Aging Capriciously

What was the happiest day of your life? It is a lot more pleasurable to think about the happy times in our lives. However, finding the happiest of the happy may not be so easy. The bad times seem to be etched in our minds, but how quickly we forget the happy times! Taking a journey through my past to answer this question, my mind sorts through weddings, vacations, love affairs, graduations, diplomas, certificates, first kisses, jobs, sporting events and sundry other activities and accomplishments. Somewhat surprisingly, I cannot fasten upon any of these as the “happiest day of my life.” Why is this? Am I looking in the wrong places? What about those book contracts, those great pay increases, and those unexpected financial windfalls? None of these seem to do the trick either! What about those great people I have met in my life? Did they help me to have the happiest day of my life? I must answer no to both of these questions also.

So where then is the happiest day of my life? Why is it so elusive? Have you thought of your happiest day yet? What made it your happiest day? Was it easy to remember? Did you find it had much competition? Or perhaps, you are like me, unable to think of the happiest day in your life? Maybe, the happiest day of our life is still to come and we are just waiting for it? On the other hand, maybe yesterday was the happiest day of our life and we just did not realize it. Are you happiest when you simply live one day at a time and are thankful for the day you live? I think that each day that I can appreciate the smell of fresh air, the joy of a loving spouse, a good job to go to and excellent health is surely the happiest day of my life.

What was the worst day of your life? This is probably something you really don’t want to think about very much. I asked myself this question just a few minutes ago. It does not seem fair to ask you to think about it, if I have not done it. I thought about the day my first wife left me for another man. I had quit my job and moved back to her home state with her. She came out a few weeks early to find work and help get us someplace to live. We had both planned on doing this after we graduated college. I had to stay back to pack and get out furniture and belongings out. When I joined her in Wisconsin, things did not seem right. She seemed distant and cold. I spend the days looking for work.

One day I came home early one day to find her in bed with another guy. I hardly said a word. I took some clothes and moved to an apartment in a small town not far away from where we had planned to live. I wanted to be able to see my daughter as my wife had made it clear that she no longer wanted to live with me. I had no friends, no job and now no family. I called the only person I thought might be able to help, my mom. I asked her to come out and spend some time with me. She said she was sorry but she could not. My brother was facing a statutory rape charge and she had to go to court with him to help his case. I said I understood. At this point, I felt rejected by the whole world. Even my mother did not seem to care about me. I don’t think I could have felt any lower or worse. I had no job, no family, no friends and was living in a new town 1500 miles from where I grew up and where I did not know a single person. .

Now, looking back at that moment, I am thinking: “Well, if that is the worst day of my life, then things have never really been very bad for me.” I had not lost my legs or eyesight. I had not been diagnosed with incurable cancer. I had not lost any children or my wife. Indeed, my life was not really all that bad. I can think of many who have had it a great deal worse. By contrast, I did not have any right to complain. There will be many of you who have had days that make mine look like a picnic. However, in another sense, my worse day, your worse day is all relative. I felt like it was a very terrible day. I thought about suicide and I was depressed for two weeks. I could have checked out of this life. At the time, it seemed easier to do this then deal with a world where I was unwanted by even my own mother. It reinforced feelings of inferiority and negativity. Nevertheless, I did not check out and now ironically, I can look back and say that things have never really been terrible in my life. I have had bad things happen, but overall I have many more things to be thankful for.

Have you answered the question yet? What was the worst day in your life? What does it bring to mind for you? Have things gone from bad to worse for you or is your life getting better? If things are getting worse, where can you go for help? There are people who want to help you. There are people who will care about and love you. The worst day in your life can be the start of a new life where each day can only be better. Give life a chance. Ask someone for help. If you have already weathered the worst day of your life and things have only gotten better, then take some time to share your happiness and joy with a friend or family member. Many of us have blessings that the world would love to share.

Pay Day! What day that can bring more happiness or sorrow to anyone’s heart than “Pay Day?” The meaning of the day might seem self-evident, until you wonder where the word “pay” derives from. Just to enlighten you on some meaningless trivia, Dictionary.com describes the history of the word pay as follows:

The word pay ultimately derives from the Latin word pāx, “peace.” However, it is not the peace of the one who pays that is involved in this development of meaning. From pāx, meaning “peace” and also “a settlement of hostilities,” was derived the word pācāre, “to impose a settlement on peoples or territories.” In Late Latin, pācāre was extended in sense to mean “to appease.”

Thus, the word really means to enforce a settlement on a conquered people. Hopefully, today, our bosses do not impose a forced settlement on us and instead we get a bundle of loot. There are many who would disagree with this statement and with forced cutbacks and give backs becoming common, it would be hard to argue this point. Nevertheless, however it is received; it just goes from one hand in to the other hand out. Who among us does not have more bills than income? Until the “Great Recession,” the average American spent five percent more than they earned. This was true in much of the developed world. We were spending more than we were making. We have become a consumer driven world economy and it has become too extreme. We need a better balance between production and consumption and Green. Green is really a way of thinking about how our consumption and production will affect the world today and tomorrow. We cannot keep expecting other countries or other generations to shoulder the burden for our extravagance.

Come payday, you may be in the camp of happy people or sad people, depending on how much loot you have left over. Payday can be a relief in any case, if it keeps the debt collectors just one more week away. Sadly, it is harder to juggle bills than in the past. With electronic transfers and instant cash and all the other new ways of managing money, we often have very little time between the deposit of our pay checks and when we pay our bills. If you are doing on-line bill pay, you probably have your money taken out of your account in less than twenty four hours. Gone are the days when you could “float” a check for a week or so. In today’s world, paydays just don’t go as far as they used to.

How do you handle your pay check? Are you in the modern world of on-line bill pay or do you get cash and pay your bills with checks? Do you have direct deposit or do you still get to pretend that you are rich for a few hours? Do you look forward to paydays or do you dread the day?

We live in troubled times. How often have you heard these words and think they surely apply to the times we live in? However, if you reflect on this thought for just a short time, you may question this assumption. Did our parents living through two world wars live in troubled times? Did those growing up with the European wars of the 1800’s live in troubled times? How about those living in the US during the War of Independence? How about those living in the Dark Ages or those living during the fall of the Roman Empire when the barbarians were overrunning Europe? How about those living during the Greek wars with Persia? How about living during the times described in the Bible when tribes routinely massacred other tribes? I wonder if Adam and Eve would have thought they lived in troubled times with an evil devil lurking about trying to seduce them. Indeed, can you find me a period in history that did not appear to be troubled?

You get the point by now I hope. It would seem that the entire history of the world is one long list of “troubled times.” Maybe life is really just one big Yin and Yang. Troubled and untroubled times routinely alternate with each other on a random basis. No particular sequence except that they are roughly even in their frequency. (I would like to think the untroubled times outnumber the troubled times, but I see no evidence of this either way) Thus, we might just as well say we live in untroubled times and that the history of the world could be seen as one vast period of tranquility. Like the question, “is the glass half full or half empty?” perhaps it all depends on your perspective.

War and peace, heaven and hell, happiness and pain, life and death, love and hate, they are all inescapable. Life goes on, time passes and what do you remember? Do you see a panorama of death and depression or do you see a panorama of life and hope? Do you think you are living in untroubled or troubled times? Can you think of any period in history you would prefer to live in? Why?

Poems about Time: There are so many poems on time. Many of them are so beautiful and eloquent. Poets are able to express in a few words the essence of time and what it means to our lives. Here is one poem that I particularly liked:

God’s time by Olufunmbi Aransiola

I knelt to pray but not for long,
I had too much to do.
I had to hurry and get to work
For bills would soon be due.
So I knelt and said a hurried prayer,
and jumped up off my knees.
My Christian duty was now done,
My soul could rest at ease…..
All day long, I had no time
To spread a word of cheer
No time to speak of Christ to friends,
They’d laugh at me I’d fear.
No time, no time, too much to do,
That was my constant cry,
No time to give to souls in need
But at last the time, the time to die.
I went before the Lord,
I came, I stood with downcast eyes.
For in his hands God! held a book;
It was the book of life.
God looked into his book and said
“Your name I cannot find
I once was going to write it down…
But never found the time.”

If you want to find more poems about time, go to the following website: http://www.poemhunter.com/poems/time / you will find many great poems about time at this site. Have you ever thought of writing a poem about time?
What is the essence of time for you? If you could distill time and its importance to your life in a few words, what would they be? Here is my contribution:

Time,
I’m born.
Time,
I die.
What happens in between?

The Doomsday Clock! You may have heard of it but I would bet that you do not know what it is and what it measures. According to Wikipedia: “The Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face maintained since 1947 by the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago. It uses the analogy of the human race being at a time that is “minutes to midnight” where midnight represents the threat of global disaster. Originally, the analogy represented the threat of global nuclear war, but since 2007 it has also reflected climate-changing technologies and “new developments in the life sciences and nanotechnology that could inflict irrevocable harm. As I write this book, the Doomsday clock is at six minutes to midnight. Six minutes does not seem like a long way off from destruction. One wonders whether this group of scientists is really the most pessimistic people on earth or the most realistic.

Imagine measuring the time to destruction for the human race? When the idea for the clock was formed, the US and Russia were in a nuclear arms race that had people building fall-out shelters and schools practicing drills for a nuclear attack. With the Cold War behind us, why does the clock still loom so close to destruction? I would recommend we use the clock to measure the amount of time we have left on the earth if we continue to pollute the waters and air. Maybe we should change the name of the clock from the Doomsday Clock to the “Oblivion or Extinction Clock.” It would measure the amount of time we have left until the human race becomes extinct. Given our present levels of environmental degradation, this might come before a nuclear war.

What do you think the Extinction Clock should read for time right now? Do you think that humans are causing global warming or do you think it is part of a natural earth environmental cycle? By the way, what does it really matter who is causing it? If indeed we are going to face severe drought, hurricanes and other problems, then shouldn’t’ we be doing something about it instead of arguing? As individuals, we can all do something. We are not helpless in the face of stupidity.

If you are interested in finding out what you can do, go to the following website: http://www.globalwarmingsolutions.org / you can make a donation, find ways to reduce pollution or find efforts that you can devote some time do. Someone once said: “People get the governments they deserve.” If we remain indifferent or apathetic in the face of problems and ignorance, the Extinction Clock will continue ticking away. We can stop the clock by taking action and each doing our part. Are you going to be part of the problem or part of the solution?

Life is short, eat desert first. I don’t know who said this and I actually don’t care. If the world can be divided into those who never eat their desert first and those who sometimes eat their desert first, I am definitely in the “never” group. I have always identified with the ants in the Aesop tale about the “Ants and the Grasshopper.” It is funny because I am almost compulsive about having to do my work before I can play. It does become compulsive when you are a workaholic and you cannot even play after you have worked, since of course, your work never ceases. Do you know anyone like that?

My younger sister Sheri (one year younger than I) died several years ago. She died of cancer most likely induced through her three packs a day smoking habit. I am sure that Sherry was a compulsive worker and in the “never” group when she was younger and healthy. However, once her prognosis was a certainty and she began the countdown to her death, she changed many of her lifelong habits. She would actually go to a restaurant and start with desert. This was appalling and unthinkable! Regardless of the fact that she had less than a year to live, how could she possibly start with desert first. However, the more I thought about it, the more I could see the logic. Why save room for desert, when you don’t have to worry about saving anything?

To be honest, I have never started at a restaurant with desert first. Maybe I am too worried about chucking it all and joining the grasshopper by spending my days in frivolity and play. I go on vacation and even continue my daily routines of exercise and diet. In my mind, I am thinking “why throw out all of my daily work for a week of debauchery?”

Nevertheless, we all need to eat desert first at least occasionally. If there is a time for everything, then there is certainly a time for letting go and just having fun. Putting desert first is symbolic of letting go and throwing conventions to the wind. How often do you eat desert first? When was the last time you just let go and threw out your daily compulsions? How compulsive are you? What would happen if you were less compulsive? Would your life be happier or better balanced?

Cell phone time versus wrist watch time! Have you noticed that fewer people seem to be wearing watches these days? Perhaps this is truer for younger people. When I question my students about this, they point out that they do not need a watch since they are carrying a cell phone. When you think about it, cell phone time is more accurate than most watches. Most watches are self-set and most cell phones are linked to the correct time via satellite connections. Thus, the younger generation should have more access to accurate time than a generation that relies on wrist watches. Have you thought about the implications this could have for the way we view the world? Will the younger generation view the world more accurately and objectively than the older generation? Will lateness and tardiness become a thing of the past?

Soon, most cell phones will be GPS enabled and then no one will be able to get lost. One by one, our excuses for missed appointments and arriving late are being destroyed. With news and vital information and even advertisements arriving via cell phones, the younger generation will be linked to the world in ways that we would never have dreamed possible years ago. What will all this linking and being wired in mean for our brave new world? Will the next 100 years be as dynamic and volatile as the last 100 years of human history? Will events and history happen at an even more rapid pace? Will the new generation be able to save the world from the mistakes of the past generation? Tune in next week for the next episode and find out!

Do you carry a cell phone or wear a watch? What do you rely on for time? Which generation do you belong to? How has your view of time changed over the past few years? Are you more or less conscious of the time in your life?

If I had a time machine, my time machine would not sit idly in the garage. I would be soaring through the past like an eagle soars on the winds. I can think of hundreds of places and people I would visit. Imagine, the past becoming alive again and us being able to be a part of it. Each day would be a new adventure as I traveled back in time to relive the major events of history. I would visit dinosaurs, see the Roman Empire at its peak and have supper with Alexander the Great when he was still a young teenager.

Do you believe in time machines or that we may someday be able to visit the past? There are dozens of movies in which time travel has been the main theme. Think what the world would be like if time machines became as common as the automobile. Yes, there is the troublesome “time paradox.” This paradox assumes that we could not live in the present if we went back and somehow changed our past. However, what if the time paradox was wrong and we could change the past and not affect the future. The very idea is a contradiction. Think about hundreds or thousands of people going back on a regular basis to change the past. People who wanted to change their stock picks, people who wanted to change their spouse, people who wanted to change foolish decisions that they made. What an interesting or crazy world it would be.

If time travel became common, we would need rules for traveling like we have rules of the road today. We would need red lights and stop signs for different parts of the time continuum. A mandatory rule instead of “don’t speed” would be “Just go back and look.” How many people would obey the rules? Right! About as many people as obey speed limits and stop signs. Well, forgetting the time paradox, what if you could go back? Where would be the first place you would go back to? What if you could only go back in time three times? Like the genie, that only grants three wishes, your machine only has enough energy for three visits. Where would you go? Why? What or who would you most want to see? What would you change about the past if you could?

“One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble.” These words are lyrics from the musical Chess. The song was written by Murray Head. The words bring back memories of hard nights and humbleness that we have all encountered in our lives. Are there any of us who have not partied too hard, only to regret it the next day or who have burnt our candles at both ends only to get our fingers burnt as well? Hopefully, with age comes maturity and we gradually learn to be more humble in our expectations of what our bodies can endure. On the other hand, perhaps it is simply that our bodies wear down and we can no longer subject them to the abuse that we did when we were young.

Today, two drinks can get you a DWI and cost you much money, jail time and even your job. Perhaps, we could all learn more humbleness by watching and learning from the mistakes of those who have gone before us. Sadly, it often seems as though people all want to make their own mistakes and suffer the consequences rather than sip from the Fountain of Wisdom. The Fountain of Wisdom is the repository of knowledge and experiences from those “hard men” who have gone before us, only to be humbled by the realities of life. We should all drink daily from this fountain but most of us are not humble enough to do so. The philosopher Santayana said “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.” All too many of us will repeat the past because we are too proud to listen to others. The next time you think you are a “hard man”, think twice before you are humbled; as the saying goes: “Pride goeth before a fall.”

What do you remember from your “humbled nights?” When was the last time, you had a night you would rather not remember? When was the last time you stayed out all night or drank everyone else under the table? Do you still think you are a “Hard Man?” Can you take the council of elders? Have you learned how to avoid bad experiences by listening to the wisdom of those older and wiser?