Aging Capriciously

Saturday is the day that many of wait for all week long. It is the first day of our weekend. It is the day we are free to play, work in the yard, take the motorcycle for a spin, go fishing, camping, hiking or take a trip. Saturday is a mini-vacation. We get fifty two Saturdays a year and we wish we had more. Did you know that fewer people were born on Saturdays than on other days? One study showed that “Weekend births (around 8000 per day) are significantly lower than weekday births (about 11,000 to 12,000 per day). I believe it is because we don’t like to do scheduled things on Saturday. It is our day of rest. It is our day of play. It is our day to do whatever we want to do. Even on Sunday, our legitimate day of rest, we may have obligations like going to church or visiting relatives. However, Saturday, we are free to do whatever we want to do. (Unless of course, we are one of the unfortunates who have to work overtime or work on the weekend.)

Little Richard had a hit song called “Rip It Up.” The lyrics went like this:

“Saturday night and I just got paid
I’m a fool about my money, don’t try to save.
My heart says “go go, have a time”
Saturday night and I’m feeling’ fine.”

We party on Saturday like there will be no tomorrow. We rip it up before we have to return to work on Monday. Wikipedia says that “Saturday is the seventh day of the week, between Friday and Sunday (the first day), and represents the death of the weekly cycle before its rebirth on Sunday. It retains its Roman origin in English which is of the Roman god of agriculture Saturn.” Apparently, the Sabbath was changed by the Roman Catholic Church from Saturday to Sunday so that we now see Sunday as the last day of the week. We are free to party and play on Saturday since we can rest up on Sunday.

Nevertheless, we don’t consider our Saturday exertions to be work. Perhaps, since we are free to choose what we do, it does not feel like work to spend the day gardening or working on the car or house or just partying. Many people work harder on Saturday then they do the rest of the week. I have friends who can hardly wait for Saturday to come so that they can take a long canoe trip, a hundred mile bike ride or run a marathon. They regard such activities as fun and play. It seems to all come down to how much we are in control of what we do. When others tell us what to do and when to do it, it is work. When we are in control and can do things on our own schedule, it is play.

How much control do you have over your time and activities? Do you feel like you make most of the decisions regarding how your time is spent? Do you feel like others make most of the decisions for you? How much of your time and life do you control? How could you take more control of your time?

Twenty four hours to live! Sounds like a movie. But what if you woke up this morning and some inner voice told you that you had only twenty four hours to live. You knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this would be your last day on earth. You would not wake up to see another day. Few mortals know the time and means of their death so would you be blessed or cursed?

Let’s assume that you were going to expire painlessly in your sleep and that you were not presently sick or infirmed, but you had only 24 hours to live. This is a very difficult thing to imagine. However, what would you do with your time? Would you still get ready for work? Would you call all of your loved ones and say good-bye? Would you head down to the local casino and spend your last dollar?

You would not have enough time to go on that trip you dreamed about but you would have more than enough time to reflect on your life. What could or should you have done with it? Is it too late to ask this question? Is it irrelevant now? Perhaps not! Perhaps, you could still make a difference in the world with your last 24 hours. Perhaps, you could feel that your life really mattered. Well, after thinking about this, would the knowledge of your death be a curse or a blessing? Do you feel that your life matters now? If not, why wait until it is too late?

Well, I am now snowbirding in AZ but I still feel I should talk about November in Minnesota. Especially after I just missed the second largest snowstorm in the last 20years in Minnesota. I am also late in talking about November but it still seems appropriate. I guess you could say better late than never. So here is my take on November.

November is the month that winter really begins in Minnesota. The song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot always lurks in my mind during November. I can hear the following refrain from his song whenever the wind blows strong:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call ‘Gitche Gumee’.
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early!

“November is the eleventh and penultimate month of the year in the Gregorian calendar and one of four Gregorian months with the length of 30 days. In Latin, novem means “nine”. November was also the ninth month in the Roman calendar until a month less winter period was divided between January and February” (Wikipedia).
November is when our leaves have all gone, fall is over and we expectantly wait the coming snow. Our November days alternate between gray and gloomy with strong winds and an occasional burst of weak sunshine. It is as if the weather gods are building up to heap winter upon us but they haven’t yet quite got the steam for an all out winter storm. The lakes are not fully frozen, the paths have little snowfall and the woods are bleak and dreary looking. Not too many people choose November in Minnesota as their favorite month. The storms we get send you inside with a cold beating rain that is no fun to be caught in. But for a few degrees, a November storm could have been a real blizzard. No snow means no skiing and no snowmobiling. It has not been cold long enough for the ice to be deep enough for ice skating or ice fishing.

What to do in November in Minnesota is a puzzling question. If you are smart, you will build a fire, find a good book, get a hot chocolate, throw a blanket over yourself and resign yourself to five months of winter. With enough firewood, hot chocolate and books, you can make it through another winter in Minnesota. Of course, you still have Thanksgiving and the seasons holidays to look forward to. Thanksgiving marks the gateway to the shopping and holiday season. No matter how cold and how much snow there is, you will need to get outside to find the best bargains and put the holiday season in order. Start practicing your snow driving skills so you can be ready for the midnight madness sales. Or you can just camp in front of the TV set until you hear the first Robins with their song of spring.

What do you like and dislike about November? What are your associations with this month? How do you get through November? What is the most important or fun thing that you have ever done in November?

Keeping track of time! The concept of tracking time brings forth images of tracking some wild beast in the woods. Deer, moose, bear, cougars, tigers all leave very distinctive tracks. Time also leaves distinctive tracts. Time leaves physical as well as emotional tracks on all of us. Not to mention the tracks time leaves on the environment. Emotional tracks are evident in the greater cautiousness and fears we have as we age. From experience, once burned, we no longer want to get so close to the flame. Indeed, many of us will not even go near the fire again. Divorce, rejection, death, pain all leave emotional scars. For some of us they may never quite heal. Physical tracks show up as lines, creases, joint aches, hair thinning, broken bones and disease. I often joke that physically I am aging more like cheese then a fine wine. I am getting squishier and somewhat moldy around the edges.

Perhaps you see the ideas of tracking time through a different lens. Maybe you think of the need to track your minutes and seconds each day, a twist on tracking your dollars and cents. Certainly, if you watch your time carefully, you will have more of it. Mark down your time spent each day in an Excel spreadsheet and carefully log your corresponding activities. This last task seems somewhat obsessive to me and I am often accused of being a Type A personality. I once worked at a job where I was required to mark my work in fifteen minute intervals each day and log what I was doing during each interval. After I left this company, I decided I would never work for anyone again where I had to justify myself at this level of detail. It was simply an exercise in obsessive control and domination.

Type A personalities are supposed to be more compulsive and more aggressive than Type B personalities. I suspect that Type A personalities are more prone to track their time and that Type B personalities more prone to go with the flow. Are you a Type A or Type B personality? Do you go with the flow or do you track your time? Regarding the physical and emotional tracks that time leaves, how have you fared? What emotional tracks has time left in your life? What physical tracks has time left for you?

Well, I am back online and writing from Arizona City. Got my new internet service and am now trying to get my system down here back to where I can find my files and bookmarks and all. Thought I would post a blog on “hard times.” For many it is a very difficult economy down here and foreclosures and property values have hurt many businesses. The talk in the local cafe is usually how difficult things are, how bad the government is and how in the “good old days” none if this would have happened. Funny, how people forget the past and just keep on repeating it.

The phrase “hard times” reminds us of those days when things really were tough. They might have been when we had no money, no place to live, no one who cared about us, or when we faced all of the problems of the world alone. Studs Terkel interviewed hundreds of people for his book “Hard Times”, which told the story of the Great Depression through the words of the people who actually lived it. Many people still remember the Great Depression when unemployment rates soared to thirty percent and higher. It affected people not only in the US but in many other countries as well.

Ironically and tragically, some people today still live no better than many did in the Great Depression. The world is full of areas where poverty and unemployment are rife and where “hard times” are the norm. When we think of the hard times in our life, we appreciate more where we are now and what we have now. This is a good thing. However, how often do we think of the hard times in the lives of others? What does the phrase “hard times” mean to people who live where there is no medical care or where starvation and disease still kill thousands?

It is fashionable today to believe that: “The poor of the world just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If only they had our work ethic or were more like us, they could have what we have. They could live the good life.” This logic assumes that all things in the world are equal and that all circumstances are equal. It does not take much research or knowledge to realize that this is not true. People do not always bring their hard times on by ignorance or sloth. We cannot always control the world and events around us. Remember the quote by Rudyard Kipling “There but for the grace of God go I.” Jesus Christ said: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew, Chapter 5-7). He did not say “blessed are the hard-hearted, or blessed are those who pull themselves up by their bootstraps, or blessed are those who have the most.”

Funny, how many of us can forget the help we needed or wanted when hard times were upon us. Can you find some way to share your good fortune today with others? What can you do today to take some hard times away from someone else? Be grateful for what you have today and see if you can share some of your good feelings and benefits with others.

“Once upon a time” there were – hold it – why do all these old stories always start with the line “once upon a time?” Is there something special in these words? Does the line evoke certain images for us or certain feelings? I think you will probably answer: “Why, yes it does.” Somehow, the words “Once upon a time” have the power and magic to take us far far away to strange fantasy lands where good is battling evil. And despite how dark it might seem for the hero or heroine, in the end, we know that the evil king, queen, witch, warlord or dragon, will be defeated and the good guys (or good creatures) will live happily ever after. How many fairy tales were you told when you were a child that ended “happily ever after?”

“Once upon a time” takes us to a world where good always trumps evil. Who would not want to live in such a place? “Once upon a time” is a much sweeter opening line than “And now the six o’clock news.” Faced with the evening news, who would not want to escape to a magic kingdom of “someplace?” It is interesting that during hard times, people want more fantasy stories with happy endings to escape too. Stories like the Wizard of Oz and Mary Poppins were very popular during some tough economic and social times in the USA. We might call this escapism but it actually shows that humans can only handle so much bad news and after that we must have some happy news. Like the old axiom, “all work and no play makes Jane a dull girl”, it is likely true that all bad news and no good news makes us bitter and angry people. We must have fantasy and happiness in our lives or we shrivel up and become sour old prunes.

What is your favorite story or fantasy land? Why? What dreams or fantasies does this story hold for you? Do you realize that none of these stories ever tells you what the time period was? The time they take place in is simply “once upon a time.” Where would you like to go now if you could go anyplace in time?

Play time (Part Two). There is so much to be said about play time. The short entry above only scratched the surface. Let’s spend more time on play time! Play is a time for relaxation, for recreation and for being non-goal oriented. If you look up the word “play” at http://www.dictionary.com , you will find nearly 100 different ways the word can be used. To attend a play, to play cards, to play a game, to play at something, to play music, etc. Most of our associations with play have to do with being non-work oriented and doing something that we regard as fun. We do not generally think of getting paid to play and there are not many jobs for playing except in the theater. If you were to be paid for playing, it would suddenly become task oriented and likely loose the element of fun.

During play time, time seems to disappear and we become much less aware of the passage of time. Play time is a time when we can forget time. We forget obligations, we forget out to do lists and we forget the demands for accountability. Time seems to fly by when we are having fun. You have probably noticed how fast weekends and vacations seem to go. When we play, we become so immersed in what we are doing that we do not notice or perhaps even care about the time that is passing by. There is some evidence it is important to have a time to relax and let the cares of the world be ignored. People who can play well and frequently do so will probably live happier if not longer lives. Most of us play well when we are children but as we become adults we forget how to play. We have to learn how to play again. We may become work-aholics as we age but you seldom see adults who are play-aholics. Can you imagine an AA group for play-aholics? That would be a group worth joining.

How well do you integrate play in your life? Does it happen for you on a daily, weekly or monthly basis? Do you get enough play time in your day to allow some of your stress to dissipate? Can you play and not feel guilty if all of your work is not done? How could you be even more playful in your life?

Play time. Here we are about three fourths through the year and we are just now discussing play time. I suppose it is because I grew up with the Aesop story about the ants and the grasshopper. Most of us have heard that story but I think about it every single day. It is been etched not only into my mind but into the very fabric of my existence. “You must get your work done before you can play.” Later in life, I learned about the three boxes of life and discovered that if I was creative enough; I could integrate work, play and learning. I have tried to integrate that model in both my teaching and my consulting. Sometimes, I am successful but more often I am not. Nevertheless, I keep working on it and trying to make it a constant reality. On most days though, my mind keeps repeating the “you must get your work done first.”

Karen is very different, she can play and play and not feel guilty. When I play before I work, my guilt becomes overwhelming and feelings of some impending disaster are ever present. I suppose I think I will be left out in the cold (like the grasshopper) with nothing to eat. I once asked a group of gold-miners whom I was training what it would be like if they could integrate work, play and learning. I am not sure what I was expecting for answers but I was stunned by the following comment from one of the miners: “Well, it would be like there was no difference between Monday and Saturday.” I could not have come up with a better description. We would not be able to tell the difference between the days of the week, because they would no longer have the same meaning to us. Life would be like Saturday all the time.

What is your conception of work and play and learning? Do you think they can be integrated? Are your Saturdays different from Mondays? What would it take to integrate them in your life? Imagine waking up and saying “Thank god its Monday”

Time management is a demon. When I first started these blogs, everyone wanted to know if they were going to be on time management. We can all relate to this topic since it is not only popular but ever present in our minds. How I can manage my time better, what are some secrets of time management, where can I find a good course on time management? How can I be successful if I cannot manage my time! My answer was NO! NO! NO! I am not writing a blog on time management. There are a gazillion books on time management. I am sick of the subject of time management. My good friend Sam P-W once told me that time management was the ultimate oxymoron. We think we can manage everything these days. We human beings somehow think “management” is our solution to all of the world’s problems. If we could only plan, organize, lead and control better, we could solve all of the world’s problems. Of course, the secret to doing all of these things better is time management. However, is it really the secret? Why do we all have to be so super organized?

What would happen if we created a class on “time mis-management?” You could earn a certificate in time mis-management. It almost sounds like something they could put you in jail for. “You have been accused by the state of “mis-managing” your time. You are sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole.” We take the creed of time management so seriously that we cannot even contemplate the idea of it being feasible to mis-manage time. However, if you think about it, play is the ultimate mis-management of time. When was the last time you felt that you mis-managed your time? What did you do about it? Were you compulsive, contrite or penitent? Do you beat yourself up when you mis-manage your time? Why? Whose time is it to mis-manage anyway?

Time crept by on little cat’s feet. You hardly noticed it was gone. When you have too much time you are bored, when you have too little time, you want more. Like most of what we get, we never really value it until it is gone or until someone else wants what we have. We hardly notice the passing of time, the ticking of clocks or the ringing of church bells. Time is a paradox, a riddle and a conundrum NOT rolled up into one but twisted and tangled together until we cannot tell what is the beginning, middle or end. We alternately exult time then shortly after we malign it. We define it, and then decide it does not really exist; but through it all, time remains omnipotent and omnipresent in our lives.

So how can time be so stealthy and so cat like? If we belled time (like belling the cat), would we be more aware of its influence and presence in or lives? What if we could hear it coming and hear it leaving? Would we be forever warned or would we quickly learn to ignore the sound of the bell? I suspect that we might still take it for granted. We never really value time until it is running out. We have the most precious resource in the world and we ignore it unless we suddenly realize we will not have much more of it. We all know someone who had a heart attack and then started watching their eating and exercise. We all know someone who smoked until they were diagnosed with cancer. As a nation, we have repeatedly delayed taking action when needed until the crisis was in our face. We can get a hurricane warning but until the winds are blowing the trees down, we stubbornly resist taking action. It seems to take a crisis to galvanize us into motion. But what is more of a crisis then finding out that our time left on this earthy is shorter than we thought it would be. Suddenly, time is a very precious luxury and no longer a simple commodity.

How aware are you of the time in your life, the changing of the minutes, the passing of the days, weeks, months, seasons or years in your life? Do you see them all passing by or do you only notice them when they are gone? What would it take to make you more aware of the time in your life, the time you spend and the time you waste? Do you need to put a bell on your time? Are you satisfied with the passing of time in your life? Do you treat each hour and minute of your life as a luxury or are they simply a commodity?