Aging Capriciously

The Walls of Time is an interesting metaphor on time. The phrase is from the title of a Bluegrass music song by Bill Monroe. The lyrics sing of a dead loved one and the promise to join her someday:

I hear a voice out in the darkness
It moans and whispers through the pines
I know it’s my sweetheart a calling
I hear her through the Walls of Time.

One can picture various walls and various structures that make a wall. Regardless of what you picture, walls separate us and compartmentalize us. A Wall of Time separates us as surely as a physical wall. Walls of Time separate generations and structure the entire history of the human race. Walls between generations make it difficult to communicate with the past. We have different life experiences that lead to different assumptions and even different stereotypes of the world. Youth see the world one way and the elderly see the world another way. Those from one generation are indelibly stamped with events and happenings which color and prejudice their view of reality. A Wall of Time separates the living from the living and the dead from the living. We are all creatures of a time that will never happen again. The choices we make and even who we become are stamped by the time in which we are born. Some might even say predetermined by our time of birth.

What does it take to pass through the Wall of Time? Can it be done? Some believe that the dead can return or even continue to walk the earth. Have you ever been to a séance? Have you ever tried to communicate to a dead loved one? Many people say they have. However, none has yet proved that they can pass through the Wall of Time to communicate with anyone dead. Do you think it is possible? Can you pass through the Wall of Time with the dead or the living? Can you even transcend the cultures and habits of the time period in which you were born?

Crazy time today often has a very negative connotation. We think of the crazies in our world and the damage they often do. We try to figure out what made them crazy or what ticked off their crazy streak. We wonder “How could anyone do something so bizarre? What made them do such things?” However, being somewhat crazy and having some crazy time can have other connotations. For instance, many of us are straitlaced and very update. We are constantly honed to think about our duties, responsibilities and obligations to others and ourselves. There comes a time when maybe we all need to let go of these, to become somewhat “crazy.” Here are four definitions of the word crazy:

1. Mentally deranged; demented; insane.
2. Senseless; impractical; totally unsound: a crazy scheme.
3. Informal. Intensely enthusiastic; passionately excited: crazy about baseball.
4. Informal. Very enamored or infatuated (usually fol. by about): He was crazy
about her. (www.dictionary.com)

No one wants the first definition to apply to them, but the second definition has often been applied to geniuses and entrepreneurs, while the third and fourth definitions have probably applied to all of us at one time or another. Who among us is not crazy about something? Thus, craziness is simply a state of being that others do not share at that time. This could also be considered the essence of nonconformity. Those who dance to their own drummers seldom share the same state of being that others do. Thus, going a little crazy might be good not only for our spirit but also for our creative side. Who among us would venture out and do anything really unique or different if we were not willing to flaunt convention and practical reality? In fact, craziness might just be the sine qua non of the adventurous and spirited.

Have you ever been called crazy? Why? Do you ever indulge in activities that others think are crazy? What would your life be like if you were just a little more crazy? What if you danced a little crazier? Acted a little crazier? Dressed a little crazier?

“Prison Time” is the one time I have never done nor do I have any desire to do. Of course, like many of you, I have watched countless movies dealing with crime and imprisonment, so I do not feel totally alien to the concept. This is not to say that I can empathize completely since I have never really been there. However, let me try to imagine “doing life” in a prison.

No parole, no chance of ever getting out. Endless days and nights spent in the same room, looking at the same walls and eating the same food. There is someone telling you when to get up, when to eat, when to talk and when to walk on the hour, every day, seven days a week. Routine and monotony piled on routine and monotony. Never smelling the flowers, never cuddling with your loved ones, never running and playing with your children, never walking in the woods, never fishing or swimming in the lake, never going to any place exotic for vacation, never riding your cycle, bicycle, skis, snowmobile, ATV, rollerblades, skateboard, sailboat or motorboat. Never, piled on never, piled on never, for the rest of your life. Then you grow old and die. Forgotten and scorned by all who knew you.

Maybe my portrait of prison time is too bleak or maybe not bleak enough. Some of you will know and you can send me your own feelings. I do not want to find out for myself. Buy I can’t imagine it being worth it. Prison time is a result of a collision of factors that no one imagined possible at the time. Surely, the perpetrator and the victim did not want the intended outcome. The victim did not choose to be a victim and the criminal did not think they would end up doing prison time. However, outcomes are a result of actions and when you put ethics, morals and laws aside to pursue selfish motives and desires, the results can be catastrophic to both parties. We may not be thinking about “prison time” at the time of the crime. If we did, would life have been different? Is prison time a deterrent for crime? It would appear not judging by the number of incarcerated felons or by the recidivism rate.

Thus, we are left with prison time as a sad byproduct of a series of events gone astray. Society has a set of morals and values that once put aside will lead to the harming of at least one and perhaps many more people. Is there such a thing as a victimless crime? What amount of prison time do you think would be a deterrent to you? Can you imagine doing ten years, twenty years, thirty years or a lifetime behind bars? What would make spending such time worthwhile for you? Is there anything you would take this risk for?

Internet Time has emerged as the gold standard for compressing time. When we say something is on Internet Time, we mean that it will be done in a much shorter cycle or period than we would normally expect. Thus, a year of regular time will be 9 months or perhaps 6 months on Internet Time. Things do not last as long on the Internet, things happen faster on the Internet, fame and fortune pass more quickly on the Internet, life is faster on the Internet. Life before the Internet was mostly 9-5; life is now 24-7. On the Internet, you can send and receive mail within minutes seven days a week, 24 hours a day. You can get legal, medical, financial or personal advice any time of the day and any day of the week. The Internet is never out or on sick leave, vacation or busy. You can buy and sell within minutes on Craig’s List and you can achieve instant fame on YouTube or MySpace.

We once thought that a New York minute was quick but it has been replaced as a quick standard by the Internet. The Swatch Company has even tried to define a system of Internet time. In the Swatch system, the current Internet Time is the same all over the World (no time zones or daylight saving time adjustments). There are some real pluses and minuses to this system. The biggest plus being that no time conversions are necessary since it is the same time everywhere. This might seem peculiar but it makes sense when we are all on the Internet because day and night no longer matter. We do our transactions on cyber time. Day and night time do not matter on cyber time.

Are you Internet savvy? Have you taken advantage of the Internet as a way to increase your productivity and personal effectiveness? Alternatively, are you sick of emails, spasm, hackers, viruses and expectations for service and replies almost instantaneously? Ironic that a system with so much potential could also become such a nightmare for many of us! How has the Internet changed your life? Has the Internet affected your perception of time? Has it been for the better or for the worse?

The economics of time- there is an economy to everything. There is an economy of commerce, an economy of ecology, an economy of travel and an economy of time. However, not much has been written about the economics of time. So we must ask the question: what are the key principles of an economics of time? I would suggest the following key principles:

1. Time and money, like matter and energy are interchangeable.
2. Saving time means saving money.
3. Time is a valuable resource. Wasting time is wasting money.
4. Time cannot be saved, like we save money.
5. Time grows in value as we age, while money diminishes in value.
6. We all start out each day anew with 24 hours of time.
7. We can leverage time like we leverage money.
8. Time is not equal for all people. Some of us can use time more productively
than others.
9. Unless you prioritize your time, you will never know what it is worth.
10. Each day of our lives has the potential to be the most valuable day we will
ever spend.
11. Once you are dead, you forfeit all of your time.

Adelheid Blesecker writes that a view such as described above (wherein time is regarded as a scare resource) “ensures the acceleration of economic processes. This in turn damages the reproductive cycles of social life and the natural environment” (Economic Rationales and a Wealth of Time, Time and Society, Vol 7, No 1, 1998). He argues that a future sustainable economy must be based on an understanding of time wherein our natural cycles and rhythms are taken into account. As one example, a system of work based on linear time and traditional time clocks is counterproductive to our natural work rhythms and cycles. Who can be productive, innovative or resourceful as soon as the clock strikes 8 AM and then work like a machine for 8 hours pumping out ideas, innovation and imagination? Although we espouse living in the new knowledge era, we still treat work and time as though we lived in the feudal era.

I believe some of the principles I listed above can be useful and some can be counterproductive. Time to me is a valuable resource. However, I do not see time the same as money. I do not wake up with twenty four new dollars each morning to spend and as far as I know, most robbers are still looking for money and not time. In addition, time does get more valuable as we age and it is a scarce commodity. Maybe we should think of time as we do jewels. We regard them as precious and we admire them and want to save them and keep them in good condition.

What if each day our goal was to treat our twenty four hours as twenty four precious jewels? We would nurture and cherish each one of these twenty four jewels by admiring and protecting them. What would your day be like, if you treated your time as precious jewels? Each time an hour is up, you must put your precious gem away until tomorrow. Would you think about your day any differently? How would you spend your gems today? What would you do with them? What would it mean to you to keep your gems safe and in good condition?

Life’s too short is another often heard expression having a variety of meanings. However, what is life too short for? Some people change the entire world in a lifetime, while others make hardly a scratch in time. Life’s too short to spend: “Watching TV, wasting time arguing with a fool, lying in bed doing nothing, waiting for a late airplane or missing the parade.” Though for others, this list of activities may be just the thing they want to do most. My list of things that life is too short for will not be your list of things. The following poem by Nancy Thelot has some nice thoughts about what life is worth living for and what life is really too short for:

Live: By Nancy Thelot

Tomorrow is promised to no one
enjoy your life
don’t hold grudges; life is too short for that
laugh more, cry less
please yourself; you can’t please everyone
every day is a blessing treat it as such
take the time to smell the roses
watch the sun set
live your life to the fullest
hug your love ones
let the past stay where it belongs: in the past
just live.

When you end each day, do you feel that it was a day well spent? Can you look back on your life and say that you spent most of your days in worthwhile activities? Will you be able to end your life with “no regrets?” If you can answer yes to these questions, you are undoubtedly making the most of your life. If not, you are probably spending time in too many useless and unproductive ways. What could you do to have a more fulfilling and satisfying life? What would help you to eliminate the “life’s too short for” activities?

Bedtime – Who can think of a more popular or at least a more universal time in the world? When freely chosen, it is a time that many of us (though certainly not all) look forward to. During winters, we crawl between the nice warm covers and kiss the problems of the day goodbye. During summers, we revel in the warmth when we do not need sheets and the daylight does not wane until long after we have closed our eyes. Some of us see it as a time for reading, some for a time of sex and some just to forget and put another day behind them. Kids see it as an imposition, perhaps imposed by adult authority. “I don’t want to go to bed” is a common childhood complaint not shared by many of their esteemed parents. Some of us drop off to sleep seconds after we lie down and others have to count thousands of sheep jumping over the wall until we are finally in slumberland. Some of us sleep lie a rock and others sleep so lightly that even a cat would wake them up. Some of us dream of wonderful places and people and our thoughts at night are filled with unicorns and rainbows. Others have nightmares of torture, abuse and killers chasing them through the halls of time. Some of us have dreams that we hope may someday come true, while some of us hope that we can just forget.

Scientists tell us that sleep is a time of rejuvenation for both the body and mind. Our muscles relax and rest. Our stress and lactic acid dissipates into the night. Our mind clears itself from the problems, strains, anxieties and worries of today so that we can start tomorrow with a clean slate. No one in the world can survive without sleep. Yet many of us have insomnia and other sleep maladies that prevent us from getting a good nights rest. For some, bedtime is just a continuation of the anxieties that beset them during the day. And sadly, some problems do not disappear at night and are simply put on hold until the morning.

Would the world be a better place if we could all get a good nights sleep? How often do you get a good nights sleep? Do you dread going to bed or do you look forward to it? What would help you to get a good night sleep every night?

A “sign of the times” may be the poor attitudes of teenagers today. But wait, wasn’t that a sign of the times during the days of Socrates? We often hear this expression used to denote something that seems symbolic or emblematic of the era we are living in. “Sign of the times” is a phrase strongly associated with Roman Catholicism in the era of the Second Vatican Council. It was taken to mean that the Church should listen to, and learn from, the world around it.” (wikipedia.org)

The problem is we do not have any good reference point to compare our times to. Most of us do not have a very good knowledge of history or of what happened even a few years ago. We all tend to forget how things really were. So we think: crime is worse today, teenagers are worse today, life is harder today, etc. Then we say it’s a sign of the times. However, it could easily be a sign of many times and eras gone by. What then are the dependable and predictable signs that would allow us to say with certainty that our times are different than past times?

Very few things really emerge that make good signs of the times. Rising costs and rising taxes have been true forever. War, famine and pestilence were frequent during the days of the Pharaohs and are still with us today. Disease kills millions yearly and people do not really seem any less or more happy than in days gone by. Is life easier or more difficult? You would probably find it depended on who you asked. How then can we find a true and accurate “sign of the times?” Bottom line is you will probably not. The idea sounds good on paper but it is just too subjective. There are few signs that exist today, that could irrefutably tell you what year or even decade it was, without the value of hindsight. Twenty years from now, it will be possible to look back at today and say things about it with some certainty but the present is never certain. That is why the past cannot predict the future.

On the other hand, maybe you can think of some good signs of the times. What do you think are the signs of the time today? How would these compare to your signs twenty years ago? Do you think your signs would hold up if you went back two thousand years? Will these still be signs five or ten years from now? When do signs become obsolete?

Time’s Arrow is a conception of time visualized as an arrow. “A metaphor apparently first used by Sir Arthur Eddington in 1927. This conception has not always been the commonsense view; the ancient Greeks, for example, thought that time consisted of a series of cycles, without beginning or end.” (Paul Davies, New Scientist, 11-1-1997, Issue 2106). In Christianity, time has a more linear sense than in Buddhism or Hinduism. Christians believe that if they lead a good life, they will die and go to heaven. “Hinduism believes in the rebirth and reincarnation of souls. In Hinduism, death is a temporary cessation of physical activity, a means of recycling the resources and energy and an opportunity for the jiva (that part which incarnates) to review its programs and policies (http://www.hinduwebsite.com ). Buddhists have a somewhat similar view to Hindus in that they believe only the body dies but the soul seeks out a new form and is born again.

These views of time as either cyclical or linear (an arrow) seem to be more dependent on where we were born or the religion we embrace than on any actual evidence that time goes one direction or another; or for that matter that time even exists except in our minds. The way we approach the world in Western society appears to be very different than in Eastern societies with a more cyclical view of life. Throughout our lives, we bounce between these two views of time. We live by circadian rhythms but we measure our time in a linear fashion until retirement and old age. We laugh at the inevitable cycles of fads and fashions and trends but we watch in dismay as the new generation replaces the old and throws out the culture and traditions we so cherished. We live by clocks where time goes round and round and by calendars where time is as straight as an arrow measuring each of the 365 days in a year that in one year will be replaced by the next year.

What does “time’s arrow” really mean? For most of us, it might seem to be just an abstraction that hardly affects our daily lives unless we stop for a few minutes and reflect on it. Upon reflection, we can see that it actually does have quite a bit of impact. Our economics, politics, governments and health care are built on a conception of time as either cyclical or linear. Each and every one of us is affected by our own personal view of how time progresses. Do you see time as linear and measure it as running out and running down? Or do you see time as a never ending series of cycles that continually repeat? Will you be born again or will you simply die? What if you could change how you saw time? What difference would it make in your life? Would you lead your life any differently?

The “time trap” is an expression we have all heard before, but what is a “time trap?” What exactly qualifies something for being a time trap? Is a time trap like a mouse trap where time runs in and can’t get out? Or is it only a figurative illusion for something that eats our time up? Is it simply a person, place or thing that captures our time and will not let it go?

It’s barely yours on loan
What you think you own
The place that you call home
The ideas in your bones (in your bones)
This would still feel dumb
Back where you’re from
Do you (do you) want to change your mind
Do you want to change your mind
Cause you could never know that
In a time trap
In a time trap (Lyrics by the Built to Spill Band)

Some things that come to mind as time traps for me are the following: working on a computer bug, a wedding, working in the yard, doing a word puzzle or cleaning up the house. Time traps are things that unexpectedly capture our time or use up more of our time than we had originally allocated. For some of us, time traps are a routine hazard of life. Just like sand traps on a golf course, we see them, but can’t avoid them. Once we fall into them, they are very difficult to get out of. Of course, this metaphor suggests that we want to avoid them and that may not be the case. Many of us like to find some type of activity to spend our time on and for us, it is not a time trap. It all becomes very relative. One person’s trap is another’s passion. What constitutes a time trap for one person might be a joyful use of time for another. What are those things in your life that you consider “time traps?” How do you avoid or get out of them? How often do you still fall into them?