STREET DOGS

From Joseph Brodsky’s commencement address at the University of Michigan (1984):

Life is a game with many rules but no referee ... Small wonder, then, that so many play dirty, that so few win, that so many lose.

The world you are about to enter doesn’t have a good reputation. It’s not a nice place, as you are soon to find out ... Still, it’s the only world available; no alternative exists, and if one did, there is no guarantee that it would be much better than this one. It is a jungle out there, as well as a desert, a slippery slope, a swamp

— literally — but, what’s worse, metaphorically, too. Yet, as Robert Frost has said, “The best way out is always through.” He also said, in a different poem, though, that “to be social is to be forgiving.”

Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those — in the official capacity as well as the selfappointed.

Suffer them if you can’t escape them, but once you have steered clear of them, give them the shortest shrift possible… steal, or still, the echo, so that you don’t allow an event, however unpleasant or momentous, to claim any more time than it took for it to occur.

FLIP THE CHANNEL

What your foes do derives its significance or consequence from the way you react. Therefore, rush through or past them as though they were yellow and not red lights. Don’t linger on them mentally or verbally; don’t pride yourself on forgiving or forgetting them — worse come to worse, do the forgetting first. This way you’ll spare your brain cells a lot of useless agitation.

So flip the channel: you can’t put this network out of circulation, but at least you can reduce its ratings.