Aging Capriciously

History or Her-story, which do you prefer? History is said to be told by the winners, so who tells her-story? Some might think that changing words is nothing more than semantics or perhaps political correctness. However, words have the power to shape and create. The pen has often been mightier than the sword. Words shape our reality by influencing our perceptions and our concepts of reality. What we hear and how we define meaning will prejudice what we see and what we believe. History is the story of “mankind.” But is history really the story of humankind? Who is left out of a history told (at least in school books) from a rather slanted perspective? Do we hear history from minorities, from women, from the losers?

As an example of how perspective shapes our meaning of history, in America, we have the Revolutionary War or the War for Independence. In America, the colonists were revolutionaries and freedom fighters. The British saw our war as a revolt. To them, the colonists were lawbreakers and terrorists. Another example: during the sixties, the civil rights protestors in the South were fire hosed, beaten and arrested. They were regarded by lawmakers and others as trouble makers and radicals who wanted to destroy the country. This view would hardly be shared by the protestors who wanted the right to vote, go to the bathroom and have the same schools as the white majority. Not to mention eat in the same restaurants and sleep in the same hotels.

History is ideally a recording of the events that happened in past times. Washington chopped down the cherry tree. Lincoln returned the penny. But did they really? What if we cannot ever know the “historic” truth? What if history is so full of prejudice and distortion that we can never see the underlying reality? What if there is no underlying reality? Perhaps, the only reality is the reality told by the historian. Those who write history create it. There is no answer to this dilemma since it is the dilemma of life. We are always subjected to multiple views of reality and it is up to us to piece together the best view we can. The truth may be that there is no truth, only your truth. My truth and yours may indeed by different. Truth and history are processes that will constantly undergo transformation and change. The history you hear today may change tomorrow. The stories that are told today will change over time. The interpretations that we provide will be distorted and altered by other story tellers and other her-storians.

Do not be so sure of your reality! Do not be so sure of what you read and hear! Will you ever read this blog again? Do you think your ideas and interpretations of what you are reading now will change if you do read it again? What if you wait ten years and then read it again? How do you think your ideas will change? If you are reading it again ten years from now, what has changed in your feelings about this blog and its meanings?

Question time! To children the world is one big question. Young children ask questions about everything and exhibit little or no shame in asking the most private of questions or the silliest. As children progress in school, you can literally see their innate curiosity decrease. Ask a question in kindergarten or the first grade and every hand in the room will go up. Try the same thing in high school, college or grad school and you will see progressively less hands raise. I would argue that there is a direct correlation between the number of years in school and the number of percentage of hands that are raised in each grade. I have had direct experience with this and I can sadly assure you that it is true. What are we doing with our schools when we progressively kill the curiosity and questioning that is at the root of all creativity and development? Are we teaching too many right answers and the importance of getting the “right” answer on tests at the expense of teaching creativity and curiosity?

We teach that there are right definitions and wrong definitions and of course, the teacher’s definition is the correct one. Rest assured, it will be on the weekly exam. In life, there are many answers and many definitions. True, some will be wrong, but there are certainly many ways to “skin the cat.” In science, the concept is called “equifinality” and it means that there are many paths to the same destination. When we award stars and bars for getting the right answer, we are progressively sensitizing students to the power of conformity. My answer is right! Don’t think for yourself! It is important to get the right answer on the test. There is only one right answer. Where does curiosity go? Where do new ideas come from if we don’t ask questions and challenge the status quo?

Have your ever been afraid of asking a question? Why? What thoughts went through your mind while you hesitated? Are you afraid of being wrong, looking stupid, having people laugh at you? Do you think they laughed at the Wright Brothers or Thomas Edison or Thomas Fulton? How many great ideas can you think of that people first laughed at?

Time Zones are regions of the earth that have adopted the same standard time, usually referred to as the local time. Before the adoption of time zones, people used local solar time but this became a problem as railways and telecommunications improved. As people began to travel more, it became even more of a problem because clocks differed between places by an amount corresponding to the difference in their geographical longitude. The “solution” to synchronize all clocks to the same time meant that in some areas of the world, 12 midnight would occur during broad daylight and 12 noon would occur in absolute darkness. “Time zones are thus a compromise, relaxing the complex geographic dependence while still allowing local time to approximate the mean solar time” (Wikipedia).

With the advent of high speed plane travel, time zones have become somewhat of a major nuisance to many travelers. We have all experienced the concept of Jet Lag which appears to be induced by crossing multiple time zones. This has the effect of throwing our bodies into a state of disequilibrium which can take several days to readjust. There are 24 time zones spaced at intervals of 15° in longitude. You can go forward in time and lose time or backwards in time and gain time depending on your direction of travel. If you go west, you will gain time as you cross time zones and if you travel east, you will lose time as you cross time zones. What makes this system even more confusing is the International Date Line.

The International Date Line is the imaginary line on the earth that separates two consecutive calendar days. The date in the Eastern hemisphere, to the left of the line, is always one day ahead of the date in the Western hemisphere. Without the International Date Line, travelers going westward would discover that when they returned home, one day more than they thought had passed, even though they had kept careful tally of the days. (http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/international_date.html)

If you have ever traveled very much, you will find that these systems are very irritating and perplexing. It is easy to lose track of what time it is where you started from and what time it will be where you are going. You may gain a day or lose a day. I have almost arrived back before I left from some trips. For instance, if you cross seven time zones from say Paris to Minnesota and you leave Paris at 7 AM and your plane could make the trip in 6 hours, you would arrive back one hour before you left. On the other hand, the flight there would take 13 hours even though the plane could make it in six.

There are all sorts of tips, tricks, etc, to follow to minimize the impact of jet lag. Over the course of several years, I have tried quite a few of them. I am still not sure which if any really work. Going west, going east, coming home, going there have all been equally hard or easy at one time or another. The more you travel, the easier it is to adjust, but it always takes some adjustment. I was more than happy a few years ago to stop flying as much as I had. With the new changes in airport security, I would just as soon stay home unless I was going on vacation.

How have you been affected by time zones and date lines? Do they impact your life at all? Do you ever notice their effects? Do you call across time zones or travel frequently across time zones? What do you do to minimize jet lag when you travel?

The Walls of Time is an interesting metaphor on time. The phrase is from the title of a Bluegrass music song by Bill Monroe. The lyrics sing of a dead loved one and the promise to join her someday:

I hear a voice out in the darkness
It moans and whispers through the pines
I know it’s my sweetheart a calling
I hear her through the Walls of Time.

One can picture various walls and various structures that make a wall. Regardless of what you picture, walls separate us and compartmentalize us. A Wall of Time separates us as surely as a physical wall. Walls of Time separate generations and structure the entire history of the human race. Walls between generations make it difficult to communicate with the past. We have different life experiences that lead to different assumptions and even different stereotypes of the world. Youth see the world one way and the elderly see the world another way. Those from one generation are indelibly stamped with events and happenings which color and prejudice their view of reality. A Wall of Time separates the living from the living and the dead from the living. We are all creatures of a time that will never happen again. The choices we make and even who we become are stamped by the time in which we are born. Some might even say predetermined by our time of birth.

What does it take to pass through the Wall of Time? Can it be done? Some believe that the dead can return or even continue to walk the earth. Have you ever been to a séance? Have you ever tried to communicate to a dead loved one? Many people say they have. However, none has yet proved that they can pass through the Wall of Time to communicate with anyone dead. Do you think it is possible? Can you pass through the Wall of Time with the dead or the living? Can you even transcend the cultures and habits of the time period in which you were born?

Crazy time today often has a very negative connotation. We think of the crazies in our world and the damage they often do. We try to figure out what made them crazy or what ticked off their crazy streak. We wonder “How could anyone do something so bizarre? What made them do such things?” However, being somewhat crazy and having some crazy time can have other connotations. For instance, many of us are straitlaced and very update. We are constantly honed to think about our duties, responsibilities and obligations to others and ourselves. There comes a time when maybe we all need to let go of these, to become somewhat “crazy.” Here are four definitions of the word crazy:

1. Mentally deranged; demented; insane.
2. Senseless; impractical; totally unsound: a crazy scheme.
3. Informal. Intensely enthusiastic; passionately excited: crazy about baseball.
4. Informal. Very enamored or infatuated (usually fol. by about): He was crazy
about her. (www.dictionary.com)

No one wants the first definition to apply to them, but the second definition has often been applied to geniuses and entrepreneurs, while the third and fourth definitions have probably applied to all of us at one time or another. Who among us is not crazy about something? Thus, craziness is simply a state of being that others do not share at that time. This could also be considered the essence of nonconformity. Those who dance to their own drummers seldom share the same state of being that others do. Thus, going a little crazy might be good not only for our spirit but also for our creative side. Who among us would venture out and do anything really unique or different if we were not willing to flaunt convention and practical reality? In fact, craziness might just be the sine qua non of the adventurous and spirited.

Have you ever been called crazy? Why? Do you ever indulge in activities that others think are crazy? What would your life be like if you were just a little more crazy? What if you danced a little crazier? Acted a little crazier? Dressed a little crazier?

“Prison Time” is the one time I have never done nor do I have any desire to do. Of course, like many of you, I have watched countless movies dealing with crime and imprisonment, so I do not feel totally alien to the concept. This is not to say that I can empathize completely since I have never really been there. However, let me try to imagine “doing life” in a prison.

No parole, no chance of ever getting out. Endless days and nights spent in the same room, looking at the same walls and eating the same food. There is someone telling you when to get up, when to eat, when to talk and when to walk on the hour, every day, seven days a week. Routine and monotony piled on routine and monotony. Never smelling the flowers, never cuddling with your loved ones, never running and playing with your children, never walking in the woods, never fishing or swimming in the lake, never going to any place exotic for vacation, never riding your cycle, bicycle, skis, snowmobile, ATV, rollerblades, skateboard, sailboat or motorboat. Never, piled on never, piled on never, for the rest of your life. Then you grow old and die. Forgotten and scorned by all who knew you.

Maybe my portrait of prison time is too bleak or maybe not bleak enough. Some of you will know and you can send me your own feelings. I do not want to find out for myself. Buy I can’t imagine it being worth it. Prison time is a result of a collision of factors that no one imagined possible at the time. Surely, the perpetrator and the victim did not want the intended outcome. The victim did not choose to be a victim and the criminal did not think they would end up doing prison time. However, outcomes are a result of actions and when you put ethics, morals and laws aside to pursue selfish motives and desires, the results can be catastrophic to both parties. We may not be thinking about “prison time” at the time of the crime. If we did, would life have been different? Is prison time a deterrent for crime? It would appear not judging by the number of incarcerated felons or by the recidivism rate.

Thus, we are left with prison time as a sad byproduct of a series of events gone astray. Society has a set of morals and values that once put aside will lead to the harming of at least one and perhaps many more people. Is there such a thing as a victimless crime? What amount of prison time do you think would be a deterrent to you? Can you imagine doing ten years, twenty years, thirty years or a lifetime behind bars? What would make spending such time worthwhile for you? Is there anything you would take this risk for?

Internet Time has emerged as the gold standard for compressing time. When we say something is on Internet Time, we mean that it will be done in a much shorter cycle or period than we would normally expect. Thus, a year of regular time will be 9 months or perhaps 6 months on Internet Time. Things do not last as long on the Internet, things happen faster on the Internet, fame and fortune pass more quickly on the Internet, life is faster on the Internet. Life before the Internet was mostly 9-5; life is now 24-7. On the Internet, you can send and receive mail within minutes seven days a week, 24 hours a day. You can get legal, medical, financial or personal advice any time of the day and any day of the week. The Internet is never out or on sick leave, vacation or busy. You can buy and sell within minutes on Craig’s List and you can achieve instant fame on YouTube or MySpace.

We once thought that a New York minute was quick but it has been replaced as a quick standard by the Internet. The Swatch Company has even tried to define a system of Internet time. In the Swatch system, the current Internet Time is the same all over the World (no time zones or daylight saving time adjustments). There are some real pluses and minuses to this system. The biggest plus being that no time conversions are necessary since it is the same time everywhere. This might seem peculiar but it makes sense when we are all on the Internet because day and night no longer matter. We do our transactions on cyber time. Day and night time do not matter on cyber time.

Are you Internet savvy? Have you taken advantage of the Internet as a way to increase your productivity and personal effectiveness? Alternatively, are you sick of emails, spasm, hackers, viruses and expectations for service and replies almost instantaneously? Ironic that a system with so much potential could also become such a nightmare for many of us! How has the Internet changed your life? Has the Internet affected your perception of time? Has it been for the better or for the worse?

The economics of time- there is an economy to everything. There is an economy of commerce, an economy of ecology, an economy of travel and an economy of time. However, not much has been written about the economics of time. So we must ask the question: what are the key principles of an economics of time? I would suggest the following key principles:

1. Time and money, like matter and energy are interchangeable.
2. Saving time means saving money.
3. Time is a valuable resource. Wasting time is wasting money.
4. Time cannot be saved, like we save money.
5. Time grows in value as we age, while money diminishes in value.
6. We all start out each day anew with 24 hours of time.
7. We can leverage time like we leverage money.
8. Time is not equal for all people. Some of us can use time more productively
than others.
9. Unless you prioritize your time, you will never know what it is worth.
10. Each day of our lives has the potential to be the most valuable day we will
ever spend.
11. Once you are dead, you forfeit all of your time.

Adelheid Blesecker writes that a view such as described above (wherein time is regarded as a scare resource) “ensures the acceleration of economic processes. This in turn damages the reproductive cycles of social life and the natural environment” (Economic Rationales and a Wealth of Time, Time and Society, Vol 7, No 1, 1998). He argues that a future sustainable economy must be based on an understanding of time wherein our natural cycles and rhythms are taken into account. As one example, a system of work based on linear time and traditional time clocks is counterproductive to our natural work rhythms and cycles. Who can be productive, innovative or resourceful as soon as the clock strikes 8 AM and then work like a machine for 8 hours pumping out ideas, innovation and imagination? Although we espouse living in the new knowledge era, we still treat work and time as though we lived in the feudal era.

I believe some of the principles I listed above can be useful and some can be counterproductive. Time to me is a valuable resource. However, I do not see time the same as money. I do not wake up with twenty four new dollars each morning to spend and as far as I know, most robbers are still looking for money and not time. In addition, time does get more valuable as we age and it is a scarce commodity. Maybe we should think of time as we do jewels. We regard them as precious and we admire them and want to save them and keep them in good condition.

What if each day our goal was to treat our twenty four hours as twenty four precious jewels? We would nurture and cherish each one of these twenty four jewels by admiring and protecting them. What would your day be like, if you treated your time as precious jewels? Each time an hour is up, you must put your precious gem away until tomorrow. Would you think about your day any differently? How would you spend your gems today? What would you do with them? What would it mean to you to keep your gems safe and in good condition?

Life’s too short is another often heard expression having a variety of meanings. However, what is life too short for? Some people change the entire world in a lifetime, while others make hardly a scratch in time. Life’s too short to spend: “Watching TV, wasting time arguing with a fool, lying in bed doing nothing, waiting for a late airplane or missing the parade.” Though for others, this list of activities may be just the thing they want to do most. My list of things that life is too short for will not be your list of things. The following poem by Nancy Thelot has some nice thoughts about what life is worth living for and what life is really too short for:

Live: By Nancy Thelot

Tomorrow is promised to no one
enjoy your life
don’t hold grudges; life is too short for that
laugh more, cry less
please yourself; you can’t please everyone
every day is a blessing treat it as such
take the time to smell the roses
watch the sun set
live your life to the fullest
hug your love ones
let the past stay where it belongs: in the past
just live.

When you end each day, do you feel that it was a day well spent? Can you look back on your life and say that you spent most of your days in worthwhile activities? Will you be able to end your life with “no regrets?” If you can answer yes to these questions, you are undoubtedly making the most of your life. If not, you are probably spending time in too many useless and unproductive ways. What could you do to have a more fulfilling and satisfying life? What would help you to eliminate the “life’s too short for” activities?

Bedtime – Who can think of a more popular or at least a more universal time in the world? When freely chosen, it is a time that many of us (though certainly not all) look forward to. During winters, we crawl between the nice warm covers and kiss the problems of the day goodbye. During summers, we revel in the warmth when we do not need sheets and the daylight does not wane until long after we have closed our eyes. Some of us see it as a time for reading, some for a time of sex and some just to forget and put another day behind them. Kids see it as an imposition, perhaps imposed by adult authority. “I don’t want to go to bed” is a common childhood complaint not shared by many of their esteemed parents. Some of us drop off to sleep seconds after we lie down and others have to count thousands of sheep jumping over the wall until we are finally in slumberland. Some of us sleep lie a rock and others sleep so lightly that even a cat would wake them up. Some of us dream of wonderful places and people and our thoughts at night are filled with unicorns and rainbows. Others have nightmares of torture, abuse and killers chasing them through the halls of time. Some of us have dreams that we hope may someday come true, while some of us hope that we can just forget.

Scientists tell us that sleep is a time of rejuvenation for both the body and mind. Our muscles relax and rest. Our stress and lactic acid dissipates into the night. Our mind clears itself from the problems, strains, anxieties and worries of today so that we can start tomorrow with a clean slate. No one in the world can survive without sleep. Yet many of us have insomnia and other sleep maladies that prevent us from getting a good nights rest. For some, bedtime is just a continuation of the anxieties that beset them during the day. And sadly, some problems do not disappear at night and are simply put on hold until the morning.

Would the world be a better place if we could all get a good nights sleep? How often do you get a good nights sleep? Do you dread going to bed or do you look forward to it? What would help you to get a good night sleep every night?