Aging Capriciously

Before and After!  How many times have you seen these words and the accompanying pictures?  Indeed it is difficult to go to a grocery store without seeing the ubiquitous ads glaring at us from the front of a dozen magazines while we wait at the checkout register.  Young and old, fat and skinny, powerful and weak, six packs versus no packs, hair versus no hair, there is no end to the changes we can make in our lives if we only will adopt their 100 percent proven guaranteed money back easy to apply secrets that cost pennies per week.

Before and After!  After and After!  In just six weeks, with our new diet, program, tapes, books, routine, etc. you too can become a model for our next “Before and After” ad.  You will be slimmer, smarter, stronger, faster, happier and live longer. You will have more friends, a better marriage, children to make your neighbors envy you and a love life that never stops.  Why wait, start now.  It only takes six weeks.  Motivation does not matter. Effort does not matter.  The secret is with our proven methods. 

Does anyone know when they first saw such ads?  I remember seeing them when I joined the Air Force over 45 years ago. I would bet the first ads went back to the time of Moses.  I imagine some enterprising Egyptians were selling the Israelites dreams of what the Promised Land would be like.  “Now you are slaves, but in only six weeks, with our powerful mind control techniques, you can be free like us. For just a few shekels, free yourself from the mind of a slave and enjoy life in the Promised Land. Thousands of other slaves have benefited from our free money back offer of happiness.” 

Recent evidence, which seems to keep repeating itself in study after study, shows that most good things in life take more than six weeks to obtain. In fact, you and I both know that most good things take more than six months and even six years to obtain.  We know this but we become seduced by our dreams for overnight success and instant results.  Dr. Deming used to say that managers wanted instant pudding and that was why there were so many faddish management programs in vogue.  That is why credit cards become so popular.  Why buy on lay away, when you can have it now?  Instant pudding, overnight success, instant gratification, weight loss without hard work, abs of steel with no burn and pain; these delusions blind us to the reality that we know but don’t want to accept. 

There is no overnight success.  There is no gain without hard effort.  Instant dreams of “Before and After” blind us to the reality of life.  The “Law of Effort” is as much a law of life as any physical laws that exist. You do not get something without giving something. The more you get, the more you must give. The more you want to change, the more changes you must make. The more weight you want to lose, the more calories you must expend.

Could it be possible?  Hope springs eternal in the human breast. However, hope must be tempered by some firm realities. To repeat, you cannot get something for nothing in this world.  Money does not buy anything but a new coach or trainer.  YOU must still be the one to put up the effort.  This is a message that if everyone really understood and accepted would erase all of those seductive magazine ads that portray a false picture of reality.  These ads are dangerous because they promote unrealistic dreams of life.  

Most people last anywhere from six weeks to six months on any given program and then they give up.  Ask anyone at your local gym if you don’t believe me.  Conditioned to think that they only need to work six weeks or to find the right program, most people do not start out with the right attitude.  They subscribe to the wrong set of premises; a set of premises that doom most people to failure.  But would anyone buy a program that said “It will take you anywhere from six months to six years to fully realize the benefits of this program and you will have to work hard at it five or six days per week.  In fact, you may have to work at it the rest of your entire life.”  And by the way, “You will never look like Jessica Alba or Brad Pitt.” 

You say no.  People would never change if they realized the true effort that would be involved, but I say we need to tell the truth.  If there were not so much money in these phoney commercials, there would be less lies.  I think perhaps there would be more people who would give up their day dreams of overnight success.  I am not saying there would not be dreams but they should be dreams that have a real chance of success. Dreams based on faulty premises such as overnight success only doom the bearer to failure. I want more people to be smarter, happier, slimmer, stronger and to live longer. I believe it is possible if our dreams are based on a realistic plan of success and not some fairy tale dreamed up by some greedy Wall Street marketer. 

Do you have dreams of before and after?  Are your dreams followed by the effort you need to make them a reality? Can you dream and still be realistic in the work you need to make your dreams come true?  Maybe you do not dream enough or maybe you do not put enough effort into making your dreams a reality, which is it for you? 

Run time!  No, this is not the run time for my computer.  This is my personal running time.  I have been running regularly for 35 years.  On the average, I run about 5 times a week and about 3 to 4 miles each run.  I am still waiting for the runners “high” where I can feel nothing but blissful peace. I really enjoy running but through the years, there have been numerous pains and hurts to overcome.  It seems to get harder running in the winter.  I suppose running is a great deal like life, it has its ups and downs and it only gets better when we keep working at it.  There are no magical highs (except for temporary ones on drugs) but in general, the pleasure I get from running out weighs the pain.  

I no longer try to increase my running speed or my distances. I will not be an Olympic marathoner nor am I training for my 101^st marathon. I like to say I am a “maintenance” runner.  That means my schedule is set up to maintain my present level of fitness.  For my age, I am in reasonably good health.  I am five foot eight inches tall and I weigh about 150 lbs.  I feel good and have not been to surgery or to the doctor for anything serious yet in my life. I pray it will remain the same for the next ten years.  I suppose like many people I avoid going to the doctor unless I have to.  I will have my first physical next Wednesday in five years. Karen said she was remiss in letting me skate for so long.  

What does running have to do with time?  I find that by doing “maintenance” running, I notice my running times go in cycles with the seasons.  I run more in the late summer and fall and less in the winter and spring. At first I was worried at these dips in my “maintenance” schedule.  Then, I read that it is natural to go with a cycle and that it lets my body recover.  Just like winter allows the earth to recover before it starts to bud out in spring and emerge more glorious in summer.  As each year progresses, I find that I am running farther and farther and enjoying it more and more. As winter sets in again, I slow down and with the shorter days, my runs become shorter and shorter.  Spring is when I start feeling like increasing my runs and distance.  My body and running seem to respond to the same cycles as the earth. 

Have you ever found a cycle to your life? What activities or efforts in your life seem cyclical?  Do you fight your cycles or do you allow yourself to “go with the flow.”  How have cycles made a difference in your life? Would better managing your natural cycles improve your life?  

Call me Cynic!  I am sorry but I am not a believer in everlasting love.  When I go to weddings and see the “happily” married couples with stars in their eyes and passion in their hearts, I wonder how long it will be until the divorce.  What many people regard as love is little more than infatuation and naiveté.  We begin our romance with delusions of how wonderful this person makes us feel, how much we enjoy being with them, endless nights of passion and a lifetime of love without strings attached.  Somewhere along the way for all too many couples today, this fantasy of love changes.  Our blemish free partner suddenly develops warts, demands start increasing, passionate nights of love making become less and less frequent.  At some point, we begin to have doubts as to what we really saw in this person.  Did we really make the right choice?  What were we thinking? 

Well, you are probably thinking about what a miserable person I am right now. How can I say these things about love and marriage?  Perhaps all my relationships have been terrible but yours certainly would not be.  What world is he living in?  I suppose  I could point to my present 23 year marriage to Karen as some evidence of my experience in this matter but you could simply say “Yes, but it sounds like you are pretty unhappy.” Actually, that is not the case.  I have never been happier or more in love with Karen then I am now.  We started dating in 1983, married in 1989 and will have our 24th wedding anniversary in September.  I submit some people stay married simply because of duty or loyalty but that is not my case.  To be perfectly honest, I do believe in the possibility of living “happily ever after.”  Call me Idealist!   This is not the same as everlasting love. 

Next weekend, I will attend my former employer Lou Schultz, who is now my good friend and his wife Kay’s 50 anniversary.  I could not be happier for Lou and Kay. Throughout all the years I have known Lou, he has worked hard for whatever he has obtained.  Nothing was simply given to Lou nor would he expect the world to simply take care of him.  Lou served in the Marine Corp with honor and subsequently built a very successful career with Control Data.  Not content to simply pick up a paycheck and put his time in, Lou struck out on his own in the early 80’s and took the risk of starting his own company.  Lou and Kay put up a great deal of their savings to start PMI.  During the 80’s and early 90’s, PMI was one of the most successful quality consulting firms in the industry.  Kay continued to work to help support the effort and Lou put in many 60-80 hour work weeks.  The same hard work and dedication that Lou put into the company, Lou put into his marriage.  Thus, next week they will celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. Call me Realist!

At PMI, I learned from Lou and others, that most of life is a process.  There are ups and downs, ins and outs and normal variation in day to day levels of quality and satisfaction.  I submit that true love is really like that.  It is a process. You must feed and nurture it. You must work at it and you must expect ups and downs.  Some days, you will feel more loved and closer than ever before. If you continually work on your process, you will find the ups and downs become less severe and you will find your overall “quality” levels increasing in a steady upward trend. Meaning you will begin to have more and more a deepening sense of love for your partner. In team building, we describe the process of team development as going through four stages. The first stage is Forming when the group begins and selects it rules and leaders.  The second stage is Stormingwhen the group starts challenging the rules and power struggles break out.  The third state is Norming when standards and expectations begin to be understood and the group begins to really work together. The fourth and final stage is Performing when the team is really working on task and accomplishing its objectives in a unified and cohesive manner.  It has finally become a real team. 

I believe love may go through similar stages for many of us.  At least for those of us who are willing to stick it out past the Storming stage instead of heading off to Divorce Court.  However, unlike a team which is only formed for a short period of time, our marriage or our relationships are “teams” that we want to form for life.  The implication or consequence of this decision is that: Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing may become part of our overall cycle of process improvement.  Love grows as a result of sticking to this process and continuing to build trust and loyalty with our partner.  It is all too easy to give up on them and to look for someone else who better meets our expectations.  Keep in mind that these expectations are most likely the same ones that your former lover once filled. However, since you have never understood the idea of Love as a Process, your desire is to simply fulfill that fantasy of love which still exists in your mind.  You go out again hoping to find Mr. or Ms. Right. This is the only person in the world who can satisfy your dreams and hopes of everlasting and effortless free love.  What you are really in love with is yourself and you are looking for a mirror to reflect that love back to you. This might happen for a short time but eventually and inevitably, your dream partner begins to have dreams of their own.  The “Mirror Mirror on the Wall” will someday tell you that you are not the “The fairest of them all.”  And thus the cycle of disillusionment starts again. 

Are you in love today or in passion?  Are you a cynic, an idealist or a realist about love?  Do you work at your relationships or do they just happen?  What could you do to apply the ideas of Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing to your relationships?  What do you think it would take to put more love in your life?  

Polls show Americans like instant gratification. A recent AP Poll showed that Americans are an impatient bunch. We get antsy after a few minutes on hold; we hate to wait in grocery stores or in airports.  Older people are more impatient than younger people.  People in the country are just a little more patient than city people but not by much.  This poll was based on 1003 adults.  Most people answered they felt more time poor than money poor.  Benjamin Franklin said that time was money and many of us take this truth to heart.

The findings from this AP Poll will probably not surprise anyone but it is significant in that today we are beginning to value time more than money.  Economic theory or the Law of supply and Demand says that the scarcer something is the more valuable it will be.  If we now have less time than money, then time will become proportionally more valuable to us.  People who can afford SUV BMW’s and other such luxuries may have a surplus of money but there are only 24 hours in a day.  I have often noted that time and money are like matter and energy, they are interchangeable.  The more money you have, the more time you have because you can pay people to do things that you don’t want to do. If you have time and no money, you can just do them yourself.  Of course, that oversimplifies the relationship between time and money, since you have to spend time to get money.  

Another comparison of time to matter and energy is that no matter who you are or how much money you have, the time you have is fixed.  Just like matter and energy are fixed, so is the amount of time in any given day and perhaps in any given life.  No matter how rich you are, you cannot buy another minute in a day or another second in your life. You may work overtime to acquire more toys or to display a luxury lifestyle image but rich or poor you share the same amount of time each day as everyone else. Time will become more and more precious while the things in your life will soon lose their luster.  Bling only blings so long and then goes out of style.  A short life does not always equate to a cosmic sense of justice and perhaps the length of our lives is more random that we would like to believe.  The good do not always die young but neither do the bad.  

What is the true value of your time?  What if you wanted less? What if you spent less time shopping and buying and acquiring things?  Would you be happier with less things and more time?  How does buying and spending keep you from enjoying your time and relaxing more?  How does owning so many toys affect your life?  What if you adopted the virtue of frugality?  Would you trade your things for more time to spend with those you love?  Would your life be happier if it were simpler? 

Don’t waste my time. One of the greatest sins of modern society is to waste time. It is even worse to waste someone else’s time.  Unfortunately, there are numerous ways that you can waste time.  Pace Productivity conducted surveys among 690 employees and entrepreneurs across North America. The first question they asked was designed to find out which factors impeded respondents’ productivity that were outside of their control. The following were the top ten time wasters that respondents felt they had no control over.

This is a very interesting list. No doubt there are many aspects of time that we cannot control.  However, the first question I have when looking at this list is the validity of the respondents’ assumption that they have “no control” over these time wasters.  I admit that in several of these areas, it is difficult to have control, but the operational word is difficult.  I would stop at the word impossible. I lean towards looking at what I can do to have more control over my life and I refuse to abdicate control in many of these so called time waster areas.  I might only have partial control but once I assert this control, I can minimize the impact of the time wasted. 

Do you see some areas above that you also feel you could take some control over?  What are the biggest time wasters in your life?  Do you think they are all out of your control or do you think you have some control over them?  Pick one large time waster in your life.  What could you do today that would help you to gain control and minimize this time waster in your life?  

Children Time! The experts all say that the best thing to spend on your children is your time. Nevertheless, toys have become a substitute for time spent with children today.  How much money is spent on children’s toys each year?  How many parents do you see who try to buy their kid’s affections with toys?  Children are inundated with toys, video games, I-Pods, and countless other throw-away items. We bury our kids with an avalanche of toys and mindless distractions. The toys and the interest in the toys do not seem to last as long as the batteries.  Once upon a time, children if they were good got a special toy at Christmas or on their birthday.  Today, every day is toy day for kids.  I have seen friends who have children with so many toys you can barely walk through their houses.  Many motorcycle clubs have a ride each year called “Toys for Tots” to buy toys for any children who do not have enough. However, the real problem is too many toys for children. Too many toys and not enough time with our children!

Have you noticed that kids seem more angry (witness the increasing school violence) today.  They are certainly getting fatter (due in some small part to all the toys they have that prevent them from getting real exercise).  I see young kids riding down the street on motorized skate boards and motorized scooters instead of pedaling or pushing a regular skate board.  They are inevitably overweight or obese.  Computer sports games and other on-line competitive games have replaced real sports for many kids.  Of course, there are those kids whose parents are grooming them for the NFL or NBA or NHL and these poor kids get to go to so many sports events they lose track.  Followed by the inevitable coach parent, they will probably learn to hate sports as something that is a duty rather than something you can do for fun.  I wonder how many of these sport-aholic parents and children will appreciate exercise for exercise sake or will really enjoy the parent child time spent together?  How many of these would be Pro-Stars will still be in good shape when they are in their thirties or say fifties?

Regardless of how much we give our children or how many sporting events we make our children attend, the thing they will remember the most and that will have the most impact on their lives will be the quality of the time we spend with them.  Quality time is time spend interacting with our children. This does not mean watching TV with them or even going to their soccer games and baseball games. It is time spent relating to them and sharing parent wisdom, guidance and experience with them.  It is time spent camping with your children, roller skating, ice skating, skiing or playing tennis with them.  It is time spent reading a story to or with them. It is time spent helping them with their homework or doing chores around the house with them. It is time spent during the entire cycle of your children’s lives from infant to old-age.  Parent child time will change as they grow older but it does not diminish in terms of the quality of the interaction that is important. 

How much time do you spend doing things with your children, with your grandchildren?  Do you read to your children, play games with them, take walks with them?  How much quality time do your spend with your children versus just “busy” time?  What could you do to increase the quality of the time you spend with your children and with your family? Would this improve your life or their lives or both? 

Family time is one of the most important times in our lives. It is the time we set aside for our children and our spouse. Sometimes it seems hard to “find” this time, but unless we make the effort, we grow old without really creating those essential bonds for a family.  When my daughter was young, I tried to have a fixed time each week to do something together with her. As she got older and had more friends it became more difficult to find the time each week.  Nevertheless, no matter how much we say we love someone, there is nothing like being there for them. 

The need to be there never ends.  One morning Karen got up at 4:30 AM to travel 30 miles to take her oldest daughter to the hospital for surgery. Julie, (Karen’s Oldest) was having a hysterectomy and Karen wanted to be there with her at the hospital. Karen asked her boss for the day off so she could drive Julie to the hospital and spend the day with her.  It would have been very easy for Karen to find an excuse: “It is really far to drive;” “I don’t have much vacation time left;” “There will be plenty of support at the hospital;”
“I will only spend most of my day sitting around.” Actually, all of these thoughts went through my head when Karen told me what she planned to do.  However, to Karen, this was a form of family time and it was the most important time in the world that she could spend with her daughter. 

In my second marriage, Karen and I fixed times to do something together as a family and to do something with just each other.  I am not always good at keeping this family time and it is not always “quality” time but as I look back, I would never give up these times. If there were one most important “time” in my relationship with Karen, it is this “family time.”  I think Karen and I have grown closer together and become more loving and intimate as time has gone by. Our family time and family meetings are still weekly events which we adhere to.  Sometimes they end up in disagreements or the discussion of unpleasant issues. The alternative is to ignore problems and just let them build up.  I have found that it is never one big issue that destroys a relationship.  It is the pile up of straws that as the proverb goes eventually “breaks the camels back.” Family time for me is not only time together, it is problem-solving time to improve our relationship.

Do you have a family time? Do you have a set time each week to spend together for fun and for discussion?  If so, do you find this time valuable?  If not, what would it take to create this time?  What would it take to improve the quality of your time together with your family?  Will you regret that you did not take this time in the years to come?  Can you start this week with more family time?  

We are all familiar with the concept of “Prime time.”  According to Wikipedia, Prime

Time is defined as “the block of time with the most viewers and is generally where television networks and local stations reap much of their advertising revenues.”  Thus for some, Prime Time is where the most money can be made.  

I have some “left-over” time today.  Like left-over food, if I don’t use it, it will probably spoil. You cannot save left-over time too long, since something will inevitably come up to take it away from you. We get left-over time when we finish something sooner than we thought we would.  I may budget four hours for a project but instead it only takes three. I now have 1 hour left-over. If I don’t save this time, I will surely be able to use it up right away.  Left-overs are one of life’s many blessings to us.  Do you know anybody that does not like left-overs?  It is so much fun to go back down to the refrigerator after all the company has left and find left-over turkey or chicken or a roast to pick on. 

Left-over time can be equally wonderful. We all love to have time left to spend on something that we did not plan or did not anticipate.  It is all too rare these days to find ourselves with left-over time.  Of course, if you get to the airport and find out that your plane was delayed, you might be at a loss as to what to do with your time.  At this point, there is no refrigerator to store your left-over time in.  Many people plan for such delays and creatively find uses for left-over time. Much like some good cooks can make more interesting second meals out of left-overs, some people find very novel ways to spend their left-over time. Take a trip to an airport sometime and look at all the ways that people spend their left-over time.

Left-over food always seems to taste better when you eat it then when it was cooked.  Do you think “left-over time” gets better when you can put it away and bring it out later to use?  Does time age well or does it go stale very quickly?  How long can you keep left-over time? When do you ever have “left-overs” for time?  If you finish something today in less time than you had anticipated, what will you do with your left-over time today?  Are you creative with your left-over time?  Maybe we all need to start finding a better way to have “left-overs” for time and more creative ways to spend it?   

The older I get, the less I know.  Isn’t it supposed to work the other way around?  A friend of mine, Jerry, gave me this quote from Bertrand Russell the other day:  The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”  The Greek philosopher Socrates was once proclaimed to the wisest man in the world. The day before he died, Socrates declared that he knew nothing. On that same day, the Oracle at Delphi was asked “Who is the wisest man in the world?”  She replied “Socrates is the wisest man in the world.”  This was reported back to Socrates who said “When I was young, I knew everything but now I know nothing.” The Oracle, who was never wrong, was asked “How can Socrates be the wisest man in the world when he knows nothing?” She replied “Only the wisest man in the world would know that he knows nothing and have the courage and humility to admit it.” 

So we go to school to learn many facts and figures.  We study history to learn the story of humanity, we study physics to learn the theory of the cosmos, we study biology to learn how animals grow and develop and we study science so we will know how the world really works.  We learn more and more and are deluded into theories and opinions and positions. We become more and more certain that we are wiser and smarter. The more degrees that are conferred on us, the smarter we are supposed to be.  In reality, we begin to suspect that all of these facts and data bits are not really helping us to become smarter or wiser.  The older most of us get and the more learned most of us become, the more we suspect that there are no truths to the world.  We begin to see that there are always more truths behind the truths that we think we have found.  Our profundities become curiosities as we get older until at some point they wither away and become obsolete.  How many theories have you seen that were proven wrong?  How many times have you had to eat humble pie because something you were absolutely positively sure about was proven conclusively wrong? 

I remember seeing a picture in the paper the other day of a man accused of sexually molesting a young girl.  He was accused of pedophilia and charged with a felony offense.  I took one look at the visage staring out of the paper at me and promptly proclaimed “If there were ever a guy who was a pedophile, he sure is.”  A few weeks later, a more complete investigation proved him completely innocent of all offenses and the young girl admitted that she made the story up for some unknown reason.  I was beyond having egg on my face.  You would think that at my age, I would have learned to avoid rush to judgments.  I can make no excuses for my blatant stupidity. 

For the last few weeks, the media circus has been focusing on the Trayvon Martin case. It seems every day we are confronted with some new facts that support a change in who the media wants us to think is guilty.  Trayvon initiated the encounter. Zimmerman initiated the encounter, Trayvon provoked Zimmerman.  Zimmerman stalked Trayvon. Trayvon was a good kid.  Zimmerman was loved by all of his friends.  Trayvon was a racist.  Zimmerman was a racist.  Tapes, witnesses, photo enlargements, medical information, acoustic information, video tapes, the entire gamut is presented daily with one expert after another telling us what they think.  Each day it appears we know more and more about less and less.  What are we doing here folks?  Are we indicting racism? Are we selling papers?  Are we voyeurs to some weird witch hunt?  Are we looking for the truth?  Are we taking sides so we can become right? 

Trayvon s death is tragic. It is a loss to his family and friends and society.  I have never been “stalked” to the extent that many Black people are but I have had many friends who have told me about situations wherein they were stalked or profiled because they were Black.  It is always embarrassing for me to hear these stories.  I wish we lived in a nation where this could never happen, but I don’t and it does.  Somehow though, I think Trayvon’s death could be a catalyst to help change some of this outright racism. I keep thinking and hoping that this young man’s life and death will not be in vain.  If we can somehow get pass this media circus and any calls for revenge, there are lessons here that we need to learn.  If you remember the famous story Rashomon, you may be more liable to realize that we may never have any truth to what really happened between Trayvon and Zimmerman.  However, the lack of truth and certainty does not mean that there are not lessons to be learned here. 

I think many of you are also appalled by this show that seems to be playing out in the papers and television.  I can only hope this is not the forerunner of more cases being played out in the media. If so, we will truly have become a Roman Circus instead of a civilized society of laws and courts and presumptions of innocence until proven guilty. 

What can you help do to overcome the types of bias and prejudice that the media often promotes?  How can you avoid your own “rush to judgment?”  What does it mean to “judge not others, less you be judged yourself.”  How often do we see the mote in others eyes but ignore the pole in our own?  What lessons can we learn from Trayvon’s death so that it is not meaningless?