Aging Capriciously

If you spent your time like you spent your money, how much time would you have left? I have 9,460,800 minutes left. You can calculate this by doing the following:

1. Find you’re expected life span. Go to Google and type in “life span
calculator” or go to the following website:
http://www.cancer-info.com/life_span_calculator.htm
2. If you live in the USA and are reasonably healthy, you might just assume 78 if you are male and 82 if you are female.
3. Subtract your current age in years from your expected lifespan.
4. Multiply your “remaining” years, by 525,600/This is the number of minutes in
a year.

The figure that you get will be the number of minutes you have left to “spend.” Chances are you will be a millionaire. If you are like most people, the goal or desire of being a millionaire is quite precious. You might have a desire to have more money but what about time. Time and money are interchangeable. So now that you realize you are a millionaire, the real question is “how will you spend your time.” Unlike money, you cannot choose not to spend it. Whether you choose or not, your time will be spent. The only choice you have is how you will spend your time. I have just spent 30 minutes of my time writing this short reflection. Was it worth it? My hope is that it will help you to think about how precious time is and how fast we spend it. If I have accomplished this goal, then my time was well spent. If not, well, “tomorrow’s another day.”

How much minutes in your life do you have left to spend? Will you spend them wisely or will you “waste” them. What is a wise choice for you? Do you feel that you are making these choices? Why not? What will it take for you to spend your time more wisely? Perhaps more wisely than you have spent your money?

Funeral time has been spent since the dawn of the human race. Evidence of ancient burial ceremonies has been found connected with Neanderthal skeletons. Funeral ceremonies vary from country to country and from religion to religion. Funerals may also vary depending on the nature of the deceased person’s life and occupation. For instance, funerals for police and fire fighters are somewhat unique. Funeral time is not always a time of sadness as one might expect. In some cultures, funerals can become quite celebrative. The traditional New Orleans Jazz Funeral starts off on a somber note but once the burial has occurred it changes into a celebration to commemorate the life of the deceased.

As I have grown older and attended more funerals, I have been surprised to find that sometimes death is a blessing in disguise. Many times the death of a loved one frees that person from a life of pain and torment. For this, we are very thankful. No one ever really comes out and wishes a person were dead, but how often have you heard someone say “they are better off now.” An unexpected gift from some funerals is the reuniting of relatives who may not have seen each other for many years. Funerals have a way of helping family members re-bond after years of arguments and disagreements. Perhaps it is because the death of anyone close makes us realize how short life is. Sometimes death comes so suddenly and unexpectedly that we can not really come to grips with it. When a young person in the prime of their life dies either through natural or unnatural causes, we find it difficult to accept their death. “Why did it have to happen?” “Why they and not us is a question that many of us ponder?”

We all face two kinds of deaths, the death of others and the deaths of ourselves. We will face the death of others many times and probably no two times will it be alike. We grow older and wiser as we visit many funeral ceremonies and have to come to grips with the death of loved ones and their effects on us and others.

We will only have to face our own death once or will we? Shakespeare said in his play Julius Caesar that “Cowards die many times before their deaths. The valiant never taste of death but once.” What does this mean to you? To me, it means that life is a risk and that each day I face a risk that it will be my last. I can choose to minimize risks but I cannot ever eliminate all of the risk associated with life. How much I minimize risk will determine the type of life I live. If I minimize too much risk, I will lead a very boring and sheltered life. It will be a life without surprises or variety. If I have too much risk, my life may be sweet but it will undoubtedly be short.

Do you want to know when or how you will die? Would you like to life forever? How would you like to die? What type of funeral do you want? Have you planned your funeral yet? Why not? What if death came knocking on your door tomorrow?

Psychological time refers to our actual perception of time rather than the “reality” of time. Much as art and beauty are in the eyes of the beholder, time is in the mind. There are times when the clock seems to fly and others when it drags. When we are enjoying ourselves or having fun, time seems to pass too rapidly. We wish the moment or day would last forever. It feel like this when we are on vacation or spending time with people we like. However the opposite is true when we are doing things we really do not want to be doing. Time seems to drag by ever so slowly when we are bored or doing work that we hate. Time at a conference listening to a boring speaker can seem like an eternity. Time at an amusement park or something we deem entertaining will seem to pass too quickly. Time for one of us may be too fast while for someone else it might be too slow. Young children perceive time as passing very slowly and think of each day as a lifetime. The elderly count weeks going by as the young count days. Indeed, it sometimes seems like I turn calendar pages so fast, I forget what year it is. How often have I said to Karen “when was the last time we were there”, only to hear the answer “about 25 years ago.” Then I think: “Impossible, it seems like only yesterday.”

You have all heard stories about people who while having some kind of a life threatening event; will have their lives pass before them in a heartbeat. I have heard many people speak of how before an accident on a motorcycle occurs, everything will seem to be in slow motion until the actual crash. Imagine if there were clocks for psychological time. How do you suppose a clock like this would work? You could dial in slow days and fast days? If you wanted time to speed up, you simply set the clock on “speed up.” Vice versa, you could set it on slow down if you wanted things to last longer. This clock actually exists but it is in our minds and we often do not know what the key is. Our minds respond to stimuli and we are not able to alter the perceptions that we are having. Perhaps if we could, we might be able to change boredom into excitement or to slow the clock down on those times that we want time to last longer. If the key is in our head, it must be there for the finding.

Can you control your perception of time? Do you know anyone who can? Does time fly when you do not want it to and drag when you wish it would fly? Do you think you have any control over this? Why not? What do you think it would take to change your perceptions of time and how it moves? Where is your key to time to be found?

Genesis is the first book of the Old Testament and the Torah. It is the book that tells about the beginning of creation and the early relationships between God and his “chosen” people. When we refer to the genesis of anything, we are talking about the beginning or creation of it. According to the Book of Genesis, it took God six days to make the world and he rested on the seventh. Today there is great debate over the literal accuracy of these words. Creationists want to hold to the biblical description as to how the world was created. Those of a more scientific mindset have put this description aside in favor of the Evolutionary theory developed by Darwin and others. This debate started many years ago and still continues.

The Creationists want to believe that “humans” were created in the “likeness” of God and not as a process of development from fishes to apes to humans. Evolutionists point to the scientific evidence that humans have “evolved” over time and that it took millions of years for us to become what we are today. Scientists like to talk about the “Big Bang” theory as to how the world and heavens were created. According to this theory, a cosmic mass of energy and matter exploded sending superheated particles of matter throughout the universe. This matter eventually coalesced into the bodies that we call planets, moons and suns. After eons of years, life began to form (at least on the third planet from the sun in our solar system) and then Homo Sapiens eventually emerged. Not all people subscribe to either theory. There are many who regard the Evolutionary theory with as much skepticism as the theory accepted by the Creationists.

I have another theory. My theory holds that it does not really matter one iota how the earth was created. I am more concerned with what we do to the earth today and less with how it was created or who created it. For all I care, it could have been created by a cosmic Leprechaun who had a really warped sense of humor. How else can you account for the acrimony that we humans can expend over the most senseless and useless issues? I would like to see 1/3 of the energy spent by Evolutionists and Creationists directed to help fight the environmental and economic problems that we see facing our world. Global warming (whether caused by man or nature) is happening, along with increased atmospheric and environmental pollution.

No one disagrees that we need to have economic development but at what price? Are beanie babies, IPods, disposable diapers and fertilizers to grow really pretty green lawns worth the costs incurred to the environment by their creation and usage? How much commercialism and development are our environment, forests, oceans and lakes worth? Where do we draw the line between commercial development and environmental responsibility? Who pays for the “externalities” that economists talk about?

Will we spend all of our time and energy in trivial debates about who created and how the earth was created and in denying the reality of problems that we see today? Or will we spend our energy to all work together to maintain and create the kind of blue-green world that we want to live in. Which side will you be on? What will you do to help create a clean environment? If you are not part of the solution, then you are part of the problem. Are you waiting for someone else to do it?

Wedding time- a time of joyous celebration and commitment, a time of happiness and the expectancy of long years spent with the partner of one’s choice. From another perspective, a time of youthful naiveté, a time of soon to be dashed dreams and a rude awakening to reality. People once got married much earlier then they are doing today. The average age of marriage has increased. People are living together more often and delaying marriage. You might think that this would impact the divorce rate but it does not seem to have had an impact yet. My favorite poem which my first wife found and gave to me when we were married went as follows:

Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life, for which the first was made:
Our times are in His hand
Who saith “A whole I planned,
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!” (Robert Browning, 1812-1889)

I am now married for the second time to another wonderful woman and I still think of these lines and what I want marriage to mean for me. It has entailed work, tears, pain and many arguments and disagreements. On the other hand, it has entailed joy, innumerable memories of good times together, a great deal of shared pleasure and more happiness than I would have ever thought possible. As we have grown older, we have gone to marriages of friends, close relatives and others of our generation. We are now going to the marriages of children of our friends, second marriages of our friends and soon marriages of our grandchildren.

I thought I would be going to more funerals as I aged and instead I seem to be going to more marriages. We will have gone to six marriages this year. Bear in mind, that I detest ceremonies and will try to get out of marriages and funerals unless they are of close friends or relatives. So what to make of wedding time? Why do people cry at weddings? How come we don’t laugh? I think there are some we should laugh at but I guess we are just too polite. Maybe that’s why we cry. We say its tears of joy but maybe it’s a realization that this marriage is really doomed. Let’s be honest, how many people do you know who have married the wrong person? How long did it take for them to wake up and realize this? Oh, but I should not be so cynical, lets give them a chance.

How many times have you been married? Did you marry the right person? If not, when did you realize that they were not meant for you? What did you do about it? What would you change if you could go back now? How do you tell people that marriage requires a great deal of work to be successful? There will be problems in every marriage, but maybe the problem is not the other person. Maybe the problem is you.

Chaos or Order, which rules your life? Chaos time is non-linear, non-ordered, non-sequential, unpredictable and multi-tasking. Order time is logical, linear, programmable, predictable and sequential. Some say time exists to bring order out of chaos. Our general view of chaos is that it leads to problems. Complex Adaptive Theory (Chaos Theory) subscribes to the viewpoint that the world is nominally chaotic and that only by understanding that the world is in a state of constant disequilibrium can we fully appreciate it. Here is one definition of Chaos Theory:

Chaos theory, in mathematics and physics, deals with the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that (under certain conditions) exhibit the phenomenon known as chaos, most famously characterized by sensitivity to initial conditions (see butterfly effect). Examples of such systems include the atmosphere, the solar system, plate tectonics, turbulent fluids, economies, and population growth. http://www.wikipedia.org

The implications of Chaos Theory have had profound effects on the way scientists and even lay people now view the world. We realize that our planning methods, our prediction methods and out strategies are subject to a great deal more unpredictability and serendipity then we once believed. This does not mean that we cannot or should not plan, but it implies that the degree of accuracy of our planning is subject to many outside and uncontrollable forces. Some even believe that planning is a waste of time. I disagree. If anything, I am more likely to plan but I build in more contingencies. I do agree that it is naïve to forecast without considering the concept of “sensitivity to initial conditions” or the idea of “wild cards.” Both of these concepts imply that there are many factors which might alter our plans and over which we have no control. Nevertheless, I have had over 1000 plane trips during the last twenty two years and in every case except one, I have arrived on-time at the place I wanted to go. Either I am very lucky or the world can be ordered. Maybe we can’t order everything and maybe it is foolish to try but many events, programs and activities happen every day based on “order time.”

What is your view of time? Is your time Chaotic or Ordered? Do you plan based on Chaos time or Order time? How effective has your planning been? How do you think your planning could be more effective? Would thinking about Chaos time help your planning?

Lifespan is an interesting way of looking at time. The average lifespan of a male during the Roman Empire was 28 years. During the course of the 20th century, average life expectancy in the US rose by 57 percent, from about 49 years of age in 1901 to 77 years by the year 2000. Males and females have different life spans and different countries today may vary considerably in the life spans of their citizens. Average life expectancy in Japan is 82.02 and in Angola it is 37.63 (The Worldfact book, http://www.cia.gov). All of these numbers though may be meaningless for us individually as they are simply averages. Teenagers today are involved in a high percentage of fatal car accidents and many will not live to be 21. If you smoke, drink heavily, eat poorly and never exercise, you may live to be 100 but I would not bet on it.

What are the factors that contribute to a long lifespan? These are certainly well known by actuaries who determine insurance rates based on them. Some would include: culture, heredity, health patterns, life style, job and even luck plays a factor. If you buy a life insurance policy, you are gambling that you will get more benefits out of it than you have paid in. Since insurance companies are well armed with facts and data, you are probably going to lose the bet.

One of the most important contributions to increased longevity was not from any advances in medicine but was from public health education. According to the Dept of Public Health, Twenty-five of the 30 years of increased life expectancy in the US during the last century can be attributed to public health initiatives rather than medical advances. Thus, we need to add hygiene to our list of factors that contribute to longevity. When we near our final hours, medical science will do all it can to stretch our last minutes on this earth. Science has been stretching our life for some time now but there is definitely a cost attached to the effort.

Nevertheless, most of use would be willing to trade a few more dollars for a few more hours on earth. Many people see the foolishness of trying to extend their life beyond a reasonable point and opt to forego these last minute catastrophic life saving procedures. What is a reasonable time to live is a question that many of us will answer quite differently.

What do you think is a reasonable time to live? What are the circumstances that might cause you to “throw in the towel?” Have you developed a living will to specify what procedures you will forego or are you leaving it to others to decide? This can be a terrible decision for others to make.

Magic time is any time that magic is performed. When we go to a magic show, time as we know it may be grossly distorted. Flowers can grow from a seed to full bloom in a few seconds and we have seen chicks turned into chickens and other tricks that seem to make us doubt our concepts of time. Magicians such as Merlin were said to be able to make accurate prophecies because they could go backward and forward in time and hence knew exactly what was going to transpire. Magicians play with our ideas of what should be and what we expect can be. “Magic,” said Harry Blackstone, the great magician, is “nothing but pure psychology — applied in the right place.”

Our minds can easily be fooled because we all have expectations of what should be and what is. For instance, older actors can be made to look younger and vice versa by simply changing hair color or adding some gray streaks or removing gray streaks. We associate age with graying and hair loss (at least in men). We trick the ideas of others and try to appear generally younger than we really are. We perform a sort of magic trick. Magic is simply the art of creating an illusion. Time plays a role here because time is another illusion. Who is to say that someone 60 years old is really not younger than someone 50 years old? If we measured time by degree of health, it is quite possible that many “older” people are actually younger than some younger people.

A friend of mine who attended an International BMW Riders Annual Event told me that the rider who received the award for most mileage done that year (63,000 miles in one year) was an 85 year old woman. How many younger motorcyclists could or would be able to do that much mileage in one year? Our fixed ideas of life and time create boxes for many us that limit what we can do or can be. Little children are so delightful because their ideas about time and life are not as rigid as adults. The new generation of computer kids doesn’t know that they have to wait until they are old to become billionaires. It is not unusual to see some twenty something with a billion dollar start-up Company.

What expectations and ideas do you have about life that have been tricked by “magic?” Have you ever thought you were too old to do something? Or that someone was too young to so something? Why? What would you like to do today that you think you are too old to do? What about too young to do? What would you do with your life if time did not matter?

History or Her-story, which do you prefer? History is said to be told by the winners, so who tells her-story? Some might think that changing words is nothing more than semantics or perhaps political correctness. However, words have the power to shape and create. The pen has often been mightier than the sword. Words shape our reality by influencing our perceptions and our concepts of reality. What we hear and how we define meaning will prejudice what we see and what we believe. History is the story of “mankind.” But is history really the story of humankind? Who is left out of a history told (at least in school books) from a rather slanted perspective? Do we hear history from minorities, from women, from the losers?

As an example of how perspective shapes our meaning of history, in America, we have the Revolutionary War or the War for Independence. In America, the colonists were revolutionaries and freedom fighters. The British saw our war as a revolt. To them, the colonists were lawbreakers and terrorists. Another example: during the sixties, the civil rights protestors in the South were fire hosed, beaten and arrested. They were regarded by lawmakers and others as trouble makers and radicals who wanted to destroy the country. This view would hardly be shared by the protestors who wanted the right to vote, go to the bathroom and have the same schools as the white majority. Not to mention eat in the same restaurants and sleep in the same hotels.

History is ideally a recording of the events that happened in past times. Washington chopped down the cherry tree. Lincoln returned the penny. But did they really? What if we cannot ever know the “historic” truth? What if history is so full of prejudice and distortion that we can never see the underlying reality? What if there is no underlying reality? Perhaps, the only reality is the reality told by the historian. Those who write history create it. There is no answer to this dilemma since it is the dilemma of life. We are always subjected to multiple views of reality and it is up to us to piece together the best view we can. The truth may be that there is no truth, only your truth. My truth and yours may indeed by different. Truth and history are processes that will constantly undergo transformation and change. The history you hear today may change tomorrow. The stories that are told today will change over time. The interpretations that we provide will be distorted and altered by other story tellers and other her-storians.

Do not be so sure of your reality! Do not be so sure of what you read and hear! Will you ever read this blog again? Do you think your ideas and interpretations of what you are reading now will change if you do read it again? What if you wait ten years and then read it again? How do you think your ideas will change? If you are reading it again ten years from now, what has changed in your feelings about this blog and its meanings?

December is the last month in the Gregorian calendar. It is the month with the shortest daylight hours of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest daylight hours of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. It is winter in Minnesota and summer in Peru. In December, Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, Jews celebrate Hanukah, and African Americans celebrate Kwanzaa. Most of the world seems to be celebrating something in December. Gift-giving and shopping are the defining factors for many of us at this time of the year.

In Minnesota, we probably have our motorcycles and boats put away and have taken out our snowmobiles and ice-fishing houses. Ice skating and skiing help us pass the long cold five months of winter. Some call Minnesota, the land of two seasons: Winter is coming and Highway Construction. In the past, there was never any question about a white Christmas, but with the global climate changes, winter in Minnesota is not what it used to be. Increasingly, we wait for the first major snowfall and wonder if we will have a white Christmas or even be able to get out and do much skiing or snowmobiling. For some of us, we miss the winters of time gone by. Others are perhaps not sure if global warming is really all that bad when winter becomes less snowy and milder.

The snowbirds will not really care though, since at the first sign of winter, many of them have bought their tickets to Miami or Phoenix where they will plan to spend the winter. This is not a choice for those who are poor or who are not retired. They must face whatever the winter will throw at them. However, even with global warming, we will get some good storms and some sub-zero temperatures. We may even be able to talk about how bad the winters were when we were young.

What are your memories of winter? What characteristics of December most stand out in your mind? What do you most look forward to during this time of the year? What traditions are most important to you? Have you added any new traditions for your family?