Aging Capriciously

There are many metaphors that involve time: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2-12-22) “God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.” (Genesis 1-2). A metaphor gives us an alternative picture of reality. Some metaphors can be taken quite literally, others are more symbolic. Since we cannot feel, taste, see or touch time, most time metaphors have to be symbolic. However, we can measure time, and that fact makes some symbolic interpretations of time very problematic. Could Jesus Christ really have destroyed the temple and rebuilt it again in three days? Did God really create the world in only seven days? Here is a good explanation of the relationship between symbols and metaphors from the website of Dr. Rick Singleton, a professor at Southern Virginia University:

“One of the most recognizable objects from J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is the One Ring. It is the object that controls the other ring wielders, yet it is also the only one that has that power and will of its own. The One Ring symbolizes power, dominance, corruption, and evil. When we take the phrase “One ring to rule them all,” it then becomes a metaphor. Because the One ring is the subject and the object of the phrase, but it’s A is B relationship is simple to understand once we know the idea behind the ring and the phrase behind the metaphor.”
http://www.hatrack.com/svu/tolkien_lewis/OSC%20Paper.html

It would be impossible to speak about time without speaking in symbols and metaphors. Each reflection in my these blogs I do represents an abstraction that hopefully many of you reading them can relate to. I have tried to make these reflections interesting and useful by putting these abstractions on time into a different light or by creating new metaphors for some of them. The power of symbols and metaphors is in helping us to see and understand the world and ourselves in a different light. However, as we become accustomed to symbols and metaphors, they lose this power because we take them for granted. We allow them to become worthless because we no longer think about them.

For instance, when you see the Statue of Liberty, do you think about all the immigrants that came over and about the fighting that went on to free us from the British? When it is the Fourth of July, do you see Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress debating the text of the Declaration of Independence? Many metaphors become clichés such as: “sharp as a knife”, “he was a lame duck” or they were “like two ships passing in the night.” Repeated use brings dullness to the edge of metaphors. We say them, think we understand their meaning and quickly move on. In doing so, we ignore the deeper implications of each. We miss the more profound thoughts that are hidden beneath our surface understanding. For instance, why were they like ships passing in the night? What happened to them that they lost or missed their chance for a relationship? When did they first start to pass each other? What could they have done differently to not miss each other in the dark night?

My goal in this blog is that these many metaphors, symbols and concepts about time I am presenting will help you to think about the world and your life differently. I hope you will begin to see a different picture of those things that you may take for granted about time. Did God really make the world in seven days? Does it matter? What do you think?

Dinner time – “The word “dinner” comes from the French word dîner, the “chief repast of the day”, (Wikipedia). It is a time for family and bonding in some homes. In others, it is simply a time of eating. Dinner time in many cultures is associated with ceremony and a degree of formality. There once was a time in the U.S when people dressed up to come to dinner on a regular basis. Traditionally, the head of the household said a blessing and then dinner was served. Increasingly, in our strapped and harried culture, dinner time has become a time simply to grab a quick microwave meal and catch the latest sports event on TV. The time for socializing and sharing the day’s experiences has been traded for time in front of the TV watching the news. Mom’s homemade cooking has been traded for Mrs. Field cookies and Papa John’s Pizza. Dinner is simply a time to stock up on high fat, high calorie pre-processed foods. Witness the current obesity in American society.

We can yearn for the past, but the past is not always as we remember it. Dinner time in some historic periods has been a time of fasting and even deprivation. There simply was not enough food to go around and many would go hungry. A blessing would have been said to simply help find food and to survive until food could be found. Today there are still places in the world where people do not have enough to eat. The following facts are from the site:
“Bread for the World” ( http://www.bread.org )

• 854 million people across the world are hungry, up from 852 million a year ago.
• Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes–one child every
five seconds.
• In essence, hunger is the most extreme form of poverty, where individuals or
families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food.

These figures come from studies done by Global organizations working to reduce poverty. Perhaps in twenty years or so we will have made a larger dent in these figures. Perhaps we will not if the world has to keep struggling with war and terrorism, if we do not see the urgency or we do not make it a global priority to help reduce poverty. The value of sitting together at a well stocked dinner table gets trumped by the value of security and freedom from oppression. Have you ever wondered why we cannot have both values together? How do we bring this choice upon ourselves in the first place? Are war and poverty inevitable? Have we accepted that they are beyond our control? Is it simply our nature as human beings to have to suffer? Would we really want a world that was like the Garden of Eden? Or would we soon become bored and start throwing apples at each other?

Have you ever sat down at dinner and not had enough to eat? Have you ever passed the plate so someone else could eat and you would not? Have you ever passed the plate to help others in the world to eat? Is dinner time a time of joy for you or a time of strife? What would help to make it more joyful? Would more food help? Would more socializing and talking to each other help? Would doing more to help those with even less than you have help?

Do you measure journey time or measure destination time? I have a patch on one of my jeans which says “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” How often in life do we get so wound up with what we are going to do, or where we want to go that we forget the joy in the journey. Our destination, our goals become so overpowering that we forget the process, we forget to live each day. We live in the future and never enjoy the minutes which are happening one at a time. We become so consumed with our purpose or goals that we ignore the flowers and birds that surround us. We forget to smell the roses. The famous atheist and socialist Emma Goldman said “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” We take ourselves and our lives too serious. How often have you known someone who upon experiencing their first heart attack and surviving it suddenly decided to reprioritize what was important in their life? This wakeup call for mortality helped them to realize that they were missing out on what life is meant to be. Why take a trip if you cannot enjoy the journey?

Every so often when I was growing up, my father would take us on a trip. It was usually to visit my grandparents in Alabama. I hated those trips. My father would drive like a maniac, watching the clock every minute to see how he could cut minutes or seconds off the trip. He was obsessed with how fast he could get there. Sometimes we would sleep in the car through the night. We would often pass restrooms because he would not waste time stopping. When he finally got around to it, we would pee at the side of the road. There was no stopping for road side rests. No stopping for any sights or marvels that the world might put up for display. My father’s sole and unremitting quest was to see how fast he could get us from NY to Alabama.

These trips were hated by me, my mother and my siblings. They were never fun nor do I remember one minute of pleasure on any of these trips. It was not until I was 13 that I had a good trip down south. My mother decided to take a train with my two sisters and leave early and my father and I were going to go with my Uncle Paul and his father (Pop Hofer). My uncle was not going to let my father spoil a perfectly good trip by ignoring the sites along the way. For the first time in any of these trips, we stopped. We stopped in Washington D.C. to see the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. We stopped at Luray Caverns and visited the underground caves. We stopped at Ruby Falls to see the underground waterfall. We stopped at Lookout Mountain and rode the train up and down. We stopped to eat along the way. We stopped at a motel and stayed the night. I will never forget this trip or my uncle for helping me to find a life along the way. I learned then that the journey can be as important as the destination.

What if you get there and you hate it? What if you have not learned to enjoy life along the way? What if you never get there? What about the people who had a first heat attack and it was their last? Do you stop to smell the roses? Do you stop to pick raspberries? Is your life so busy that you don’t enjoy the journey? Do you have to have a “heart attack” to teach you to enjoy the journey?

Every now and then:

“Every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound
of my tears,
Turn around,
Every now and then I get a little bit nervous that the best of all the
years have gone by.” (Total Eclipse of the Heart, Bonnie Tyler)

I love the words in this song. They have a way of causing me to reflect on those things in my life which seem to happen “every now and then.” I have made the following list of my most important ones:

• Every now and then, I get wistful, thinking of the people I once loved.
• Every now and then, I think of the friends and relatives long gone.
• Every now and then, I feel sad about the things I cannot undo.
• Every now and then, I go back to memories and places I will never see again.
• Every now and then, every now and then, every now and then, I just get
stuck. I wonder whether life makes any sense and if living longer is of any
value.

I think of the mistakes that I have made and wonder if I can undo them. I think of the people whom I have hurt and wonder if forgiveness is still too late. I think about the people I used to know who no longer talk to me or seem to want my friendship. I think about the opportunities I have missed and wonder whether I have learned anything from these mistakes. Every now and then I wonder whether my life has come to its apex and I should just “retire” like so many other people my age. I think of those fighters who fought past their prime when we all know they should have hung up their gloves. I wonder whether I am fighting for fame, fortune, glory or simply to make a difference. Every now and then, I wonder whether or not anything I have done has made one difference to the world and whether it’s worth the ongoing fight to make a difference.

We all have our every “now and then.” There is a sadness to my list. Perhaps your list would be more joyful or fun. What are the things that pop up for you “every now and then?” Can you make a list? Why do you think these things keep popping up? Do they represent regrets or unfinished business? Do you think they would come up less often if you could somehow put them to rest? What stops you?

What would Aristotle, Plato and Socrates say about time to Confucius and Lao Tzu? What if the greatest philosophers of the Western world met the greatest philosophers of the Eastern world? What would they say to each other about time? Confucius emphasized doing the proper thing at the proper time. Lao Tzu believed that time was created in our minds and to say “I don’t have time” was to really say “I don’t want to.” Socrates would have asked “why do you think time is in your minds? Could time not be in our hearts?” Aristotle would have pointed out that the planets, stars, and earth all do their own thing independent of what humans believe or want. Aristotle defined time as a kind of ‘number of change’ with respect to the before and after (Ursula Coope, “Time for Aristotle,” 2005, Oxford online Monographs).

By this time, Plato, totally exasperated would note that “no human thing is of serious importance.” “Thus, why waste time quibbling here over what time is or is not, let us go find a tavern and have a drink together.” And so the philosophers all went off in search of a tavern. Legend has it they spent the rest of the day drinking and making fools of themselves with the young women in the bar who could not understand what they were talking about. Well, such is the folly of most men when their minds meet their basic instincts and needs.

My question for you and for all up and coming philosophers is: “does time rule your life or does instinct and nature rule your life.” Do you live according to the clock and logic or do you live according to your feelings and instincts? What most guides your choice of activities and times? Are you a thinking person or a feeling person? What if you could switch? How would your life be different?

Is God time? God is perfection. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. God could build the universe in seven days. Did God create time or is God Time? What if God was like a giant pacemaker; all the beatings of each heart, all the changes of nature, and all the changes in humanity, governed by a God with infinite pacemaker capabilities? Everything that is going to happen is already known. Each act in the universe already scripted in God’s timepiece. All events pre-determined. Some people would call this determinism and say it has no place in the freewill that God gave humans. Other philosophers would disagree and say that determinism and free-will can coexist. (See Bea Best: “A Case for Freewill and Determinism,” http://www.benbest.com/philo/freewill.html)

If God was time, it would explain many things that we never seem to understand. Accidents and random events that do not make sense in the short term might make more sense when understood on a cosmic level. Perhaps we could understand why justice seems to occur very slowly but nevertheless inevitably. God does not forget, there is just a time and place for everything. If we could look at God’s schedule we would be able to foretell all that is to come and perhaps comprehend why things unfold as they do. If God was time, we would not have to worry about the lateness or earliness of anything, nor would we worry that the world was going in the wrong direction or the wrong political parties were in control. According to God Time, things would happen for the best in the long-term.

We puny humans cannot understand time on a cosmic infinite scale. We are constantly left wondering as to the complexity and strangeness of the universe. Even our own lives and actions constantly surprise and befuddle us. Why do we act like we do, why do others act like they do? Most of the universe is like a giant jigsaw puzzle that we just can not figure out. All of our theories and hypotheses and scientific findings cannot account for this infinite puzzle that seems to strangely unfold before our eyes. It is like a play with most of the action happening unseen off stage. We never know what will happen next or why it will happen. We are just content to say “its time to go.”

Do you think God is time? Can you understand what you are about or why you were put on this earth? Do you think you serve a larger cause or are you just a random event in time?

The Opportunity Costs of Time refers to a concept in economics that values the costs of anything by the other possibilities that are foregone by your present choice of spending time. For instance, if I spend time today washing my car, I could have been working, going to school, making love or doing any number of alternative endeavors. Each of these other choices entails a “cost” in terms of both money and my perception of the value of the time spent. Some things I can do will provide me more money either now or in the future and some things will provide me more pleasure. Some things will probably do neither (taking out the garbage) but they are necessary to prevent possible future unpleasantness or costs.

Here is an example from my life. When I decided to go to school to get my Ph.D. degree, a number of years ago, I gave up a decent paying job. My “opportunity costs” of going to school would include the following:

1. Salary for 4 years
2. Possible raises and promotions
3. Cost of tuition and books
4. Cost of loans
5. Interest on loans
6. Time to spend on more pleasant activities
7. Study time
8. Class time spent in some boring classes

If I were thinking rationally before I started my school program, I would have considered all of these costs and measured them against the expected benefits of getting my degree. As it turned out, I do believe that I came out ahead. The one factor that cannot be calculated in this mental effort is the “risk” factor for time spent. For instance, I wonder each time I go out and run a rugged trail if I will break my leg. In over 5000 runs, I have not broken my leg yet, but as they say “there is always a first time.” I try to compensate for this possibility by taking my cell phone with me when I go trail running. Two small problems I often encounter are, first, that I cannot get T-Mobile reception anyplace on my Ice Age Trails in Wisconsin and second, that I often forget to take my cell-phone holder. Thus, my risk factor escalates some.

It is interesting to think of Time as Risk. We often talk about time as money but the opportunity costs of time also imply a risk. For instance, I might not have been able to get a good job when I left grad school or I might not have found that my Ph.D. degree opened any more doors than before I obtained it. If we think about the idea of Opportunity Time rather than Opportunity Costs, it may provide a different set of insights into the activities we pursue. Another striking example of this concerns the oft given wisdom that the value of obtaining a college degree is worth the time spent beyond merely going to high school. However consider the following facts:

•Average net worth of a Forbes 400 member without college degree: $2.27 billion
•Average net worth of a Forbes 400 member with a college degree: $2.13 billion
•Percentage of Forbes 400 members with college degrees: 66%, without 33%.
•Richest self-made Americans without a college degree:

William H. Gates III
Harvard University, dropout
Net worth: $43 billion
Source: Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT – news – people )

Paul Allen
Washington State University, dropout
Net worth: $21 billion
Source: Microsoft; Charter Communications (nasdaq: CHTR – news – people )

Larry Ellison
University of Illinois, dropout
Net worth: $15.2 billion
Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL – news – people )

Michael Dell
University of Texas Austin, dropout
Net worth: $11.2 billion
Dell (nasdaq: DELL – news – people )

The above facts can be found at http://www.forbes.com/2003/07/28/cx_dd_0728mondaymatch.html

When I look at the facts above, it makes me wonder what the real value of a degree is. It does not appear that it can simply be measured by monetary returns for the billionaires without a degree are richer than the billionaires with a degree. Perhaps, the real value lies in how confident it makes us feel or how much more literate and wise we are? If so, I have yet to see any evidence that going to college makes one either more confident or wiser. So we return to the Opportunity Risks of spending time. Here are some quotes that I like that reflect on this issue:

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.” – Charles Richards

“A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.” – Charles Darwin

Thus, I do not think that time can be measured as simply money or simply opportunity costs. I think we need to measure time as a risk and time as rewards and costs that go beyond monetary considerations. I am not making any money writing this blog today. I have been writing it for over two years now and have not made one dime yet on it. No one has picked me for a “reality” show and no one has called me up to be on the Oprah show. Nevertheless, I write these blogs and am sustained by the faith and hope that somehow each day or perhaps only once a month, I might make a positive difference in someone’s life. There is a great risk in my spending this time with this hope, but without hope and risk what would our lives be. If we can go through live and do no harm or do more good than we do harm, then we may have done all that is possible as a human being. The simple calculus of time as money or time spent on activities that pay a dividend reduces life to a pure equation with no emotion or no feeling. We are not automatons to be driven by calculators that measure the dollar value of every minute spent. I think we need more choices and a wider set of criteria in which to measure the value of the time we spend.

Do you spend your time well? Are you satisfied with the efforts and goals you have set for your life? Are you doing what you want to with your life and time? If not, why? When will you start making the choices that bring you joy and satisfaction?

Are my reflections on time timeless? As I have worked on the reflections and ideas in this blog, I have wondered about how timeless or not timeless these thoughts will be. Will they speak to other cultures if translated into their language? Will they be readable 25 or 250 years from now? Will the ideas, questions, comments and theories still be interesting and thought provoking long after I am dead? Or will this just be another collection of faddish ideas and my reflections soon relegated to the bottom of the “used blog” pile?

How long will my blogs be readable and how many people will really find value in my blogs? Will future generations coming upon this blog, still think it is worth reading and reflecting on? It is my hope that the readings in this blog will still be useful whether you read them today, tomorrow or a hundred years from now. But of course, we all have blinders on and how can I know the future or what needs, wants, desires and problems people will be dealing with 100 or 200 years from no? Today, these issues and ideas seem meaningful and important. Tomorrow, they may just be another set of quaint ideas. Someone in the year 2300 coming upon my reflections may think that we were really very simple and naïve people in the 21st century.

A second question I have pondered while writing these blogs deals with how many times you could read my reflections and still get any value out of it? Or how many times, you will need to read them before you get any value out of them? I have often read something several times before the light bulbs went on and I understood what the author was getting at. There are many questions in my blogs for you to answer. Have you been taking the time to answer these questions or do you just read the reflections and skip the answers?

What if you did answer all of the questions? Do you think you would get more out of my blogs? Is it too late now or could you go back and start over if you have been skipping the questions? Would these reflections be more valuable to you if you did answer all of the questions? Have you found any value in answering the questions? Do you think you will ever read some of them again? Why not?

The following comment was posted on my blog site by an old friend whom I have not seen for over 30 years. We recently reconnected and he has been following some of my blogs. His comments have added quite a bit of depth and perspective to each blog that he has reviewed and left his impressions on. This comment was in respect to a blog that I posted last Thursday asking “Is Time too Fast or too Slow for You?” I think Bruce offers some interesting personal advice on how to deal with the flow of time. I asked him if he was okay with my posting his comment as a blog and he said “sure.” Here are his comments. Please feel free to add your own. As a writer it keeps my ego and writing going to know that someone is out there and cares enough to comment or add their ideas.

“I think I can counteract the tendency for time to seem to pass more quickly as we get older. I can manage the feat (perhaps) but cannot say how I do it. It may have something to do with attending to at least some things, some of the time, intensely just about every day. It isn’t that I’m engraving these things in my memory. Unfortunately, my narrative memory is rather sketchy and unreliable, but just that I’m focusing on them for a minute. I think time stretches out for the motorcycle rider as he crashes because he is automatically paying as acute attention as is possible for him to what is happening right now. It is as if we were like cameras that normally take in one frame per second, but we can up that to many frames per second, at least in fairly short bursts. Of course, its not just the visual aspect of experience, but many others that we can intensely focus on, and thus get extra psychological time. And by trying to habitually generate intense attention on a regular basis, even though it amounts to a tiny fraction of my overall experiences,leads me to perceive time, in general, as if it were passing more slowly.

I worked with a guy years ago who was concerned about mortality and who wanted time to pass slowly. He said he had deliberately taken a job he found boring because that would make his life seem longer. I could never tell if he was joking or not. If unpleasant experiences do seem to take longer, I guess it would work, but he would be extending his psychological time only be living a generally unpleasant life. And I’m not even sure if it would work. I think the sense of dragging time during unpleasant experiences has a lot to do with gnawing impatience, of so wanting the thing to be over. Every day, my friend would be released from what to him was a boring cubicle prison, and if that release engendered more joy in the evening than his pain during the day, he might have a positive net for manipulating himself that way. Why did the moron hit himself on the head? Because it felt so good when he stopped. This strategy would be a rational one, if the good feeling more than outweighed the pain (and possible tissue damage). But I doubt that this would really work because I think our painful attention to unpleasant things is proportional to our expectation of their being ended. If there is some relatively permanent circumstance that causes us pain, I think we quickly go numb to it, and sort of zone out about it in a way that makes it take little subjective time at all. Or at least so it seems to me. If he really felt he was stuck in his job permanently, it would have to stop bothering him so much, and his joy at being released would lose its kick as well. It would be like riding a roller coaster over and over.”

Do Bruce’s ideas make sense to you? Have you experienced anything like he describes in your life? Do you control the flow of your time and if so how? If not, have you ever thought that you might want to or might be able to? Are you stuck in a cubicle watching the clock slowly move and waiting for life to begin?

If you spent your time like you spent your money, how much time would you have left? I have 9,460,800 minutes left. You can calculate this by doing the following:

1.Find you’re expected life span. Go to Google and type in “life span calculator” or go to the following website: http://www.cancer-info.com/life_span_calculator.htm
2.If you live in the USA and are reasonably healthy, you might just assume 78 if you are male and 82 if you are female.
3.Subtract your current age in years from your expected lifespan.
4.Multiply your “remaining” years, by 525,600/This is the number of minutes in a year.

The figure that you get will be the number of minutes you have left to “spend.” Chances are you will be a millionaire. Now the question is “how will you spend your time.” Unlike money, you cannot choose not to spend it. Whether you choose or not, your time will be spent. The only choice you have is how you will spend your time. I have just spent 30 minutes of my time writing this short reflection. Was it worth it?

My hope is that it will help you to think about how precious time is and how fast we spend it. If I have accomplished this goal, then my time was well spent. If not, well, “tomorrow’s another day.” How many minutes do you have left to spend? Will you spend them wisely or will you “waste” them. What is a wise choice for you? Do you feel that you are making these choices? Why not? What will it take for you to spend your time more