Aging Capriciously

Time marches on. You can hear the cadence of the drumbeat. You can see all of the good soldiers keeping a measured pace. Left, right, left, right, left, right, to the beat of the time clock. Tick, step, tick, step, tick, step, tick, step, tick, step. The clock beats and we march. W must keep up. The clock is relentless. It never stops or falters. Another one loses the pace and is left behind. We keep marching. No matter how tired we get, we can not afford to stop. We are all good soldiers. We are all marching every day to the beat of this unknown time drummer. All of us in perfect rhythm to the time clocks in our lives. We are all trying to remain in sync with this mysterious drummer. We are marching, marching, marching. We are marching ever onwards towards life, towards glory, towards fame, towards fortune, towards death. We are marching but often we do not even know where we are marching to.

Where will you march to today? Are you in the band, watching the band or one of those who do not even know a band is ticking and marching away? Whose drum are you marching to? Is it your own drum or someone else’s? Are you able to keep perfect cadence or do you sometimes fall out of step with life? How hard is it to get back in sync with the rest of the band? Sometimes, you may just need to give yourself a break from the march. Do you get enough breaks or do you feel like you are a rat on a treadmill? What stops you from leaving the band? Is today a good day to take a break from the band? Perhaps you will live longer if you do less marching!

Have you ever heard of “wish” time? We take the time to wish in a fountain, we wish on stars, we make wishes when we pray and sometimes we simply make a wish. A certain portion of our lives is spent wishing. Perhaps some of us wish too much and others do not wish enough. Wishing without action is fruitless, but action without a dream is worthless. Wishing can be a metaphor for what we want out of life or what we hope our lives can become.

Karen and I went to Rome a few years ago. On part of a tour we took, there was a large fountain (made famous in the movie “Three Coins in a Fountain”) called the Trevi Fountain. You stand with your back to the fountain, throw a coin over your shoulder and make a wish. If you do this properly, it is claimed that you will someday return to Rome and your wish will be granted. I am not sure if either will come true but we did it anyway. I love to throw coins in fountains, pools or wishing wells and make a wish. I don’t know if any have come true since I seldom keep track of my wishes. I guess if I were more organized, I would keep an Excel spreadsheet on my wishes. One column would be place, one date and one the wish I made. The final column would be a metric on the degree of success I had with that particular wish at that place. Perhaps some places are better for wishing than for others. I am sure a more scientific analysis could help us to determine the best places to wish in the world and even which wishes are most likely to come true. On the other hand, I would not hold my breath.

How much time each day do you spend wishing? Are you someone who spends too much time wishing or not enough? Are you too much of a daydreamer or someone who days not dream enough? What would you need to do to get a better balance of wish time in your life? What would it take to make your wishes a reality? Wishes can become dreams. Dreams can become goals and goals can become reality.

Who is not juggling time today? When we talk about multi-tasking we are like the juggler who must keep four or five balls in the air at the same time. With all of the demands on our time, we are all acrobats with time. We have become a nation of time jugglers. Our mantra is “no time.” As time jugglers, we must be very careful not to let one of the balls hit the ground. We have numerous tools to help us keep the balls in the air. We have clocks, stop watches, regular watches, alarms, bells, buzzers, PDA’s, cell phones and GPS to incessantly remind us of our juggling chores. Time to switch, time to stop, time to start, time to go, time to do it, time to relax, time to run, time to exercise, time to visit, time to work, time to let go, time to sleep, time for ourselves, time for family, time and more time. Are we jugglers or rats in a maze of time? Running and running to find our way out of the maze while not dropping any of the balls that we are juggling.

A master juggler astounds us with how much they get done and how successful they are. They are the supermen and superwomen of today’s modern world. How we ask do they get so much done and never break a sweat! Perhaps we all need to take more training in “time management.” Pick up one of the million books on time management or take one of the billion courses on “how to better manage your time.” If you have already taken one of these courses, maybe it is time for you to attend a refresher class.

On the other hand, what would happen if you stopped juggling time for a day? Where would the balls all go? Do you ever notice which balls are harder and which are easier for you to juggle? Why do you suppose some are harder and some easier? Try juggling one less ball today, see how it feels. Do two less tomorrow and three less the next day. Perhaps you will one day have no balls to juggle and then you will not need any time management. What do you think that would feel like? Imagine a day without any balls to juggle?

Living time backwards! I once heard someone say that it would be wonderful if we could be born 90 years old and grow younger instead of older. We would be born old and naïve and as we got younger, we would progressively know more and be healthier. It is a very intriguing idea if you do not stop too long to question the anatomical difficulties. Imagine being at the height of your physical prowess and having lived 60 years already. What would it be like to have lived for 60 years and have the physical age of a thirty year old?

Many things which I do not even begin to attempt today would not seem as challenging or difficult if I had the body of a thirty year old. I would not feel like my life was running down. Instead, I would feel like my life was running up. I probably would not be worried about retirement benefits, health insurance or funeral arrangements. Growing younger rather than older physically would change your entire world perspective. You would be getting smarter and healthier with each passing day. The mistakes of youth would now belong to old age; with youth would come wisdom instead of inexperience.

We would become better drivers and athletes as we became “younger.” Imagine what effect this would have on the sporting world. Teams would be looking for younger people who were really older in age but who came with thirty or forty or even fifty years of experience. Today most athletes peak in their late twenties with perhaps fifteen or so years of experience. If we lived backwards, we would peak in our twenties but with 40 or more years of experience. The impacts on the entertainment world and academic worlds would be equally profound. Imagine “young” people in these fields with forty or more years of experience.

What endeavors would you start today, if you suddenly became twenty or more years younger? What mistakes would you be able to avoid if you had the wisdom you had now forty years ago? What if you knew for certain that you were going to live another sixty years? How would this knowledge change your life?

One month to live! What if your doctor told you today that you had one month to live? Not a very pleasant thing to think about but something that could indeed happen to any of us. What would you do? Of course, you say you would start doing those things that were most important to you. Chances are you would quit your job, tell everyone you could that you loved them, go out and buy something you had always wanted, make sure your bills and expenses were all in order and finally you might think about arranging your funeral. Would the last thirty days of your life be the happiest or would they be the saddest days of your life? Not a very easy question to answer.

Would doing the tasks I noted above your last thirty days the best you had ever spent or would these tasks just be chores perhaps like you had been doing for so many years. Our lives are so inundated with tasks and chores that even if we knew we were dying, we would probably start filling up our remaining time with more tasks and chores. One has to understand the “meaning of life” to really live life. This meaning lies in finding the unique value that each of us has to give to the world. It lies not just in doing but in being. An old Cherokee saying goes “When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”

Have you found the meaning of your life? Would a notice of your impending death help you to find this meaning if you have not already found it? How can you find the meaning of your life today and live it 365 days a year? What would it take to make the last thirty days, the best thirty days of your life? Maybe you should not wait until you only have thirty days left to think about this question.

“One moment please!” I can still hear Lily Tomlin saying that line on the Laugh-In show when she played the obnoxious telephone operator Ernestine. Her voice was dripping with sarcasm and we all knew that it was going to be a heck of a lot longer than one moment. Come to think of it, we generally know it will be a lot longer than “one” moment whenever someone says: “One moment please.”

What is one moment anyway? One definition of the word moment is: “an indefinitely short period of time.” If you read this definition carefully, you will notice a “catch” word. Do you see it? Right! It is the word “indefinitely!” There is no real specification to this word as when someone says one minute or even one second. We know these latter are unreal specifications, but they are still definite. With the phase “one moment please”, we do not have any specification. Is one moment shorter than two moments or ten moments? This would all depend on the length of a moment, which has no definition. Thus, one moment becomes a sort of carte blanche to be as long as one likes. Imagine, calling in late to your company and saying “Sorry I am going to be late, I will be there in one moment.” What would your boss reply? He/she would probably not know what to say. Or else, it might not be something you would not like to hear.

We might all be more patient and then the words “one moment please” would be easier to tolerate. We could then reply to the Ernestines of the world with “No problem.” How long a moment can you be patient with? What do you say when someone tells you they will just be “one moment?” What would you really like to say? Perhaps you are a very patient person and one moment is very easy to deal with.

Life-cycle time is a business term that refers to the average life expectancy of a new product. Generally, a new product goes through four stages. The four stages are: development, growth, maturity and decline. Marketers must make different decisions about a product depending on what stage the product is in. Some products have a lifecycle that could be measured in decades. Ivory soap and Kikkoman soy sauce have been around for over a hundred years. Many products (fad items) can come and go inside of a few weeks. Some products disappear never to return such as Davy Crockett hats while others (hula hoops) make a comeback. In some respects, the product life cycle concept mirrors our human life cycle. We grow, develop, mature and age/decline. Some would argue we get better with age, but each day of aging brings us closer to if not decline, then at least death.

Marketers will do everything they can to stop the decline of a product, since it is very costly to develop new products. It would seem we do not hold human life in as high regards as products or perhaps human life is viewed from a perspective of greater expediency. We are horrified to see the death toll from war mount up, but on the other hand, we take for granted the nearly 50,000 automobile deaths in the USA each year. We accept that these deaths are the price we pay for our high tech life styles. Imagine if fifty thousand Americans were killed in the any war this year. People would be screaming to end the war. Do we just assume nothing can be done about highway deaths? Why not make the same effort to protect people from an early death as we do to protect products from an early death.

Each of us has our own life cycle. We will all grow, develop, mature and decline. We cannot stop the cycle of life and death but it makes sense to find a way to prevent premature decline or accidental death. What can we do about this neglect? How can we all stop taking death for granted? What would it take to get you to complain about the number of deaths from accidents in this country? What causes of death bother you the most? Would you be willing to take a stand to demand more attention and research be paid to preventing accidents? What about war? Do you accept the inevitability of war? If not, how can we all work to stop war? What can you do today to play a role in stopping war?

Allegro

What does writing have to do with making love? Can the changing of the seasons really be compared to an overture? What if on some primal level, we all live by an unseen rhythmic law? This law says that there is fundamentally no difference between making love and writing or between a brilliant piece of choreography and the changing seasons. Does the rhythm of the universe expect a form of symmetry to all of life? A regulated succession of strong and weak elements or of opposite and contrasting conditions becomes the master of all we do. The seasons come and go. The music ebbs and flows. Our love is gentle, passionate, sublime and tired. Mornings, afternoons, evenings and nights fuse with the spring and summer and fall and winter of our lives. The harsh gales of November echo in the overtures of Stravinsky and Beethoven. All things are one say the mystics. Is my writing one with all things? Can I form, norm, storm and perform even with mere words.

Adagio

Far be it for me to confuse philosophy with art. Greater men than I have said that there is a unity to life. We travel down our different paths often blind to the journeys of others who walk side by side with us: This one a carpenter, this one a computer scientist, this one a teacher, this one an artist and this one a hero. If I were a rich man, lord who made the lion and the lamb, would it really spoil your cosmic plan if I were a wealthy man? We are all dust in the wind but our rhythms echo down the halls of time. The most unforgettable and amazing repetitions will resonate as long as humans walk the earth. Coded in the numerous ways we have of capturing the rhythm of our lives: Some dynamic, some peaceful, some violent and some sad. We write our lyrics, pen our verses, create our stanzas and design our choreography all guided by the unseen law of rhythm. Now we are hard, then we are soft. Now we roar and now we snore.

Scherzo

Love is kind, love is considerate, love is not selfish. The waltz was a creation of times when love was more restrained. This torrent of mine was supplanted,
extending my being, your challenge. The Tango alternates patterns of space and closeness with syncopated rhythms of violence and passion. Love me tender, love me sweet, never let me go. Rock and Roll ushered in a wild abandonment of morality in the face of conspicuous sexuality. The rhythm of music often exhibits striking harmonies with the rhythm of our love lives. Can I be soft and gentle like a warm breeze but also wild and unrestrained like in the movies? What if I made love to the William Tell overture or would Shakira’s lyrics work better:

Baby I would climb the Andes solely
To count the freckles on your body
Never could imagine there were only
Too many ways to love somebody

Is it enough to alternate patterns of tenderness with patterns of inhibition? Shall I open with an allegro, then move into an adagio, followed by a scherzo and conclude with a rondo? Who would expect love to end without a crescendo? Should my love making follow the classical style or should it be more like a jazz piece?

Rondo

Whether goes my writing. I have written this in four parts to reflect my cosmic view of the rhythm of life. We form and norm and storm and then perform. Spring is the opening that brings fresh growth to our world before the bloom of summer. Summer brings the maturity and ripeness of life. Fall brings the storms and winds that signify our frailty and insignificance to the universe. Winter ends our symphony with the closure and solace that our work is done and our day is over. Our life, our work, our art, our thoughts all finished but with a hope to be reborn perhaps by someone who sees a need to continue the rhythms that we have started. Not really finality, but continuations that started before us, and will continue long after our memorials are put up. Perhaps, my headstone will have four verses or stanzas or paragraphs or perhaps like the newest greeting cards, you will be able to press a button on my tombstone and you will see a picture of me singing and dancing to a four part harmony.

Antiques and time seem to go together. The older something is the more likely we are to call it an antique. Have you ever wondered how old something has to be before it is an antique? Rocks are very old and no one calls them antiques. One person’s antiques are often another person’s junk. The one thing I notice about antiques is that people of the “time” were more than happy to get rid of them. The last thing in the world they would have thought of was to hold onto these “antiques.” Back before their “antique” became “priceless,” if they could have traded up for something newer or better they would have. However, once something becomes an “antique” we want to hold on to it regardless of how useless or out of style it may be. Antiques seem to write their own rules for style.

Those who are into antiques would never question the style of an antique in comparison to some new product. The very virtue of an antique seems to lie in its age. The fact that it is old is one of the major determinants of an antiques price. Yet in some areas of the world, things that are antiques would be new items. I notice for instance that objects in the Midwest of the USA do not have to be as old as on the East Coast to be considered an antique. Of course, the condition and rarity of an antique also contribute to the value but the defining characteristic of an antique is age.

Why do we value (some of us anyway) old things, when our current society seems to devalue anything that’s old. If we say that something is out of style, no one wants it. However if it is really old and can be called an antique, then it becomes desirable. If this is true, then perhaps more old people should be classified as antiques. It does not seem that our society really values the aged any more.

I notice that there are those who love antiques and those who find them useless. I am in the latter category. I really do not care much for antiques. I do not value age as much as functionality and most antiques are obsolete by today’s standards. I have always liked the newest and most useful gadgets that are in the marketplace. I prefer Japanese motorcycles over old Harley Davidsons. Which group are you in? Do you love antiques? Why? What draws you towards an antique? Do you value the age in people or just in things? Do you think age is important and do you show as much respect for the elderly as you do for antiques? Do you value things over people?

Let’s KILL some time today. If you are not afraid of killing time and are fearless of the consequences, here is a list my spouse suggested of time killers that she likes:

• Driving around with no place to go or reason to go anywhere
• Suduku puzzles
• Computer solitaire
• Sitting in the sun reading a book
• Sleeping in
• Playing an instrument for fun and not practice
• Window shopping when she does not plan to buy anything

These are just some of the ways that she likes to kill time. If none of the above ideas works for you, try one of your own ideas. Imagine a book not based on time management but on “killing time.” A book that is full of creative and imaginative ways to do nothing productive. Sounds sinful, like eating desert before your meal, or having two popcorns at the movie theater or goofing off when you should be working. Well, the world has a lot more books on managing time than on killing time. Perhaps a few days a year devoted to not being productive would be good for all of us. It might lower the national stress level. Indeed, a measure or Index of National Stress might be a good tool for determining how well the country is doing. Perhaps if stress levels were lower, the crime rates or at least road rage cases would fall.

How does it feel to kill time? Do you feel guilty? Can you take a day without doing anything productive? When was the last time you really goofed off and had a lazy day? Do you ever goof off at work? If we behaved more like little children, do you think we would have more fun albeit be less productive? Could you survive the guilt?