Aging Capriciously

Tempus Fugit: The expression was first used in the verse Georgica written by Roman poet Virgil: Sed fugit interea fugit irreparabile tempus, which means, “But it flees in the meantime: irretrievable time flees.” (Wikipedia). Two thousand years have past and sadly, no one has yet learned to retrieve time. As one grows older, the law of supply and demand enforces an increased value for time. Time is to the elderly as money is to youth. Time is a precious and scare resource that one values and seeks and that becomes more important later in life than when you are young. Yet, where money can be retrieved, time cannot. I can lose a fortune but if I waste ten years of my life, I can never recover the spent time. Who would not want to find the Fountain of Youth?

Time flies and flies and flies and ever I wish I could just “stop” the clock. Stopping the clock is possible on game shows and in some sports. However, we do have those special moments when time seems to stand still. When we are truly engaged in something or someone, time may not seem to be present in our lives. Like a hummingbird, time can hover in one place but only for short sequences. Inevitably the clock starts to move again and we return to the world of time and money.

As you go through the day, try to reflect on the Latin phase “tempus fugit” and see how and when your time flies. There is a value in truly treasuring the moments of our lives. Sometimes we seem to be trying to make time fly faster than it does. Are you in a hurry to get home, to go on that date, to get some job or chore done? In such cases, we can’t stand to see time standing still. We want tomorrow to happen today. It does not matter then that time flies. Where will your time fly today? Where would you rather have it linger like the hummingbird? Do you take enough time in the day to just let it hover for awhile? What would your life be like if you had more hover time and less “tempus fugit?”

Time clocks are synonymous with the industrial revolution. Prior to industrial work, people thought of time as more cyclical. Time clocks went hand in hand with factory or machine and assembly line work. The concept of a “Time clock” is an oxymoron. Aren’t all clocks, time clocks? The industrial revolution was a period when brawn became more valued over brains. It was more important to measure the amount of time that a person worked (and this was equated with productivity and quantity) then the quality or creativity of their work. The information age and knowledge age has reportedly ushered in a quantum change in how we view and value work. Today, creativity and innovation have become highly prized, at least in word if not in deed.

One hears today that quality, creativity and innovation are the cornerstones of success in the 21st century business world. Nevertheless, we still see managers who seem more concerned with the time clock as a measure of productivity than anything else. How long did you work today is often seen as more important than how much you accomplished or what new ideas and innovations you could come up with. We talk about allowing workers to telecommute, yet many managers express the view that: “how will I know what they are doing or if they are really working?” “Well, perhaps they will not get their job done and then you would know!” We may live in the knowledge age, but the industrial era mindset is still dominant in many workplaces.

It often takes a generation before minds catch up with new technology and paradigm shifts. We have 21st century needs and technology still driven by 20th century minds and concerns. Companies that cannot make the change are destined to go the way of the dinosaur. The same might be said for managers who cannot change their mindset.

What do you value in your workplace? Do you measure how much your employees contribute, including ideas and innovations or are you measuring how long they work and how many hours they put in? Do you have the power to change things? If so, when will you go from the 20th century to the 21st? When will you start treating your employees like knowledge workers rather than machines?

We often hear the comment from someone getting older that they are “Aging like fine wine.” Well, yes, wine does gets better with age, but sadly, the human body does not. My joints and muscles are no longer as flexible as they once were. My body does not recover as fast from aches and pains as it once did, and I no longer dream of playing football on the weekends or any rough contact sports for that matter. My body seems to be aging more like cheese. It is getting softer and moldier around the edges. It might still be edible but it is not as fresh as it once was. The good side of this issue is that my brain is more nimble and astute than ever. The body will inevitably deteriorate, (even with plastic surgery), but the brain does not necessarily age the same way. Studies have shown that IQ can remain the same throughout one’s life, if you keep “exercising” the brain by reading, studying and learning. Now of course, the body will stay in better shape as well if you keep up with some exercising. However, no amount of exercising is going to keep the body in the same shape as when we were 21 or younger.

Then we come to the soul and spirit. Here is where age can really excel over youth. Through experience and moral exercise, we can all become better then we were. We can continue to grow spiritually and morally throughout our entire lives. We can leave this earth as better people. We can give back to the world some of what we took from it. However, this also requires exercise. It requires exercise of both moral and spiritual values. It requires moral and spiritual discipline. You will not grow in either area if you do not take the time to practice skills that lead to moral and spiritual development. The virtues of faith, hope, charity and love must be practiced daily or they atrophy like an old moldy cheese.

What exercise do you get each day? Do you exercise morally and spiritually as well as physically and mentally? Which areas do you need to concentrate more on? Are you aging like a fine wine or like moldy cheese? What do you need to do to perk up your aging process?

Balancing time is one of the biggest juggling acts facing most of us. Considering how well we do, we should all think of ourselves as “jugglers of time.” We schedule this meeting, then that meeting and still another meeting and in between meetings, we must do paperwork, find time for lunch, get some errands done, meet with our boss and then get more paperwork done. We return home and then must balance time for ourselves, our spouses, our children, our family, our friends and also more errands, housework and chores that demand time.

I sometimes think that someone could make a fortune starting a time service for people. I would show up at your house and do all the minor things that take up so much time and don’t really add value to your life. Of course, if you have money, you may already be paying people to do the housekeeping, the yard, the chores etc. You are then juggling a variety of services that help to “save” you time. Many of us cannot afford these services and must juggle lives, jobs, chores etc, ourselves. As society has become more modern, we seem to be juggling more and more. Perhaps this is because we are not run by “natural” clocks anymore and in a sense (unlike milking cows or farm chores), the time we have is really discretionary. This puts more power in our hands to manage time but also demands more of our balancing skills.

What do you need to balance today? Are you balancing the unimportant things and forgetting to include the really important things in your life? Is your present balancing bringing you happiness and satisfaction or is your balance out of kilter?

Stop wasting my time! This is a comment that is frequently heard and seldom reflected on. What does it mean to waste someone’s time? Does the person know they are wasting your time? What was the person doing that “wasted” your time? Is it like wasting food or wasting money? When someone tells you something that you are not interested in, does it waste your time? In a country where the average person watches more than 25 hours a week of TV, it seems preposterous that anyone could dare use a phrase like “stop wasting my time.”

We spend four hours per week watching people hitting a ball, carrying a ball, throwing a ball and bouncing a ball in games that we call sports, but we do not consider this a “waste” of our time. If sports and TV are not time wasters, then what qualifies? What wastes your time? Is this time when you are not doing anything? Whose fault is that if you have nothing to do? If we were honest, we would admit that most of us waste our own time with silly meaningless activities designed to take our mind off living and perhaps really accomplishing something. We are each experts at ways to waste time. TV, gambling, casinos, watching sports, newspapers, endless meetings, etc. are only a smattering of the myriad ways we each waste our time each day.

Wasting time may be a very subjective term, since what I think is very wasteful, you might think is very useful. My ideas of what constitute a valuable use of time might fit your definition of “time wasters.” Nevertheless, we all have our own ideas of what time wasting means to us.

What if more of us started “wasting” our time on the activities that could really make a difference to the world? What would the world be like, if more of us took an interest in government, law and politics and less in TV, gambling, sports and other activities? What if we spent more time in charitable activities, loving others, finding ways to bring peace to the world, building bridges and creating friendships with those in need? What if we spent 25 hours a week on these activities instead of watching TV? Could you spend one hour less on TV this week and one hour more on peace? Where would you start? When will you start? Why not today?

You have one year to live! What if your doctor told you today that you had only one year to live? It’s not a pleasant thing to think about, but it might be true right now. Who among us can know the day of our death? We all know people who were healthy and active and died unexpectedly. We also know people who smoked, drank and never exercised and died rather more expectedly. Nevertheless, none of us know the exact day we will die. My sister was a smoker and like my father she was diagnosed with cancer. They predicted she would die within six months and she lived nearly four years longer. Neither my father nor sister had a very active or healthy life. Neither of them lived to the expected average age. My father was sixty when he died and my sister was fifty four. They both had ample warning to get their lives in order but both did little or nothing about it.

Perhaps too many of us live with no thought of dying because we “assume” we have a great deal more time to live. Maybe we are young and think we will live forever or maybe we regularly work out and think this will prolong our life. By assuming we will live longer, we put up with a lot of stuff that we would be better off dealing with. We stay in dead in jobs, we ignore things we really want to do, or we put off living until we are retired.

Are you waiting to live your life? If you died today, would you have any regrets? If you thought about the possibility that this proposition was true (that you only had one year to live), would you do anything different? Do you think you would try to get your life in better order? What do you need to do to make this next year the best year of your life?

What matters most in your life? Do you want to find out? There is a simple way to do this. Take out your checkbook and your daily scheduler. You must be entirely honest with this exercise. Looking at both your checkbook and your calendar for the past week or month, where are you spending your time and your money. Make a list of the areas that you spent your most time on and most money on. Did you spend 100 dollars on a charity but 300 on eating out? Did you spend 24 hours in the past month watching TV and four exercising? If so, then your priorities would suggest that dining is more important than charities and that watching TV is more important than exercising. Your time and money does not lie. It says what really matters in your life. The doing is more convincing then the saying.

What do you say really matters in your life? What do you like to think really matters most in your life? If you are consistent with your values, then where you spend your time and money today will match your values and priorities. This is the true indicator of what is important to you and what you really value. The rest is wishes and dreams. Deny it if you want to, but actions speak much louder than words and we will all be remembered by what we do more than by what we say. This is a very difficult fact for many of us to reconcile. We all have many ideals that we espouse but unfortunately we don’t take the time or effort to live up to them.

Where are you spending your time today? What do you really value? Do they match? If not, what do you need to change in your life to bring it more into alignment? Are you willing to make the sacrifices necessary to bring your values into alignment with your behaviors?

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.” (Macbeth, V, v, 19, Shakespeare)

The above passage is perhaps the most famous speech in literature, spoken by Macbeth after learning of his wife’s suicide. Why does this macabre and depressing analysis of life hold so much meaning for us? Is it because, like Macbeth, we sometimes feel a powerlessness and futility to life? What is our “recorded time?” Is this the time we are destined to live? Do you believe the time and date of your death is fixed?

I think it might be inevitable to believe that we are fixed by fate and that life is controlled by forces and events beyond our power to influence. Nevertheless, we see countless examples of people who have changed the world for the better by denying the concept of predestination and fate. Macbeth brought his own destiny upon him by his greed and avarice. We go through life making choices and these choices decide what we will become. We are more than candles and poor players upon a stage. We may not quite be Nietzsche’s Superman, but we are a great deal more than fools and idiots. We are not all powerful but neither are we powerless.

I am always reminded of the serenity prayer: Please help me to know the difference between those things I can change and those things I cannot. This is one example of pure wisdom. We can change some things and we cannot change others. What will you become if you do not try? What can you change today in your life? What needs to be changed that you have felt powerless to change? What destiny are you following that is painful? Who can you find that could help you change? There is always someone out there who can and will help you? Do you need to find that person today?

Westminster chimes are a harmonic symbol of time for some people. Karen (my spouse) who is very musical pointed out to me that sounds often represent time for us. The ticking of a clock, the coo coo bird in an old fashioned grandfathers clock or the bells chiming at noon in many towns are all tuneful measures of the role that time plays in our lives.

There are many songs that sing about time or make reference to time; perhaps the most famous being Auld Lang Syne. Robert Burns (the famous Scottish Poet) is known as the restorer of this song via his poetry which was based on perhaps an earlier version that was lost or wherein only a few parts remained. This song is known throughout the world and popularly associated with the end of the old year and the bringing in of the New Year. The three words can be translated as “old long ago, or old long since.” It is about old friends and old times that were forgotten and about the joy of looking forward to new times and new memories.

The verse “should old acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind” is a question we never answer during our New Years celebration, but it really does deserve an answer. When do we forget old friends and move on? When do we try to rekindle a past friendship? Who gets to be forgotten and who should we remembered? Are all old friends worth keeping? When do we need to forget some and move on? How do we decide whom to forget and never bring to mind? I still wrestle with this problem and I wonder how you decide. I would love to hear your thoughts on old friends and acquaintances.

This year when you sing this song, sing all the verses and in the traditional circle perhaps share who you remember and who you will forget. It will be quite an interesting New Year.

Quantum changes represent breaks in the continuity of time. Linear times measures changes in specific fixed intervals. Quantum change happens when something “jumps”, i.e., it defies our normally ordered thinking about time. Sometimes, these special events are called discontinuities because they represent a break in the normal chain of events. Our lives in this country underwent a quantum change after 911. While we can argue about whether or not the bombings could have been prevented, there is little or no argument that they completely disrupted our life patterns not only in the US, but in other parts of the world. The changes 911 caused in the US had ripple patterns that have affected the entire history of many other nations and cultures.

Quantum changes seem to be unpredictable and can have enormous impacts on our lives. Getting married or divorced might be a quantum change for some people. Death though predictable as to the eventuality is not predictable as to the time and manner. Death can cause quantum changes in the lives of many people connected in some way to the loved one. Even distant connections can be impacted by the death of someone we know or hear about. Witness, how many people were affected by the death of Princess Diana. How will your death affect others? Who will be most affected? What long-term changes will your death have on the lives of others in the world? Remember the John Donne poem:

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.