At conception, we are someone else's domino: a decision. Most of us are part of a deliberate and meticulously planned blueprint. We are placed gently into our parents' lives as a step in their success stories. Then there are those who are thrust into this world as the spawns of artists. Artists say "to hell with success." They knock down the dominoes of their lives with spontaneous fits of passion and rock concerts. Artists are ignorant of the fickle nature of dominoes, how placing even one at an incorrect angle increases the chances of your whole world toppling over. Impromptu decisions and haphazard arrangements greatly increase the possibility of a chain reaction of failure after failure. Avoid the arts: the thrill of impulsively scattering your dominoes is ephemeral. You will be left with an unstable life that can collapse at any time.

The first years of education often involve arts and crafts: the SAT for children. Finger painting may just seem like a playful activity, but it actually functions as a method to identify which children will grow up to be successful and which ones will live in an unfashionable, non air-conditioned, single room apartment. When asked to color a picture of the sun, the future doctor will create a perfect yellow ball, while the future indebted artist will use a rainbow of colors as if the outline of the sun does not exist. The teachers will not discriminate because it's not the children's fault that their parents never taught them that true art is placing your dominoes in the right places. Those unfortunate children may have a chance of surviving the real world if they learn to color inside the lines.

In high school, the notion that art is for failures becomes much more apparent because the number of academic classes outnumber the art classes. This is because your entire life is devoted to getting into college, then graduate school, maintaining a sustainable job, raising a family, and finally enjoying a comfortable retirement. There are pivotal steps to attaining these goals. High school is not about saccharine prom proposals or making memories: it's about building the rest of your life. Step one: take as many AP classes as you can in order to make your application scream "potential neurosurgeon." Step two: invest your time into useful extracurricular activities that will teach you valuable life lessons. Join science research and design a way to use worms to remove corrosive heavy metal ions from soil. Sit and toil with the worms in the fluorescent light of the laboratory. Win gold. Your science board will nobly collect dust in the closet for ages, and will be pulled out whenever the teachers need to provide others with an example of a successful board. Step 3: never forget that every decision you make is a domino that will either maintain order or induce total chaos. Follow these guidelines because if you carefully place your dominoes, you will avoid pandemonium and go from one level of stability to the next.

After attaining your Bachelors, Masters, and finally PhD, begin teaching the art of making dominoes stand to your children, just as your parents taught you. Tell them that placement is crucial, as in a still life. This is all the "art" you will ever need. Enroll them in the right schools and drive them to chess club. Pick out their clothes for them and decide which children they can play with. Feed them vegetables. And when they attain their Bachelors, Masters, and PhDs, cry because that was the moment you had dreamed of ever since you colored that sun inside the lines. Grow old and be proud of how wonderful your flawlessly arranged dominoes look.

Avoid the arts because retirement is not in the artist's vocabulary. In old age, the musicians' fingers do not ache from arthritis, but rather from need to press piano keys. As a parent, the writer dares his children write their own stories, in italicized, bold, rainbow letters. In his dingy apartment, the artist has no intention of earning a degree and stains his walls with paint to capture his courageous spontaneity. In high school, the photographer ventures into forbidden territory to expose the truth. Avoid the arts because the artist keeps his masterpieces from kindergarten and uses them as makeshift macaroni coasters. And you still have your sun on the refrigerator. Avoid the arts because writers can describe all the chances you didn't take and the regrets you have. Avoid the arts because artists scatter their dominoes, but in their eyes the dominoes are pieces of a larger mosaic that you cannot begin to fathom.

To all those who carry their guitars with them everywhere, sit on the subway sketching strangers, or write in the symbolic shadows of trees: you are an incessant reminder of what I could have been had I stopped worrying about those damn dominoes. I will never be able to muster enough courage to perform poetry at an open mic or major in writing. Every page in your novel is a catharsis that I could have written. Please leave me here with my medals and go display your easels splattered with talent to someone who knows how to take a risk. Leave me with my prep books because all I will ever be able to do is place my dominoes and pray they don't fall.