Aging Capriciously

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. 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 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. What did you learn from this week’s football game or the new TV series about sex and crime? How much do these shows help you in your marriage, 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 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? What are your priorities this week?

Here is one of the most useful thoughts about time that I have ever heard:

“Therefore, I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all things will be given to you as well. So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.” – Matthew 6:25, 33-34

It does not matter whether you are Christian, Moslem, Jewish or even an atheist. The above reflection helps us to put our life in perspective. We worry, worry, and worry about things that we cannot control.

Another thought about time, that I always find useful is from the Alcoholics Anonymous book: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” – The Serenity Prayer of AA. What do both of these thoughts tell you about time and about life? Are you too concerned with the future or the past to live your life today? Do you worry about things before they happen? Are you a worry-wart? Are you trying so hard to control life to prevent anything bad happening that you have no room for the good to happen?

What if you lived your life more in the present? Do you really know what you can control and what you cannot control? How can you get more balance and start living more in the present? Would you be happier if you could?

This is a story about an older woman who had watched her life fly away and did not feel that she had really lived it. When she turned sixty, she started thinking “Well, I will have about 20 years to live and I really want to make them count.” Therefore, 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 bin in her house and each day, she took one 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 only had 365 marbles left, exactly enough for one year. From here on out, her attitude started to change 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. Before she died, she said the activity made her aware of how precious each of our days really are. We take each day for granted until we only have a few left. Some of us don’t even realize this fact until it is too late.

Create a bowl for yourself. How long do you think you will live? 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 over so you can get on to tomorrow? Do you throw away your week days and live for the weekends? Do you truly appreciate the time you are given each day and make the most of it? Do you treat each day as the gift of life it is? When will you start appreciating the time you are given?

Time consuming generally means something that takes a great deal of time. To consume means to eat, so something that is “time consuming” literally eats our time. Have you ever made a list of time eaters? Probably they will be different from time wasters. Time wasters generally have little or no value, like waiting in line at an airport. However, time consumers may have a lot of value but they still take a great deal of time to accomplish.

It is time consuming to paint your house, find a new babysitter or complete your B.A. degree. Nevertheless, none of these things is a waste of time. There are so many time consuming activities that we could do and that would add value to our lives. How can we get over the hurdle that these large consumptions of time present? We have so many things do to; it is hard to spend a large amount of time on any one activity or effort. Time consumers bog us down and force us to ignore other time activities that are screaming for our attention. I was amazed to read that Truman Capote spent ten years writing and researching his novel in “Cold Blood.” It simply amazes me that someone could spend ten years on such an activity. Of course, his effort was well worth the time spent. Many of us would want a guarantee that our time was going to be productive before we would commit a large block of time. Unfortunately, there are often no guarantees that our time spent will reward us with increased value in the future. Even getting a diploma is no guarantee of getting a good job.

How long should we invest in one activity? How can we tell when a time consumer really will be worth the effort? Is there any way to measure the value of time consumers? What do you think?

Have you ever wished you could go back in time or wanted to build a time machine and travel back to some event in the distant past? Thinking about time travel is an interesting endeavor. Most of us would like to be able to visit the past. A most provocative idea is that we could somehow make things right by changing what we did wrong. However, whenever this is attempted in the movies or in stories, inevitably something unexpected also changes and the results are never positive. Of course, this does not dissuade anyone from trying.

The question then is can we change the past? We all seem to think that we have to go back in the past to change it. Perhaps it is possible to undo mistakes from the past today. Perhaps it is never too late. Perhaps we do not have to go back in time to change the past.

If you could visit the past and undo something or change the course of some event, what would you choose to change? Why? What if you could change it today? Would you try? Why not? What are you doing today that you might regret in the future? Do you have time today to change it?

As you read my blogs this year, you might want to reflect on how much time you have spent in your life, how wisely you have spent it and how much time in your life you have left to spend. A wise man once said: “live each day as though it will be your last, but spend your money as though you will live forever.” No one knows exactly how much time they have left in their lives. The wisest path for all of us is to live our lives by making the most meaningful choices in respect to both our time and money.

The short ideas, quotes, questions and exercises in my blogs are all about helping you to think about time differently. There are too many books and lectures about “time management” and I have no desire to simply add to the pile. Managing time is only a small aspect of our ability to deal with the time in our lives. Tips on managing time do not deal with the underlying influences that time has on our lives. If you want to better manage time, you must first see time for what it really is. I want my blogs to help provide a new way each day for you to think about the “time” in your life.

Whether or not time exists in a physical sense, it is certainly a reality in our lives. If I don’t show up for work on time or keep an appointment on time, it may cost me my job or a friend. Some of us control our time better than others and some of us can never seem to control our time. The daily thoughts and challenges in each of my blogs are designed to help you think about and deal more effectively with the seconds and minutes of your life. The more zealous you are about answering the questions and conducting some of the suggested activities, the more valuable these blogs will be for you. Thus, do not simply read these blogs. Take a pencil and paper and when you have some time. answer the questions that I pose. This will bring home the reality of time for you and help you to see what issues and challenges time holds for you.

If death did come knocking on your door to take you by the hand and lead you out of this world, what affairs would you most want to get in order before you would leave? What is stopping you from getting your house in order? Do you think you will live forever? The Cheyenne had a war cry that went: “It is a good day to die.” Are you ready to die today? What would you need to change before you could answer yes to the question?

Sorry, but I went to Arizona to furnish my new house there and did not have the time to find to do my posts. I did start again with the New Year and will try to catch up. However, I would like to post this one which should have been posted on New Years Day. I will try to post one each day this year and have a title instead of a day to post.

January – the beginning of a new year. This is the time when we make new resolutions and promises galore. A time to begin over and to make dreams and wishes come true that did not work out the year before. We bring in the New Year as a new born baby, full of promise and youth. Some critics might look at the trail of broken promises from bygone years and laugh at the efforts of others. Such people disregard the possibility of hope and change. Yes, we are better this year than we were last year and we will continue to grow and change and look at the folly of our past lives. Hope as they say springs eternal in the human breast and what would we be without it? We need to try again and when we fail, we try again. The only failure is when we stop trying. So I say: “Disregard the naysayers, go ahead and set some new goals and new dreams. Stretch your vision and your horizons. People do not perish because of their dreams; they perish because of a lack of dreams.

An old Celtic Saying goes: “When God made time, he made enough of it.” How could this be? How could there ever be enough time? Most of us are fond of declaring that we have “no time” or that we are “too busy.” The song “Time in a Bottle” by Jim Croce has the following lyrics:

But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them.

We are always running short of time, running out of time, not having enough time, having to makeup time, having to catch up, running late, etc., etc. “No Time, No Time” has become the mantra of the 21st century. How could God have made enough time? We never ever have enough. What could the Celts have been thinking?

Well, what if the Celts were right? What if there is enough time? What if all of our running around and frantic efforts to save time are like trying to stop the wind or push the tide back into the ocean? Imagine, someone with a bucket on the beach trying to shovel all of the water back into the ocean before it can creep up on the beach. What if we are doing the same thing with time? What if all of our efforts to save time simply are wasting our lives? What if we lived one day at a time and one moment at a time each day? What if we could ignore time and believe that “God made enough of it.”

Repeat the following thought to yourself: “Today, tomorrow and next week, there will be enough time. I will always have enough time.” You will have no more time shortages. No more running out of time. There will always be enough time to do what you need to do. If you truly believed this, what difference would it make in your life? What would you do different today if you knew you would always have enough time? How would your life change if you always had enough time?

Changing times – “the times they are a changin.” Words made famous by Bob Dylan in his 1964 song and album. The times have been “a changing” ever since the first people discovered fire. The Romans conquered the known world. Then the barbarians overran the Roman Empire after which the dark ages came. This was followed by the reformation which was followed by the industrial revolution. Then the global information and computer age arrived. Times change so fast today, we buy one cell phone and it is obsolete when we get it home. Computers chips replace each other so rapidly; we cannot keep track of the numbers. Movies come and go in days and the top 40 songs last about 6 weeks.

Styles, fame, fortune, disasters and triumphs will last until you throw out today’s paper or as more likely, until you stop hearing about them on the web. When were times not changing? Are they really changing more rapidly today or is it just our myopic view of history? How could times not change? Isn’t that the very nature of time? It is a measurement of change. However, what if we did not measure it? What if we did not keep track of minutes, hours, days and years? Could anything change if we did not count the change? The obvious answer is yes. Seasons change, weather changes, we change. However, these changes are more constant. We cannot say the seasons change faster then they did 3000 years ago. Nor do we age any faster. If anything, our extra longevity should help to slow the world down for us. We have twice as long to live as they did during the Roman Empire.

Then why do we think things are changing so fast? Why does it feel like we can hardly keep up? Is it the pace of change or the number of events we now seem to have to deal with? Has the speed of change really increased? Perhaps we should have a measure for the speed of change. We measure speed of movement, why not a measure for the number of changes we are faced with daily? Instead of miles per hour, we could call it ACPD (Average Changes per Day). The daily news would report the number of changes per day along with the weather. “Today there was 4,072 changes in St. Paul. However, this was dwarfed by the changes in Tokyo which topped 1 million today.” We could keep an Index of Change like the stock market indexes. We could watch each week to see if the index was going up or down.

Of course, there would be some problems with measuring change. For instance, should each time a newborn baby say their first word be counted as a change? Is each new cell phone a change or simply a revision? Is the New Tide really new? What about changes in your life? Has your life changed very much? What were the most significant changes you have experienced? Do you think your life is going faster or slower? Why, what has changed for you? Do you wish things would slow down or speed up?

Racing against time or racing the clock. Is there any difference? Time is short, you are running late and you just found out about a deadline to meet: A play to catch, a movie to watch, a party to go to, or some other event and you have to move fast to make it. Time is critical; you can not waste a second. You must do only what is called for and in the most efficient order possible. Can you do it? You don’t know but you will sure try. You are racing against the clock. Did you ever watch that TV show, where they were given a grocery cart and they had one minute to fill it with as much stuff as they could? I think it was called “Beat the Clock.” The contestants raced like crazy to try and put as much of the “high” value items as they could in the shopping cart. Forget the pickles, get the steaks in!

How often do we run like there is no tomorrow only to find it did not make a bit of difference? The play was cancelled. The party was called off. You were the only one there. They changed the date and did not tell you. Something came up at the last minute. Who cares about your time? There was really no race. You were racing yourself. You were the only contestant in the event. Did you think you were so important that your presence would be missed? Was the race really important?

Each day, you probably spend some of your time racing against the clock. When you are racing against the clock, are you spending your precious time on the “high” value things of life? Are you going for the steaks? Or are you simply running like a rat in a wheel and going nowhere fast. Where did you get to? What prize did you win? When was the last time you raced the clock? Did you beat the clock or did the clock beat you? How much of life do you spend racing time? Is it worth the prize?