COLUMN: It's not what I Intended

By Tobin Barnes

I try to have the best intentions.

It's one of the easiest things to do...yeah, going around having good intentions, like little Miss Mary Sunshine. I do it all the time.

Unless you're an evil and demented Jeffrey Dahmer-type sucker, intending to do good is a walk in the park.

So that's me, Mr. Good Intentions. That's probably you, too.

But, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Supposedly, that thought originated with Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, who, I'm assuming,

was a tortured cleric suspicious of anything that smacked of the least bit of fun. His original thoughts were actually more like this: "Hell is full of good wishes and desires."

In other words, if wishes and buts were candy and nuts, it'd be Christmas every day.

Saint Bernard may have been inspired in his morbid musings by the Roman writer Virgil,

who said, "It is easy to go to hell."

And I agree. Amen, brother. Especially when we're talking about waist size. As in "Man,

he really went to hell, didn't he?" Chest of drawers disease can happen to anybody in their 30's or 40's when a guy's chest starts falling into his drawers.

Can happen to women, too. "Man, did she ever go to hell." Death by chocolate.

Uh huh, we fall far short of our intentions. We never intended to get fat, ugly and lazy--

just the opposite--but, yup, there we are. At least 10,000 times along the way of life, we've said, "Oh...what the hell!" to everything from another piece of pizza to another evening on the couch.

(Hell has evidently become central to this analysis, hasn't it?)

Nevertheless, despite all evidence to the contrary, past experience doesn't stop us from

continuing to have good intentions.

I'm as guilty as the next guy--you maybe. I'm still at my age chock-a-block full of wistful

thinking. Experience has done nothing for me. I haven't aged a bit in this singular respect. I'm still a babe in the woods.

My worst domain of unfulfilled intentions comes when I've got free time coming up on

the horizon. While I'm still busy with the chores of the workaday world, I can weave an amazing magic carpet illusion made up of all kinds of productive uses for those upcoming, long-wished-for idle hours, days, or maybe even weeks.

Oh, it will be glorious!

I'll read volumes by great masters, I'll start writing the great South Dakota novel, I'll

perfect my French, I'll lower my handicap by five strokes, I'll slim down to my high school belt size, I'll build great social relationships that will spread my bumptious personality all over town by changing overnight from an introvert to an extrovert.

I'll...I'll...oh, I can come up with dozens of things I'll do with that spare time. The list of

good intentions becomes infinite like a manic-depressive on the upswing.

And, of course, at the end of that beneficent bout of free time, I've accomplished hardly

anything. Then I'm like a drunk with a hangover, a druggy in withdrawal. With just a few hours of that precious free time left, the high grinds into a low. Little is left of my intentions but sad, sorrowful regrets.

Yes, woe is me.

But I've thought of a remedy. Hey, I'm going to turn this cycle around. From now on, I'm

going to expect absolutely nothing of my idle hours. Instead, I'm going to sit on my butt all day, stuff my face, zone out, and try to accomplish a totality of zilch--let myself morph into a gigantic, parasitic pustule of dependency.

Then if I do anything whatsoever during that period...anything, I say...even the least bit of

anything, and I'm bound to do a some little something of value here and there--even if by

accident--then that'll be a great positive good, because nothing good was ever intended.

What a turnaround! What a revelation! No more hangover, no more withdrawal, no more hell. It will now be a matter of "Look what can happen when I don't set my mind to it."