What is Prime TIme for you?

05 Apr 2012 Leave a comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

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.  
However, what if we thought of Prime Time as a kind of Angus Beef time, in other words the choicest time of the day or our lives?  Just like there are different cuts of beef denoting the value of the beef, we could have different cuts of time such as: Standard time, Choice Time, Select Time and Prime Time.  Choice Time would be a lower grade of time.  Work time and time spent on activities that were necessary might be Choice Time.  Select Time would be time that we can select to do what we want with.  Select Time can be play time or relaxation time or time which we just spend in front of the TV. Prime Time is the most special time of the day. It is the premium time we spend.  It is the time that is richest in flavor and value. It is the time that you would least want to give up. 
My Prime Time is the time I spend with my spouse when we both come home from work. It is the time that I spend with my grandchildren and the time I spend with my best friends.  I am never sure whether my other times will be fun or worthwhile.  The time I spend with my loved ones transcends being fun or worthwhile.  It is a prime part of my life. 
What is the Prime Time of your life?  Do you regard Prime Time as ongoing, or do you feel you have already “tasted” it?  Can you enjoy Prime Time every day of the week or do you just have a few days of Prime Time each week?  Do you have enough Prime Time in your life?  What can you do to have more Prime Time in your life?  

Brother, can you spare some time?

04 Apr 2012 Leave a comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

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?

03 Apr 2012 2 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

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?  

The Start of April

02 Apr 2012 Leave a comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

Yes I know it is April 2nd and not April fools day but did you ever think about what an interesting way to begin a month.  Imagine beginning a month on a joke?  Did you ever wonder where this tradition came from? Why is it okay to “fool” people on this particular day of the year?  Did you know that although many countries in the world share this tradition, the origin of it is still quite disputable.  Some say it began as a means of fooling people as to the beginning of the real year while others see it as connected to the crucifixion of Jesus.  Nevertheless, it is a time of hoaxes and trickery.  You can amuse yourself by going to the site called “April Fools Zone” and see what cool pranks you could have played on your friends. 
Of course, many of us are perhaps more concerned about our taxes then “fooling” around.  For some, April is when the IRS must be paid.  If you are like I am, you start trying to itemize all of your receipts and keep your fingers crossed that you will not owe the government any money.  Karen and I like to think of our “tax refund” as a kind of a down payment on our vacation for the upcoming year.  No refund, no vacation. 
April also means showers and flowers.  As I run along the trails I can find many wildflowers blooming now. Yesterday I found something called an Anemone Americana, see above picture.  They were all over the trails and very interesting. Karen picked one for me to identify and I found it on a website in about 2 minutes. Amazing the power of the web to help us find anything these days.  I also came home with a total of eight ticks to Karen’s two ticks..  Despite checking before we left the trail, I found four inside my shirt when I came home and another two inside my pants.  Are they getting smarter and sneakier or did my six months in Arizona allow me to forget how to spot them? We finally just tossed all of our clothes in a pile and put them in the washing machine.  

What does the month of April mean for you?  Are you a trickster or do you habitually get fooled? Have you ever played an April fools joke on someone?  Are you done with your taxes yet or do you wait until the last minute?  Do you think you will get a refund?  What will you do with it when it comes?  

Down the River of TIme

30 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

While driving back from Arizona, we were listening to classical music on Public Radio when they said they were going to play a piece called “Down the River of Time.”  Both Karen and I noted the title and almost simultaneously said that would make a wonderful metaphor for a blog.  Since most of my blogs on time deal with metaphors, (Do you remember the difference between an analogy, a simile and a metaphor?) we thought it would be a good subject for a blog. 
Of course, the most obvious metaphor for this topic is that we are all on a river of time.  Some of us are on long rivers, some of us on short rivers.  Some of our rivers are very rocky, shallow and rapid and some of our rivers are deep and wide and placid.  Perhaps some of us are on rivers with many twists and turns and they may go from placid to wild and rough.  Other rivers we are on may have unexpected obstacles that arise causing us to suddenly capsize.
If you have spent your life on a wide tranquil river, it would be very difficult for you to appreciate anyone coming from a rough whitewater style river.  The converse is also true.  Maybe that is why it is difficult to walk in anyone else’s shoes.  We are all on different rivers and it is hard to understand the perspective of someone whose river is one we have never paddled.  At this point, you might say “Well, I disagree, life is simply one vast river and we all have rocks and logs and whitewater to manage.”  Maybe so. 
When we are very young, our parents do the paddling for us. As we become teenagers we decide we want to paddle alone.  Some of us go to school to learn how to paddle and navigate.  Perhaps learning a language helps us to navigate foreign rivers.  Some of us leave our first river and go far away to try a new river.  Many of us will switch rivers in our lifetime and attempt more challenging ones.  As we get older, the paddling gets harder and we need to rely on others more for help.  Eventually, there will come a day when we are too old and infirm to paddle anymore.  At this point, we may have to depend entirely on someone to do the paddling for us.  Some of us will have a difficult time letting go of the paddling chores.
You might ask yourself today what kind of a river are you on now?  What kinds of rivers have you navigated in the past?  Have you had many rocky or obstacle strewn stretches in your river?  Have you ever capsized but managed to get back in?  Do you have a lifejacket in the boat with you?  Are you paddling solo or do you have a partner?  Have you become a better paddler over the years? If not, why?  What will it take for you to continue down the River of Time and continue having fun and enjoying the ride?  

Time to till the garden for love and friendships?

29 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

“Grow old along with me; the best is yet to be.”  This was a poem that my first wife found when we were just married. I loved the poem and in some sense it embodied what I felt married life should be about.  There were many times during our marriage when I thought about this poem.  We ended in divorce after 16 years.  I was never sure why the marriage ended.  We fought, loved, laughed and suffered through ups and downs with money but none of these things ended the marriage. I once added up all my theories on why the marriage ended and I came up with 32 theories.  Many years later, I came up with a new theory and decided that all the old theories are bunk.  For years we saw each other and I considered my former wife a friend.  However, we have since drifted apart and for perhaps the same unfathomable reasons that the marriage failed, the friendship has since faded away. 
I am left with the poem and while I still think about it a great deal, it now is more related to my second marriage and the hopes and dreams I have for it. What a wonderful thought that we can share life together with another person and expect that the best of life is still to come. I am facing old age and looking towards the last 20 years of my life. Yet, I can more easily believe the words of this poem today then when I was young. I now realize that relationships are not made in heaven, they are made on earth.  Relationships are like flowers and gardens.  They must be nurtured and pampered and tended daily with loving care.  There will be weeds and dry days and floods and tornados.  Rabbits and other critters will intrude on your garden and eat your flowers.  A garden is not fixed in stone. Each year requires renewed effort to bring out the best in it. Our relationships are a lot like gardens.  If you continue working on your relationships, they will only get better and better.  If you think that your garden will take care of itself and never need replanting or watering, you will soon find that your garden is nothing but weeds and stones. 
Do you have faith that your relationships with your friends and loved ones can be better or do you just take them for granted?  Do you believe that your life will get better and better if you keep improving it each day?  Do you think your life might also be like a garden?  What could you do to improve your relationships or your life today? What challenges could you take today to make your life more interesting or more fun?  What parts of your relationships with your loved ones need watering or replanting? What weeds do you need to remove in your relationships?

What are your priorities today?

28 Mar 2012 2 Comments

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

Sorry about yesterday. It was a 650 mile driving day that got us from Muskogee Oklahoma to Osceola, Iowa.  Stayed at a Casino hotel last night.  They had a Prime Rib/Crab Legs special in addition to their regular all you can eat buffet. I had six pacific oysters raw on the half shell, crab legs, snow crab claws, stuffed clams, mussels and shrimp in addition to a great piece of prime rib.  After we ate, we “joined” the casino and get free 5 dollars worth of play each on our casino cards. I parlayed mine on the penny slots into 20 dollars and left Karen to see if she could make us more. She lost her five dollars but managed to return an hour later to our hotel room with 18 dollars and change. So we at least paid for one buffet courtesy of the slots.  As you can see, we are not big gamblers. Big eaters more than big gamblers.  So today we arrive home and begin six months in Wisconsin. I hope to continue this blog until at least July but after that I am not sure if I will continue. I think my creativity and energy will need to change to something different.  I guess it is a matter of changing priroities which is the subject of this blog today.  Lets talk about priorities and what they mean to us.

Priorities, the average person spends 3 hours per day watching TV and less than one hour per week in any kind of regular exercise either physically or spiritually. Mark Twain said that the person who does not read good books is no better off than the person who cannot read. We admire people who accomplish great feats of skill, but do we realize how much time and practice went into these accomplishments. We are asked to help someone and we say “Sorry, I have no time.” We come to the end of the week and we wonder where all the minutes went. We look at our life and lament that we just do not have enough time to do what we need to get done.  How many times do successful people or people who are in good shape or people who have good jobs get told, “well, you are so lucky.”  Luck has been defined as “Where preparation meets opportunity.”  The unlucky do not see the preparation or the work that the “lucky” do. It all starts with setting your priorities and making choices.

The rich, the successful, the extraordinary people have the same amount of time we have. Every one of us wakes up each day with a new bag of minutes. The clock resets at 12 AM and we all start fresh with 24 hours. The average person leads an average life and wastes an average amount of time. The successful person does not waste a minute because they know that time is precious. Relaxation is important to each of us and needs to be included in our days, but excessive relaxation is a form of sloth and waste. It comes down to setting priorities. When I hear my students kibbinzing about the latest sports even they watched, I often asked them how will that help your careers? 

What did you learn from this week’s football game or the new TV series about sex and crime? How much do the latest “reality”show help you in your marriage or job or life goals? Which is more really important for your life? Do you fill your life with meaningless activities or do you fill it with activities that will enrich your life and those around you? Do you make choices that will create a great life for youself?  Do you set priorities and examine the time that you allocate to given activities or do you just let your time go by on whatever happens to grab you in the moment?  Do you aspire to be average or would you like to be above average in at least one area of your life? Are you willing to do what it will take to be above average? Do you wait until you really get lucky and hope each day to win the lottery?  Ask any successful person what they do to get lucky!

How can a few marbles help us to really live?

26 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

Lets start this Monday off with a story.  Since “once upon a time” is such a famous first line, I will use it this fine Monday morning to tell a little story I heard some time ago.  I loved this story, it resonated with me so much, I have shared it with many of my friends.  I think it is an inspiration for me and I hope it will help some of you today to really start living your life.  Many people are alive but are they really living?  
Once upon a time there was an older woman (Named Helen) who had watched her life fly away. She did not feel that she had really lived it. She was afraid to try new things and after her husband had died, she remained pretty much a recluse. She hardly went out and she sat most evenings in front of the TV set.  When she turned sixty, she started thinking “Well, I will have about 20 more years to live and I really want to make them count.” She went out and bought 365 marbles for each year she would have left to live. (365 marbles x twenty years). This seemed like a lot of marbles but she put them in a big bowl in her house and set the bowl on her dressing table.  Each day, she took one marble out and put it in her pocket to think about. 
The years continued to go by and she said the exercise became almost a habit, until one day she reached in the bin and noticed she could see the bottom of the bowl.  Out of curiosity, she counted the marbles and found that she only had 365 marbles left, exactly enough for one year. She was rather stunned for she still had not really started living her life.  She was still doing the same old things in the same old way.  Had the same experiences, ate the same foods, traveled to nowhere and had too many ho hum days.  However, stunned by the revelation that she indeed might have only 365 days on this earth, her attitude changed dramatically. Each marble she withdrew took on increasing significance. The days and marbles continued to go by, but not without her trying to live each day to the fullest.  She started to do things differently.  She took a trip, she met new people, she read some new books, she ate some new foods.  She started to risk doing things she was afraid to do before. She skydived, took a scuba diving class and even learned to ride a motorcycle.  
As fate would have it, she did not live the full 365 days.  Seemingly healthy she succumbed to a brain aneurysm about 15 days before the end of her “allotted” year.  However, before she died, she said that she had finally started to really live.  The activity of counting the marbles had made her aware of how precious each of our days really are. We take them for granted until we only have a few left. Some of don’t even realize this fact until it is too late. How many marbles do you have left in your bowl? Do you count each day as a blessing, or can you hardly wait until it is tomorrow? Do you throw away your week days and live for the weekends? The marbles don’t know the difference between Monday and Saturday.  Are you really living or are you waiting for retirement to start?  

Is it time to forget the past?

23 Mar 2012 Leave a comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

I forgot to remember to forget her,
I can’t seem to get her off my mind.
I thought I’d never miss her,
But I found out somehow
I think about her almost all the time. (Sung by Elvis Presley)
I always loved this song by Elvis, perhaps for the interesting twist to the lyrics. Have you ever not been able to forget something? I am sure we all have things we would like to forget. Sometimes, it seems we think about them all the time. Often, ironically, it is only time that helps us to forget them. However if we keep rehashing the thoughts in our mind, we never let time work. We are constantly refreshing the thoughts and allowing them to be present and timely. 
I know it is too much to hope I can ever get all of these all thoughts out of my mind. Some are mistakes, some are regrets, some are things I feel sorry for, some are “might have been” but all are things I can no longer do anything about. I have made my amends where I can and made my apologies where necessary. I can’t live my life over so the thoughts and reminisces don’t do me any good except to continue to feel bad over and over again.  Time to let go as my friend Bruce would say, but letting go is never easy.  I guess like everything else, there are times to remember the past and times to forget it.
How then, do we get unwanted thoughts out of our mind if even time will not erase them? How do we let go of the past?  One thing I do is use a prayer to help me push the unwanted ideas or thoughts out. As soon as the undesirable idea or issue arises, I repeat a meditation or prayer which replaces the idea. I have found this to work quite well. There are many different types of prayers in all religions. I have a book titled: “Prayers That Avail Much” by Germaine Copeland. This book has many prayers for all occasions and can be quite helpful. Try buying a prayer book in whatever faith you practice and see how prayer can help to keep your mind fresh and peaceful.
What thoughts do you have that you want to get out of your mind? How often do they reoccur? What techniques have you found to “forget the past.”  Say a prayer today and see if it helps? The thoughts may reoccur but the meditation or prayer will help you to forget.

Is your life anything but dull?

22 Mar 2012 1 Comment

by Dr. John Persico Jr. in Uncategorized

Never a dull moment!  Do you ever have one of those days that you honestly wished were dull?  A day that is without any excitement, surprises or disasters!  For some of us, life is so busy that we have no time to think and hardly time to breath. We go from one event to another. We manage one project after another. We have a series of never ending appointments to attend. We careen from one meeting to another, with just time to grab a coffee in between. We fuel our constant state of activity with high energy caffeinated drinks or other energizers. Coffee, donuts and some candies now come with extra dosages of caffeine to fuel our frenzied lifestyles. Notebooks, I Pads, I-Phones and even old fashioned calendars are all hot-sellers as we try to manage and schedule the many varied activities that comprise our daily life. We would pity an animal if it led the type of life that some of us lead. We laugh at the rat on the treadmill but many of us have become that rat.
It is not even much different for retired people. How often have you heard a retiree who says “I am busier now than when I was working.”  I usually laugh because it seems foolish to me to quit working to be busier than I was and not be paid for it.  Of course, a retiree will defend this hectic schedule since they are choosing it.  Someone at my coffee shop hangout brought in a schedule from one of the local RV Parks.  The activities start at 8 AM and go to 8PM.  You can start your day with Yoga, go to breakfast Bingo, get in a few hands of Vegas Poker, have potluck lunch and then head off for a round of Golf.  Just be sure you are back at 4 PM for coffee and then bridge which will be followed up by evening yoga.  Another RV park we visited locally called Palm Springs had over 45 organized clubs and activities for the mostly retired and elderly clientele.  No worry about being bored before you die!
Do you have the type of life that is never dull?  What do you think your life would be like if you had a few more “dull” moments? Are you a junkie for action?  Do you think time might slow down for you if you were not constantly going from one activity to another? Do you ever take some time for just meditating during the day? Every great spiritual tradition in the world notes the spiritual benefits of meditating. “What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul? (Matthew 16:26)
Try meditating for five minutes today. If you don’t know how to meditate, look it up and find a technique to try.  Go to the following website for some ideas and methods on how to meditate:  http://www.learningmeditation.com.  There are many different ways to meditate.  Start off by meditating for only a few minutes each week. Gradually increase the time and number of days that you meditate.  Your days will probably not become dull but you will gain a deeper appreciation of life.

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