Keeping track of time! Marking your days. Marking your weeks and months. Keeping a daily or monthly calendar. Keeping a diary. There are many ways we can keep track of our time. Some think it is a key to managing a successful life. Time flies when you are having too much fun but tracking time helps insure that we use our time wisely or does it? There are few things that are unambiguously good. Most of what we do has pros and cons or unintended consequences. Is this true with tracking our time?
The concept of tracking time brings forth images of tracking some wild beast in the woods. Deer, moose, bear, cougars, tigers all leave very distinctive tracks. Time also leaves distinctive tracts. Time leaves physical as well as emotional tracks on all of us. Not to mention the tracks that time leaves on the environment. Emotional tracks are evident in the greater cautiousness and fears that we have as we age. From experience, once burned, we no longer want to get so close to the flame. Indeed, many of us will not even go near the fire again. Divorce, rejection, death, pain all leave emotional scars. For some of us they may never quite heal. Physical tracks show up as lines, creases, joint aches, hair thinning, broken bones and disease. I often joke that physically I am aging more like cheese then a fine wine. I am getting squishier and somewhat moldy around the edges.
Perhaps you see the idea of “tracking time” through a different lens. Maybe you have a need to track your minutes and seconds each day, a twist on tracking your dollars and cents. Perhaps, if you watch your time carefully, you may have more of it. Mark down your time spent each day in an Excel spreadsheet and carefully log your corresponding activities. This last task seems somewhat obsessive to me even though I am often accused of being a Type A personality. I once worked at a job where I was required to check my work in fifteen minute intervals each day and log what I was doing during each interval. After I left this company, I decided I would never again work for anyone where I had to justify myself at this level of detail. It was simply an exercise in obsessive control and domination.
Type A personalities are supposed to be more compulsive and more aggressive than Type B personalities. Are type A personalities more prone to track their time? Are Type B personalities more prone to go with the flow? Do Type B people live more moment to moment? Are you a Type A or Type B personality? Do you go with the flow or do you track your time? Regarding the physical and emotional tracks that time leaves, how have you fared? What emotional tracks has time left in your life? What physical tracks do you see time making for you? Where are you headed now?
Meaning and purpose are Yin and Yang to each other. Purpose is outside you and is what you do in the world. For me purpose involves doing. Meaning is inside you and what you do for yourself. Meaning involves being rather than doing. Let’s use a running race as an example.
Meaning in my dictionary is about living up to my potential, my values and my beliefs by doing the best I can each day to be consistent with them. No one may ever know if I am being kind, compassionate or patient today. You cannot see the inner virtues that I want to live by. I am the only person at the end of each day who can judge whether or not my life had any meaning today. If I can be the best person that I want to be each day, I will die feeling that my life had meaning. To the rest of the world, I may just be another old teacher, old veteran or old guy who lived an average life and died at an average age. Meaning to me is about being and not doing.
If I answer, I want to be rich, my meaning in life will be defined by how I go about becoming rich and what I do with my money. If I want to be a writer, my meaning will be defined by what I write and how I go about the writing process. If I want to be happy, my meaning in life will be defined by how I go about achieving happiness. No one except me can judge how I define myself. People may say that I am not very rich or that I am not a very good writer, but it is what I believe about myself which will define my meaning in life. Vincent Van Gogh is now widely regarded as one of the greatest painters of all time. His paintings sell for millions of dollars. However, in his lifetime, he sold only one painting. It was to his sister-in-law who felt sorry for him.
“What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.” — 
I conclude with the consideration that Meaning and Purpose may not be everyone’s cup of tea. I confess that it was much later in my life and many hurdles had been taken and many obstacles overcome before I started caring about the meaning and purpose of life. Now I look back and shake my head with some sorrow that I did not grasp their import on life when I was in my teens. A have learned that a life without meaning and purpose is not a life, it is just living.
This theory says that happiness is dependent on other things happening in your life. You must have these other things going on or you will not be happy. If you have a good family, or good job or you have meaningful work, you will be happy. Contingency is like a correlation in statistics. The process of having a good family correlates with happiness but having a good family does not make you happy. Some things have a higher correlation with happiness than other things. Some people believe that having less things is more conducive to happiness than owning a bunch of things.
This could also be called the “Cause and Effect” theory of happiness. This theory says that certain things or activities will lead to the outcome of happiness. For instance, becoming an Olympic Gold Medalist may lead an athlete to happiness.
You will always be happy in proportion to how happy others are around us. If I have a great deal of money but my friends have more, I will be unhappy. However, if I have a bigger office than anybody else in the company, I will be happier than they are. The state of being happy will always be relative or in comparison to some other standard that I mark my happiness by.
This theory views happiness as something that has no limits. The sky is the limit. Extraordinary happiness awaits anyone willing to go for it. Every day will bring more and more happiness if you only believe it is possible.
The strangeness of the situation caused me to be somewhat nervous about proceeding further but I thought, I have nothing to fear from an old lady. Coming nearer to the woman, I jokingly asked if she was the same old woman whom I had met years ago and if she remembered me. “Yes”, she said, “but you were much younger then. How did your journey down the Farewell to Life trail go?” How could this be I thought? I don’t believe in magic, miracles, or spirits but suddenly, I began to take her words quite seriously.
Second, what are you going to do about your fears? Fear is an adaptive mechanism. It helps to keep you alive. If you are in the woods and walking down a trail and see a large bear or cougar coming towards you, it is quite healthy to have some degree of fear. But fear alone is not going to save your life. If you are paralyzed with fear you may just be eaten. Fear is an alarm. An alarm sounds to wake us up. The next step is to do something. Doing something is a risky effort with no guarantee of success. Sadly, there are few guaranties in life, but the evidence seems to suggest that doing nothing is worse than doing something. This is where forethought and preparedness come in. One of my favorite quotes is by the Roman philosopher Seneca (died 65 CE) who once said that “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”
Dylan Thomas said, “Do not go gentle into that good night.” I don’t know about the raging part of his poem. I prefer thinking about my life as I get older and not raging. But he makes a good point. It is all too easy to give up on life as we age. We can live in memories of what we used to do, or we can find new activities and new levels to pursue old activities at. For instance, I may not have the stamina to play tennis or racquet ball anymore, but I can still play pickleball or go for a short ride on my bicycle. I used to do six-minute miles in road races. My personal best was 38.48 on a 10K. The race I ran for Frederic Family days this year on June 12, 2021, I averaged 10.14 per mile for a 5k. Quite a bit off of my pace from years ago but I still got my t-shirt. I run for t-shirts these days and not trophies.
On some primal level, we all live by an unseen law of rhythm. The rhythm of the universe controls an eternal dance between the atoms and molecules that make up our existence. This natural rhythm imparts an inexorable symmetry to all of life. A regulated succession of strong and weak elements of opposite and contrasting conditions that becomes the master of all that we do. Buddhists call it the Yin and Yang of being.
In countless ways, we observe that there is fundamentally no difference between writing or between a piece of choreography and the changing climate. Creativity is carved out of the passion that is in everything we do. The body and mind embrace in a never-ending minuet. The music ebbs and flows. Our love is gentle, restrained, then wild and feral. Mornings, afternoons, evenings, and nights fuse with the seasons of spring, summer, fall and winter. The harsh gales of November resonate in the refrains of Tchaikovsky and Beethoven. “Summer Breeze” by Seals and Crofts ushers in the scorching days of July. Poetry rings out in the rap music of the streets while the mellow voices of choir singers comfort the soul. All things are one say the mystics. If my writing is one with all things, will the tempo of my words cool, heat, soothe or disrupt the fashions of life?
We are all dust in the wind but our rhythms echo through the halls of time. The most unforgettable and amazing repetitions will continue as long as humans walk the earth. Coded in the numerous ways we have of capturing the rhythm of our lives. Some codes in music, some in text and some in clay. Some dynamic, some peaceful, some violent and some sad. We write our lyrics, pen our verses, create our stanzas, and design our choreography. All efforts guided by the unseen law of rhythm. Now we are hard, now we are brittle. Now we roar and now we snore.
The rhythm of life runs through our heart beats. It runs through literature. It runs through music. Great music has rhythms that exhibit great variation. Fast, slow, moderate than fast again. Interesting speakers have a sense of rhythm in their talks. Have you ever heard a lecture or a sermon without rhythm? It will put you to sleep in less than five minutes. Writing and speaking, just like music, must contain elements of rhythm. A heart without rhythm ceases to beat. Writing without rhythm is boring. Life without rhythm is death.
Once, as a new employee, I was attending my first department meeting with my co-workers and supervisor. I deemed it prudent to keep my mouth shut and observe. At the end of the meeting, my supervisor turned to me and noted, “Well, John, you haven’t said a word. What do you think? Give me your honest opinion.” I took her at her word and gave her my honest uncensored opinion. Big mistake, as I am sure you knew. Turns out my boss only liked “Honest Opinions” when they agreed with her opinions. A good mentor would have warned me of this peril before I put my foot in my mouth.
me by giving me support and stimulation to be creative. I was thinking back over the years that I have been writing. My first paid article was in 1983. It was published in a San Francisco Men’s Journal. My piece was called “The Three Types of Male Intimacy.” I was paid about 25 dollars. It was not much but it felt like a start. I have since published about 40 journal articles, three books and over 600 blogs. It is a good thing that I never quit my day job since I could barely pay my monthly entertainment bill with the proceeds from my writing.
“I do not know what writing awaits me,
brought sorrow to my heart over the years. Life does not always end happily. Lives do not always find the justice and honor they merit. I have felt sorry for the heroes and heroines who did not get the fates they deserved. If only I could somehow right all the wrongs and set history on the paths it should have taken. I find books tell me about my shortcomings and highlight areas where I need improvement. It is always sorrowful to find that I am not as good as I would like to be.
Aging Capriciously 