiable.  Melancholy is not quantifiable.  Happiness is not quantifiable.  Hatred is not quantifiable.  LOVE is definitely not quantifiable.  Thus these pompous ignoramuses who continue to stubbornly pursue the source of consciousness in concert with the tenets of consciousness are no more learned or insightful than Ponce De Leon was when he swept through the swamps of Florida grandiosely pursuing the Fountain of Youth.  Consciousness is a metaphysical entity, a cosmic mystery; it is not bound by the strictures of science.

Why is this so?

The more appropriate question to ask would be:  Why should it NOT be so???

Why must we as human beings feel an obsessive compulsion to know the answers to everything that impacts our daily lives?

Why indeed?

For certain seminal things there are no true answers, nor should there be.   Some issues are just better left unquestioned.  Appreciated, yes, but unquestioned.  And once an individual realizes and accepts this overarching fact, life automatically becomes considerably easier to accept and, in the process…..more endearing.

We do not need to know all of the “answers” attending our collective daily existences, for the simple reason there oftentimes are none.  Just accept life and be appreciative for it.  Maintaining ignorance on the origin and reasons for consciousness is perfectly okay; it is laudable even.

…..and the incessant volley of moments kept passing by my head like stray bullets in a far-off combat zone, but with a shameless helping of luck that was augmented by neuro-physiology too complicated for anyone other than God to understand, a few of them lodged in the back of my brain and remained stuck there permanently as sweet, fleeting memories offering tribute to glad times long since passed. Ah, yes, the visceral beauty of random moments magically transformed into lifelong memories which we can take with us to our grave.  What else in life can match that?!  A miracle, perhaps??…..

…..she didn’t take herself too seriously. She didn’t think she was the end-all, be-all, do-all.  She wasn’t egotistical, not in the slightest.  And why would she be, might I ask?  She knew there were over six billion fellow human beings inhabiting Earth’s finite surface, each bringing their own peculiar talents and capabilities to the Sisyphean task of furthering mankind’s ultimate destiny.  She was merely one out of over six billion. That surely didn’t make her special, didn’t make her entitled, didn’t make her indispensable.  She brought to the table her own unique skill set, to be sure, and those skills were undoubtedly formidable, yet she was still only one member of the choir, not its director.  Not its maestro.  Not its grandiose synchronizer.  And she could live with that, live with that quite easily actually.  Others could feel their lives were absolutely crucial to mankind’s ongoing survival, but she knew better.  She was a grunt down in the trenches fighting hard and soldiering forward every day, just like everyone else.  Only some people don’t recognize this fundamental truth, cannot acknowledge the fact they aren’t exceptional.  They believe they transcend those around them, transcend humanity.  Utter craziness!   No one is more special than the person standing next to them.  No one approaches demigod status.  Everyone can be replaced; everyone derives from the same basic carbon molecules.  She was a humble person, always had been and always would be.  Humility is key to a happy lifestyle, if you really want to know the bedrock secret to survival.  If one takes himself or herself too seriously, the disappointments in life eventually start to outweigh the legions of pleasures……

…..and the moment came and then disappeared almost instantly…..followed by the next…..and the next…..and all those moments disappeared in her wake with little fanfare and no more permanence than the misty contrail a jet airplane leaves behind high in the stratosphere to mark its ephemeral presence. And she wondered right then about how purists always chide everyone to “Live in the moment!!” and “Live life to the fullest!!”  She questioned how you could live your life in “the moment” if you never even knew when that moment started and when it ended……and even though she knew for a fact that it MUST theoretically exist…..it disappeared with such fleeting swiftness and elusiveness that one never had any time to actually enjoy it and make plans over what to do with this super slippery little particle of time before it disappeared and the next one magically appeared in its stead.  She knew “the moment” and “the present” were the same thing–interchangeable entities, inarguably–but in her mind the million dollar question centered over what to do with the infernal things?!  Both of them–“the moment” and “the present”–were here and gone before you knew it, hence “living within the moment” made no more sense to her than struggling to understand the birth of our universe or living one’s entire life with a blanket pulled over your head…..

…..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!