Aging Capriciously

Naptime has always been one of my favorite moments. I love taking naps. Many people do not. There is also a stereotype in which “older” people need naps but younger ones do not need them. I have been taking naps all of my life. Ever since I can remember, I love taking naps in the afternoon. I can nap for only thirty minutes and feel so wonderful after. I remember interviewing for a job a few years ago and the “much” younger woman behind the desk kept mentioning to me that “we really need to do things fast around here.” I felt like telling her that I could not really do things that fast since I would have to nap each day right after lunch.

Is the world divided into napers and non-napers? In some parts of the world, an afternoon nap or siesta time is traditional. In other countries, the work ethic does not permit naps. Naps probably started going out the door with the Industrial Revolution; another casualty of our hectic life in the so called “modern” or civilized world. I have seen some recent articles talking about how healthy it is to take naps. Maybe it is time to start a trend or fad. Here is one way I think we could do it. Nap Parties!

We have alls sorts of parties but has anyone ever invited you over to a “nap party?” When you were a child, you may have gone to a slumber party but only if you were a girl. Men were always too macho for that kind of an activity. That was just for “silly” girls. You might argue that nap parties would not work because as our economies develop and the world gets more competitive, we don’t have time for such foolishness. We need to be more productive and get things done. What would business and industry be like if everyone took naps in the middle of the afternoon? How could we compete on a world scale if everyone took a nap each day? Interesting how we have become more concerned with competing and less concerned with stress and our personal health. Maybe we would all live longer and have a lot less stress if we took more naps. Perhaps like the turtle versus the hare, a little nap might help us to win the longer races.

When was the last time you took a nap? What was it like? Do you have enough naps in your life? How could you get more naps in your life? What if you took a nap today? What would others think about it?

What does time have to do with regrets? I once heard someone say that the only thing you will regret when your life is over are those things that you wanted to do but never did. Some of these things may be adventures that were never taken or people you wanted to meet and never did. They may also include apologies you wanted to make or forgiveness you wanted and never gave or received. You may look back on your life someday with no regrets as my friend Harold Johnson did. However, I think it is a rare individual that will live their life with no regrets. Time plays an important role in this process since we often act as though we would have unlimited time to fix things. I will call and apologize tomorrow. I will see them later. I will take that trip next year. What if tomorrow never comes? Who among us knows the time of our death?

If you could take a walk to a cemetery and talk to the people therein, what do you think they would they say about their lives and their regrets? I can imagine how many would say that they regret they never really prioritized their lives according to what really mattered. Mary was struck by a car while on a shopping trip. Paul had a heart attack while watching a soccer game. Israel was sitting at a bar when shot during an attempted hold-up. Sarah had always wanted to have enough money to visit the Holy land but could never seem to save enough for the trip. Jasmine says she would have liked to have spent more time with her son and daughter. Mohamed had not seen his parents in over two years because he was too busy with school and work.

What regrets about your life do you have today? What can you do about them today? Some of them you can do nothing about, but others you can. Like they say in the Serenity Prayer: “Lord, help us to know the difference.” Make a list of regrets you might be able to do something about. Be optimistic. Don’t put this off until tomorrow. Do it today. When you have made this list, choose one to work on for the next week or month. Perhaps this will become a good habit. When you have finished your list, how do you think you will feel?

Are you keeping time? Can the world be divided into time keepers and time ignorers? Do those folks who do not wear time pieces simply ignore time, or do they keep time in their own way? I once heard someone say that “you cannot trust a person who does not wear a watch.” Today, many people do not wear a watch. Cell phones, laptops, GPS systems and PDA’s all keep perfectly accurate time. However, are the same folks who would wear a watch now using these devices, and those folks who could not care less about the time, still ignoring it?

Time keepers tend to be worriers and somewhat obsessive. However, they also feel responsible and compelled to live up to their temporal commitments. A time keeper is dedicated to the “keeping” of good time. This means being on time, doing things in a timely manner, being alert to the passing of time and using time wisely. As with all of life, there is a time to keep time and a time to ignore it. Time ignorers use time but are not obsessed with keeping track of time. They also keep their commitments but are less obsessed with the ritual aspects of time keeping and more concerned with the relational. It is not being on time that is important to them so much as being with time. Time ignorers live in the present and may be more concerned with the quality of the time they use. Time pieces can not measure the quality of the time we use only the coming and going of time. The real secret of time may lie in finding a balance between keeping time and ignoring time.

Are you a time keeper or a time ignorer? Do the above descriptions fit you at all? Would you say that sometimes you choose to ignore time and sometimes not ignore it? Have you found the right balance between keeping time and ignoring it? If not, what do you have to do to find a better balance in your life?

No time for justice! Some people do not believe that there is any justice in the world. Others believe that justice will always occur but it just takes time. I remember part of a quote that mentions justice grinding like a mill wheel, slowly but inevitably. Many believe that justice will not be found in this world but only in some after life when all accounts are called to order. The Old Testament notes that “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” Perhaps, we will not find justice on earth but somewhere between heaven and hell, we will all be judged and sentenced. I have always wondered where Hitler and other mass murderers would end up and what criteria could be used to judge them.

In the USA, the Bill of Rights (Amendment VI) calls for a speedy and impartial public trial for all convicted of a crime. Justice is rendered today and you do not have to wait to have justice meted out. Justice is quick, fair and impartial. Or at least, it is supposed to be. Today the wheels of justice seem to grind much more slowly than envisioned by the American forefathers. Few of us would say that most trials are speedy, never mind impartial. Perhaps if the definition of a “speedy” trial had been defined we might be better able to judge the efficacy of the present US court system. What is speedy to some of us might be slow to others. No doubt we all want justice today for ourselves. Why then does it appear that few citizens are clamoring for trials to be made speedier? Is the right to a speedy trial no longer important? Are we more willing to tolerate delays in all aspects of our lives? Have we extended this to the court system so that we no longer feel that a speedy trial is important?

Maybe we should just rewrite the Bill of Rights to make the amendment more accurate. Perhaps it should read: “You are entitled to a trial, which with lawyers and court delays might take several years before it comes to court. If you can afford a better lawyer, you will have a better chance of winning your case.” What would you think of this change? Do you think trials should be speedy? Do you think it is important to have a speedy, fair and impartial justice system? Do you think most are? How would you feel if you were in the court system? Would you be a satisfied customer?

Have you ever felt that you were moving at the speed of light? Do you understand what time and speed have in common? If you are familiar with Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, the theory says that as speed increases time slows down. You might remember the famous paradox about the space traveler going away on a long journey and coming back younger than his or her parents. How can this be true you might say? Well, according to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity it is true. As we approach the speed of light, time slows down. Wouldn’t it be great if we could we use Einstein’s theory to help slow our day down and get more done? If we could move at the speed of light, time would just about stand still. Just think how much stuff you could get done. However, if everyone moved at the speed of light, then relatively speaking, time would not move any slower for you. This technique would work only if you or a few others were moving faster than everyone else.

In practice, we all seem to be working on the presumption that if we could just move fast enough we could get more done. This negates the overall benefit and we become like rats on a wheel. All of us are running and running and just staying in the same place.
We move faster and faster and faster but paradoxically we seem to get less and less done. I took a class in motorcycle racing once and the key message of the instructor was “You must first learn to go slow before you can go fast.” Most of us think that by going faster we can accomplish more. In many cases, we only accomplish less since our haste results in more rework and having to do things over again.

Today, concentrate on moving slower. Forget the speed of light. See if you can study your motions; watch your body move more slowly, exert less effort and try to move at the speed of a snail. What differences could this make in your life? Can you do this for one whole day? Why not? What keeps you moving at the speed of light?

I’m in a hurry to get things done
Oh I rush and rush until life’s no fun
All I really gotta do is live and die
But I’m in a hurry and don’t know why (Alabama)

How true this song rings for so many of us. We are all in a hurry and we don’t know why. Where are we going? Why must we be in a hurry to get “nowhere” so fast? How impatient life can seem today when everyone wants everything fast. We have fast food restaurants, fast bank drive-ins, ATM’s, fast lanes, one hour prescriptions glasses, express lanes in the grocery stores, fast check-ins and fast checkouts at hotels and fast registrations for just about everything you can name.

Amazon has instituted one-click shopping which has raised the bar even higher for fast service transactions. As we speed life up more and more, we become more and more impatient with waiting or even an instant of “wasted” time. We take our frustrations out in road rage or an excess of pills to pacify our anxiety and tensions. We see more and more the negative effects of rushing and multi-tasking. We have forgotten the old admonition that “haste makes waste.” We have no time to spend worrying about whether or not we are rushing since we are so busy rushing we have no time to think. The cycle gets more vicious each day.

When do you have time to stop or do nothing or even to waste a minute? As you go through your activities today, see if you can be a little more patient. See if you can slow down a bit. Use those opportunities when you are frustrated or rushed to regard the flow in your life. Each moment of haste or impatience is an opportunity to slow the rush down. How many chances can you take today to slow the rush down? How many will you succeed at? One of these chances may just save your life?

Famous eulogies! Some eulogies are so memorable that they are forever etched into our minds and into history. Others will quickly be forgotten. Yes, we did talk about eulogies before. In fact, I asked you to write your own eulogy. Have you done it yet? Will your eulogy become famous? Go to Google and type in “eulogy” and you will find dozens of sites with links to famous eulogies.

Perhaps the most famous “funeral” oration of all time was not given at a funeral. Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream Speech” was about what Dr. King wanted said at his funeral. He had a premonition of his own death and drafted this speech as a sort of pre-eulogy that he delivered himself. It is surely one of the most moving and memorable speeches of all time. Another famous eulogy, perhaps never given but immortalized by Shakespeare was the speech by Marc Antony after the murder of Julius Caesar. I can still hear ringing in my ears the words: “I come not to praise Caesar but to bury him.” Of course, this was a very ironic eulogy since Antony did not mean what he said and he turned the oration into a propaganda forum to inspire a revolt against Caesar’s murderers.

Most of us have probably never thought about our eulogies becoming famous, but who knows what can happen after we die. The point of creating your eulogy is not about becoming famous, it is about reflecting on the life you want to live. Someone said that dreams become goals when you put a date on them. Well, hopes and wishes can become real to but only when you put them out as intentions and desires. If you want to be the person in your dreams you will have to form the intention to be that person. When someone else is giving your eulogy it will be too late.

If you still have not written your eulogy or even if you have written it, go back and look it over again. Think about these questions again: What do I really want said about me when I die? What do I want people to remember me for? What would I say about myself if I gave my own eulogy speech today? What is memorable about my life that I would like history to remember me for? Now make a schedule to write your eulogy. When you have written it, the question to ask is “Can I live up to this?” If not, how do you need to change your life and when will you start with these changes?

There is no time that is better than fun time. Most children would not have a problem with this statement. When we are young most of our time is fun time. The older we get, the less fun time we have. Fun time is spontaneous, unstructured and not goal driven. I get a laugh out of the corporate saying: “We work hard, but we play hard.” That is an oxymoron. Play and fun are not about hard or accomplishing anything. Hard is a macho concept that denotes a phallic reference that often seems to take ascendancy over the feminine in society. Thus, working hard and playing hard are more to be valued than playing soft or working soft. When did you ever hear anyone extol the virtues of playing soft?

Well, if you want to work hard, that’s good, but don’t play hard. Playing hard destroys the essence of play. Play is about freedom and spontaneity. It is going where you want to go, doing what you want to do and not having to answer for the results. Retirement is the oasis of play that many people dream of. People wait years for retirement so they can do what they want to do. Retirement is play time for adults. Once we retire, we can become as little children again. Can you imagine wanting to have a “hard” retirement. I would much prefer my retirement to be soft and leisurely. I want to take long walks in the woods, smell more flowers, kick more cans, take more long naps and get in as much fun time as I can get in. We all need to have more fun time. We live in a work-alcoholic world driven by time clocks and computers. Perhaps, there would be less stress and less crime in our society if we all had more time for fun. I know there would be less road rage.

How much time do you have set aside for fun today? Do you take time each day just for fun? What do you have to do to have more fun time in your life? What would your life be like if you could play more and work less? Why wait for retirement?

“Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it” – G. Santayana. I first came across this quote on a tablet engraved at Dachau, a German concentration camp during WW II. The camp is now a war memorial for the millions of Jewish people and others murdered by the Nazis. Today, more than 50 years later and we still are fighting over the truth of the Holocaust. There are still those who say the Holocaust never happened. Worse, there are those who sport Nazi arm bands and wear Hitler tattoos. Many of us have no wish to forget the past but we want to remember it accurately. It is not heritage when there is hate involved. It should not be remembered with nostalgia by the perpetrators when others suffered, died and were ignominiously buried. Imagine if someone suddenly said that crucifixions were an important part of their heritage and they did not want to forget them! Christians venerate the resurrection not the crucifixion of Jesus.

What a desecration to the past efforts of millions of Americans and others who gave their lives to wipe this disease of fascism and hate off of the face of the earth! To parade around in jack boots and Heil Hitler salutes is an insult to humanity. How in heaven’s name has it blossomed again and why? Are we so ignorant of the past that we do not think it can happen again? Do we not read the paper and notice the increased violence against minorities and immigrants. Why is this true? Why are we forgetting the past and allowing this rotten blight to spread? Are we willing to trade our freedom for security? What about the past do you need to remember? What have you chosen to forget it?

Are you confusing heritage with hate? Do you romanticize the past and forget the evil that was often done to others? The good old days were not often so good to others as they might have been to some.