Aging Capriciously

Christmas Time is the celebration by Christians of the birth of Jesus Christ. He was born in a manger to Joseph and Mary. Christians celebrate December 25th as the birth of a man whom they claim to be the son of God. Other religions would disagree that he was a God, but none would disagree that he was a great prophet. His message was simple: love everyone: sinner, enemy, friend and family alike. The Christmas season today has become associated with gift giving, family traditions, Santa Claus, Christmas stories, Christmas trees, burning candles, holiday lights and the holiday shopping season. Christmas is said to be a time for children, who tend to be the recipients of the most gifts and toys. We all enjoy seeing the expression on the faces of little children as they unwrap a special gift with pretty wrapping paper and ribbons and bows. However, during the Christmas season, many spend a great deal of time trying to find the right gifts for their older friends and loved ones as well.

Some people feel that Christmas Time has become contaminated by the incessant advertisings and commercialism that litter the holiday season. Shopping used to start after Thanksgiving; it now starts after Halloween, a full month earlier. Indeed, it is easy amid the hustle and bustle to lose sight of the main reason to celebrate this season. Jesus Christ brought a message of love and peace to the world. It is ironic that during times of war and strife many people preaching his message have been sarcastically labeled as peaceniks, doves and war protestors. These labels are applied as though peace and love for other human beings was a bad thing. If Jesus were alive today, would he be a peace protestor or would he be a war supporter? Would Jesus be in the frontline of the anti-war movements or would he be Pro-War? Would Jesus be a dove or a hawk?

If you celebrate Christmas, how much time do you put aside to celebrate the message of Love and Peace that Jesus brought to the world? Is Christmas Time for you a celebration of the Peace Message or do you support a War Message? Do you work for peace or do you work for violence? Does your belief in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extend to all human beings or just those of your own religion and nationality? This Christmas Time, will you spend as much of your energy on peace and love as you do shopping and putting up your Christmas tree and household decorations? How will you extend the message of peace and love to others in the world this Christmas Time?

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, all the changes in humanity are 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 are 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, 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?

What is time? Do we even know what time is? Is it the passing of the seasons, the snow falling, our bodies aging or the leaves turning? Is it the sun rising and the moon going through phases? Is it the lines that grow in my face as the days, weeks and months pass into years? Is it my cell phone, my digital PDA or my analog wristwatch becoming obsolete? Is it my alarm clock, the radio, the TV or the five o’clock news telling me the time of day? Is time something you feel or sense? Do you even believe in something called time? Can you feel it or touch it or is it just in your mind? How do you know what time really is or do you need to care? Do you want to know what time it is when you are on vacation or during the weekends? Do you wear a watch for style or function? Do you take life one day at a time or do you plan your life months in advance?

What if time stopped? What if the word time did not exist and you had never heard of the idea of time? What would a life without time and all the ways we measure it be like? What if we had no schedules and no rules for “being on time?” What if there were no birthdays, anniversaries, holidays or special days to remember time? What if we had no place to go where we had to be on time? What if there were no planes, ships or buses that left “on time?”

Can you conceive of a world without time? What if our clocks all stopped for just one day? What time would you get up today if there was “no time?” How would you live today if there was no place to be on time? Would your life be different if you could forget the concept of time or if time did not exist? What if you could just do things over and over again until you got them right? Does the concept of time help you to live a better life?

Are these reflections 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? From my current perspective, the readings in this blog should 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 antique and quaint ideas. Someone in the year 2200 coming upon my reflections may wonder about how simple and naïve people were 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 really 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? Send me your opinions; I would love to hear from you.

Being time versus doing time, do you know the difference? Doing time is busy time. It is time spent accomplishing things, getting things done and making things for the external world. Doing time is goal oriented and linear. It moves in a straight line and is never still. Being time is time spent with and on oneself. It is quiet time. It is time spent oblivious of attainment and goals. Being time does not recognize space and movement, it simply exists. During Being time, the world stands still and nothing happens. According to Robert Wolfe who wrote “Being Time”:

“Being time means being your whole self, the whole person whom you have always been and will always be. This person stretches from the moment of your conception to the moment of your death in one unbroken self that moves and acts in the present but exists in the past and future as well.” (http://www.kofersite.com/time.htm)

I once attended a Lifesprings Seminar which lasted for three days. The subject of the seminar was learning to be as well as do. One of the leaders made the statement that in contemporary society we think that by doing, doing, doing we will then be. She said that this was backwards. We must first be before we can do. Otherwise whatever we do will be twisted and warped. If we are not first a being of integrity and honesty, then how can anything we do not be warped? Many of us are on this false treadmill. We think that by doing and accomplishing great things, we can then just “be.” We don’t realize that unless we can first be that none of these accomplishments will help us to feel fulfilled. Accomplishments will all just pass away. They will be magnificent for the moment, but in a short time we will be back to living with our unfulfilled and unsatisfied self. Nothing can get you out of this trap. No amount of physical goods, designer clothes, expensive homes, cars, celebrity friends, degrees or money can overcome the doing trap. There is only one way to live and love yourself and that is by learning the secret of Being.

The famous existential philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote a book called: “Being and Time.” (1927). It is an exploration of the meaning of being as defined by temporal time, and is an analysis of time as a horizon for the understanding of being. If you have a bent for philosophy, this book can be very interesting. I have learned a great deal about Being time from many of the excellent books dealing with Zen Buddhism. The heart of Zen lies in understanding Being time. According to Dogen, a Zen Master (1200-1253):
“To be fully present in the immediate presencing here and now of being-time is to realize the presence-time of all life. As self and other are both times, practice and realization are times; entering the mud, entering the water, is equally time.” (Dogen, Being Time, 1240)

In Western society, we sometimes say, “there is no time like the present.” Well, there is really no time but the present. We exist moment to moment and yet our minds worry about the past and the future. If we can exist in the moment, if we can learn to just be rather than do, we can quiet all fears and anxieties about what we will be, about the world and about life and death. Learning to just” be” is perhaps the most difficult task for any of us to achieve. I cannot honestly say that I have accomplished this or that I often find myself just being.

Nevertheless, I see it as a very worthwhile effort and while some would say it is an oxymoron to make it a goal, I try to reflect at least once a week on it. My weekly reflection is as: “Help me to BE as well as DO and to trust in the future by living today the best I can.” When I can accomplish this once a week and at least keep the value present in my life, I can feel a great difference in how I perceive the world and what is most important. The world and all the things I do are not nearly as important as I often think they are. Being a good person is at least as important as doing good things. From Being good will come Doing good.

Do you spend all of your time doing or can you just be? Do you appreciate the need for Being time? Do you have enough Being time in your life? Why not? What would it take to have more Being time in your life?

“I could not sleep at all last night, you were on my mind.” Have you ever had one of those nights where you just could not get to sleep because you were stuck on a thought? Perhaps it was a problem with a loved one or a problem at work. But you tossed and turned all night and finally threw in the towel and got up. Maybe you decided to read, or watch TV or just go out for an early breakfast. My, how time passes when we are stuck on a thought or how it does not pass! The night just seems to drag on and on. You want to go back to sleep but you can’t turn your brain off and laying in bed musing over the problem does not solve it. Your mind goes round and round in circles promoting one unsatisfactory theory after another. What if I had done this, or what if this had happened or what if I could do this? You are stuck on a Ferris wheel of thinking and as your mind turns the minutes seem to tick by. One minute for every idea or “what could have been” or what you should have done. Sleep is a time for the mind to rest, but sometimes when we are stuck on a thought the mind will not allow us to go to sleep and the clock will not cooperate either. No matter how tired we are or how badly we want to go to sleep, we cannot seem to turn our thoughts off.

Are there solutions for this problem? Sometimes I count sheep and this actually works sometimes. But for the most part, if I am really stuck on a thought, the only thing that seems to provide a remedy is to get up and do something. To admit that the night is over and I need to be in motion and not in bed. I may go for an early run, do homework, dishes, write, or catch up on emails, anything that will get my mind working somewhere else. Surprisingly, once I start some other activity, I no longer feel tired and I begin to feel energized. Lying in bed mulling over my problem is never very satisfactory and the time just seems to creep by. It is not time well spent until I finally decide to spend it differently. Sleep is a time for reenergizing unless we are stuck on a thought.

When was the last time you were stuck on a thought? What did you do about it? What helps you the most when you just can’t get to sleep and the thoughts keep rolling around in your head?

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. If you are like most people, the goal or desire of being a millionaire is quite precious. You might have a desire to have more money but what about time. Time and money are interchangeable. So now that you realize you are a millionaire, the real 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 much minutes in your life 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 wisely? Perhaps more wisely than you have spent your money?

Funeral time has been spent since the dawn of the human race. Evidence of ancient burial ceremonies has been found connected with Neanderthal skeletons. Funeral ceremonies vary from country to country and from religion to religion. Funerals may also vary depending on the nature of the deceased person’s life and occupation. For instance, funerals for police and fire fighters are somewhat unique. Funeral time is not always a time of sadness as one might expect. In some cultures, funerals can become quite celebrative. The traditional New Orleans Jazz Funeral starts off on a somber note but once the burial has occurred it changes into a celebration to commemorate the life of the deceased.

As I have grown older and attended more funerals, I have been surprised to find that sometimes death is a blessing in disguise. Many times the death of a loved one frees that person from a life of pain and torment. For this, we are very thankful. No one ever really comes out and wishes a person were dead, but how often have you heard someone say “they are better off now.” An unexpected gift from some funerals is the reuniting of relatives who may not have seen each other for many years. Funerals have a way of helping family members re-bond after years of arguments and disagreements. Perhaps it is because the death of anyone close makes us realize how short life is. Sometimes death comes so suddenly and unexpectedly that we can not really come to grips with it. When a young person in the prime of their life dies either through natural or unnatural causes, we find it difficult to accept their death. “Why did it have to happen?” “Why they and not us is a question that many of us ponder?”

We all face two kinds of deaths, the death of others and the deaths of ourselves. We will face the death of others many times and probably no two times will it be alike. We grow older and wiser as we visit many funeral ceremonies and have to come to grips with the death of loved ones and their effects on us and others.

We will only have to face our own death once or will we? Shakespeare said in his play Julius Caesar that “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.” What does this mean to you? To me, it means that life is a risk and that each day I face a risk that it will be my last. I can choose to minimize risks but I cannot ever eliminate all of the risk associated with life. How much I minimize risk will determine the type of life I live. If I minimize too much risk, I will lead a very boring and sheltered life. It will be a life without surprises or variety. If I have too much risk, my life may be sweet but it will undoubtedly be short.

Do you want to know when or how you will die? Would you like to life forever? How would you like to die? What type of funeral do you want? Have you planned your funeral yet? Why not? What if death came knocking on your door tomorrow?

Psychological time refers to our actual perception of time rather than the “reality” of time. Much as art and beauty are in the eyes of the beholder, time is in the mind. There are times when the clock seems to fly and others when it drags. When we are enjoying ourselves or having fun, time seems to pass too rapidly. We wish the moment or day would last forever. It feel like this when we are on vacation or spending time with people we like. However the opposite is true when we are doing things we really do not want to be doing. Time seems to drag by ever so slowly when we are bored or doing work that we hate. Time at a conference listening to a boring speaker can seem like an eternity. Time at an amusement park or something we deem entertaining will seem to pass too quickly. Time for one of us may be too fast while for someone else it might be too slow. Young children perceive time as passing very slowly and think of each day as a lifetime. The elderly count weeks going by as the young count days. Indeed, it sometimes seems like I turn calendar pages so fast, I forget what year it is. How often have I said to Karen “when was the last time we were there”, only to hear the answer “about 25 years ago.” Then I think: “Impossible, it seems like only yesterday.”

You have all heard stories about people who while having some kind of a life threatening event; will have their lives pass before them in a heartbeat. I have heard many people speak of how before an accident on a motorcycle occurs, everything will seem to be in slow motion until the actual crash. Imagine if there were clocks for psychological time. How do you suppose a clock like this would work? You could dial in slow days and fast days? If you wanted time to speed up, you simply set the clock on “speed up.” Vice versa, you could set it on slow down if you wanted things to last longer. This clock actually exists but it is in our minds and we often do not know what the key is. Our minds respond to stimuli and we are not able to alter the perceptions that we are having. Perhaps if we could, we might be able to change boredom into excitement or to slow the clock down on those times that we want time to last longer. If the key is in our head, it must be there for the finding.

Can you control your perception of time? Do you know anyone who can? Does time fly when you do not want it to and drag when you wish it would fly? Do you think you have any control over this? Why not? What do you think it would take to change your perceptions of time and how it moves? Where is your key to time to be found?

Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament and the Torah. It is the book that tells about the beginning of creation and the early relationships between God and his “chosen” people. When we refer to the genesis of anything, we are talking about the beginning or creation of it. According to the Book of Genesis, it took God six days to make the world and he rested on the seventh. Today there is great debate over the literal accuracy of these words. Creationists want to hold to the biblical description as to how the world was created. Those of a more scientific mindset have put this description aside in favor of the Evolutionary theory developed by Darwin and others. This debate started many years ago and still continues.

The Creationists want to believe that “humans” were created in the “likeness” of God and not as a process of development from fishes to apes to humans. Evolutionists point to the scientific evidence that humans have “evolved” over time and that it took millions of years for us to become what we are today. Scientists like to talk about the “Big Bang” theory as to how the world and heavens were created. According to this theory, a cosmic mass of energy and matter exploded sending superheated particles of matter throughout the universe. This matter eventually coalesced into the bodies that we call planets, moons and suns. After eons of years, life began to form (at least on the third planet from the sun in our solar system) and then Homo Sapiens eventually emerged. Not all people subscribe to either theory. There are many who regard the Evolutionary theory with as much skepticism as the theory accepted by the Creationists.

I have another theory. My theory holds that it does not really matter one iota how the earth was created. I am more concerned with what we do to the earth today and less with how it was created or who created it. For all I care, it could have been created by a cosmic Leprechaun who had a really warped sense of humor. How else can you account for the acrimony that we humans can expend over the most senseless and useless issues? I would like to see 1/3 of the energy spent by Evolutionists and Creationists directed to help fight the environmental and economic problems that we see facing our world. Global warming (whether caused by man or nature) is happening, along with increased atmospheric and environmental pollution.

No one disagrees that we need to have economic development but at what price? Are beanie babies, IPods, disposable diapers and fertilizers to grow really pretty green lawns worth the costs incurred to the environment by their creation and usage? How much commercialism and development are our environment, forests, oceans and lakes worth? Where do we draw the line between commercial development and environmental responsibility? Who pays for the “externalities” that economists talk about?

Will we spend all of our time and energy in trivial debates about who created and how the earth was created and in denying the reality of problems that we see today? Or will we spend our energy to all work together to maintain and create the kind of blue-green world that we want to live in. Which side will you be on? What will you do to help create a clean environment? If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. Are you waiting for someone else to do it?