A New Year or another False Start?

Out with the old and in with the new! New Years! The end of our past and the beginning of our future! All over the world, we count down the minutes and then seconds until a New Year begins. A New Year represents a finish and a time to put failures and bad dreams behind us. New Years day is a new beginning. We pray and hope that each year will be better than the last. Curiously, we celebrate this ending with a night of wild parties and much drinking.

Do you ever wonder why so many people get drunk on New Years Eve? Is it simply to forget the past or is it to celebrate the past? How many New Years days have been ruined before they even got started? Tonight we drink, tomorrow we make promises about how different our lives will be and what changes we will make. Each New Year is a time of magic. It is a time of possibilities. We think it will mean great differences in our lives, but how long do these commitments usually last? Go to the health clubs on New Years day and the parking lots will be full. By early March, the parking lots will be back to their normal contingent of cars. The landscape will be littered with failed promises and failed New Years resolutions. Some may think that they can escape this debacle by simply not making any resolutions. Instead their failures simply remain with them day after day because they were afraid to even start.

Thankfully, we have 365 chances each year to start our life anew. You don’t have to wait until New Years day to begin. Every tomorrow is a new beginning. The only failure in life is to give up. Each time you fall down and get up again you are a success. Each day that you make a new commitment to try, you are a success. Each time your commitment lasts a little bit longer than the last time you are a success.

You have two more days until the New Year of 2012. What are you going to do with your life? What issues, goals, problems, tasks, challenges or quests should you spend more time on? Who do you need to spend more time with? Who do you need to ask forgiveness of? Who do you need to forgive? What do you need to let go of? Sharing our lives with others is the greatest success of all. Good Luck and happiness in the New Year.

Becoming a Master of Time

The Master of Time – A Time Master is someone for whom Time is no longer in control of their lives. They have taken control of time. A true Time Master can jump forward and back in time as they wished or simply choose to live in the present. I have presented many different perspectives on time over the past year. After looking at time from these perspectives have you come to any realization about what time means to you and about how you can control your own time? Is time under your control? Is time simply in your mind? Is time an independent external phenomenon?

I believe the answer is yes to each of the above questions. Time is a manifestation of our mind’s ideas about the world, space, matter and motion. What we see as the movement of time around us exists in physical space as changes in the world, changes in nature and changes in our bodies. The thoughts in our heads are reflected on these changes like the shadows in Plato’s cave. We see and understand time as a set of reflections that are echoed by the beliefs we have about these changes. For example, my hair starts to turn gray and I say I am getting “older” and perhaps “wiser.” The leaves turn and I say it is “autumn” when it becomes time for “Halloween and Thanksgiving.” New technology replaces the old and I say it is “progress.” The changes keep on happening and I apply society’s labels to these changes. My own ideas are married to the ideas in our culture about time and thus reflect tradition as well as learned beliefs about the meaning of these changes.

Control the ideas you have about time and you control time. You cannot stop the changes but look at the changes without the labels and what do you see? Can you look at the changes without applying labels and ideas about time? Perhaps not, but if you can look more objectively at these changes, then my musings may help you to see time somewhat differently. The promise to become a “Master of Time” is still a challenge that you face.

The way to master time is to master your thoughts. Change your thinking and you can change time whenever you want to. Are you getting older or simply more wrinkled? Is life moving faster and faster or is it the transportation by which we get around which propels us faster and faster? Do children age faster or do they simply change in ways that are new to our generation? Is the world better today or worse than 100 years ago? The answers to these questions will depend on your beliefs about time. Have you learned to think about time differently? Have you become a “Master of Time?” Do you want to have another year of my blogs on Time?

The End of Time or the End of the World?

Are we getting close to the “end of time” or just the end of the year? Have you ever really thought about when time would end? The Mayan Calendar says it will end next year on December 21, 2012. I guess many can be glad that they will be able to celebrate 12-12-12 before the end of the world. Will time end when the world and the universe end? Or maybe time will just quit, like a watch that stops running.

Some religions believe that time ends on judgment day. Do you think that there are any clocks in heaven? What about hell? Does the devil track time for us? What about Purgatory? “Purgatory (Lat., "purgare", to make clean, to purify) in accordance with Catholic teaching is a place or condition of temporal punishment for those who, departing this life in God's grace, are, not entirely free from venial faults, or have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their transgressions.” (New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12575a.htm ). The Catholic Church teaches that we need to spend time in Purgatory for certain offenses. Since the punishment is temporal and not eternal, do you suppose they have clocks in Purgatory? Who do you suppose winds them up? Can you imagine spending 500 years in Purgatory and watching the clock until you are released?

Perhaps, time will wear out when people get tired of keeping time. We have explored hundreds of ways to think about time in my blogs this past year. People have been thinking about time since the first human beings walked the earth. Time seems to be part of the human psyche. If humans did not have time, they would certainly have created it. It is hard to imagine anyplace where we would not mark time. I notice I can always find new ideas about time to keep adding to my blogs. I have a whole list of subjects that I am working on for future blogs, of course, that assumes I make it past 12-21-2012. But if I go to heaven, can I keep my blog going up there?

Heaven qualifies as one place though where there would seem to be no reason to mark time. Why keep track of time when everything is eternal and unchanging? Heaven must be a place where there are no goals, no accomplishments, no meetings, no places to get to, no tasks to complete, no projects due, no emails to answer and no shortage of time. If any of these things existed in heaven, then we would need to track time. So what do we do in heaven? We all seem to want to get there, but what do we do with our “time” when we are there? I guess we just play all day since play does not require us to track time. Play is by definition "timeless."

Can you think of anything else that does not require us to mark time? Perhaps if we could just play all day, then time would end. Would little children invent time? Children do not seem to worry about time as much as adults. What if we played more and worked less? Could we cut time down some? Do we “end time” when it is just play time? As adults we become more and more fixed on the idea of time and the limitations that time places on our lives. Our goal orientation makes time a reality for us.

Maybe we should create a “holiday” each year where time stops. A day when you do not have to keep track of time or when time does not matter. It is difficult to think of living a single day when we are not keeping track of time. I guess you will just have to wait until you get to heaven for time to stop. Do you suppose anyone wears watches in heaven? When was the last time, you were able to forget about time? How long did it last? What does it take for you to forget about time?

Making up for lost time?

Making up for lost time can be bittersweet. I have a daughter who has not talked to me for many years now. I think of the time that has gone by and how we could have spent it together doing things we could never afford to do when she was younger. I think of how as adults we could and should have become good friends with talks by the fireplace and walking in the woods. She is over forty now and I am past 60 and the clock keeps ticking and ticking. I think of the minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years that keep moving on by, each moment lost forever to us as this blanket of silence shrouds our lives. Time lost forever, or can it be made up? What if she suddenly decided that she wanted to have a relationship with me? Could we make up the lost time? If we started today to try to get to know each other; imagine the events that have changed our lives, the places we have been to, the books we have read, the movies we have seen, the funerals and weddings we have been to, the jobs and careers we have changed, the children grandchildren we have helped raise. So much that has changed each of us.

Difficult to imagine making up lost time, nevertheless, few of us would not try if given the opportunity. It is a bittersweet opportunity because we may feel joy at the opportunity but also anger at the waste of time that could and should have been prevented. It might be water under the dam, but it will always seem like a waste. I have known brothers and sisters, parents and siblings and former friends who did not talk to each other for over fifty years. Unfortunately, some of them died and so did any possibility to make up for lost time. There are no guarantees in life and if you choose to waste time or lose time, perhaps you will never be able to make it up. It might be too late when you finally realize your mistake and ask yourself WHY? You will be left with regrets about what might or could or should have been.

Perhaps you have no control over your lost time. Time spent in jail, time spent recovering from an accident, and time spent in a relationship that was wrong may all constitute lost time. Lost time is time away from life that could have been lived much differently. It is time that could have been spent more productively and happily. Can this time be made up? Better to not lose it in the first place. But if you have lost it, then do your best to get on with you life. Live each day the best you can. As they say with money, don’t throw good money after bad. Do not throw good time after bad. The lost time is over and you have the rest of your life to live. If you can live each day the best you can, you will be able to put the lost time behind you and perhaps even forget it someday. Then again, maybe the time that was lost was a lesson and you needed to hear the message it was sending. A good friend of mine was fond of saying: “There are no mistakes in life only lessons to be learned.” I think of this comment often. It is a good lesson to remember.

Do you have any lost time to make up? Are you currently losing time that you should not be losing? Have you thought about how you can stop losing this time? What can you do today to make it

Did god make enough time?

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.” You 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?

My post for Chrismas, for athiests and Christians alike.

Christmas Time is the celebration by Christians of the birth of Jesus Christ. He was born in a manger to Joseph and Mary. Christians celebrate December 25th as the birth of a man whom they claim to be the son of God. Other religions would disagree that he was a God, but none would disagree that he was a great prophet. His message was simple: love everyone: sinner, enemy, friend and family alike. The Christmas season today has become associated with gift giving, family traditions, Santa Claus, Christmas stories, Christmas trees, burning candles, holiday lights and the holiday shopping season. Christmas is said to be a time for children, who tend to be the recipients of the most gifts and toys. We all enjoy seeing the expression on the faces of little children as they unwrap a special gift with pretty wrapping paper and ribbons and bows. During the Christmas season, many spend a great deal of time trying to find the right gifts for their older friends and loved ones as well.

Some people feel that Christmas Time has become too contaminated by the incessant advertisings and commercialism that litter the holiday season. Shopping used to start after Thanksgiving; it now starts after Halloween, a full month earlier. Indeed, it is easy amid the hustle and bustle to lose sight of the main reason to celebrate this season. A great prophet or God himself, Jesus Christ brought a message of love and peace to the world. It is ironic that during times of war and strife many people preaching his message have been sarcastically labeled as peaceniks, doves and war protestors. These labels are applied as though peace and love for other human beings was a bad thing. If Jesus were alive today, would he be a peace protestor, a wall street occupier or would he be a war supporter? Would Jesus be in the frontline of the anti-war movements or would he be Pro-War? Would Jesus be a dove or a hawk?

If you celebrate Christmas, how much time do you put aside to celebrate the message of Love and Peace that Jesus brought to the world? Is Christmas Time for you a celebration of the Peace Message or do you support a War Message? Do you work for peace or do you work for violence? Does your belief in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extend to all human beings or just those of your own religion and nationality? This Christmas Time, will you spend as much of your energy on peace and love as you do shopping and putting up your Christmas tree and household decorations? How will you extend the message of peace and love to others in the world this Christmas Time?

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?

Sorry if I am late posting today. We headed down to Mexico for the Holidays and will be here for a week. I did not have Internet access yesterday but am back on line today. We checked into this wonderful hotel in San Carlos and there is great internet access. I will post tomorrow for the Christmas Holiday and then sign off until Monday, if you celebrate Christmas, I wish you a very Happy Holiday and if you do not, then have a wonderful day and a great weekend. John

Are you living on borrowed time?

Borrowed time - We have all heard the expression “you are living on borrowed time.” Of course, this means to go on living after the time you should have died. The phrase goes back to the seventeenth century (see http://www.phrases.org.uk). My sister was given several weeks to live after being diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer. She went on to live five more years and even survived one round of hospice care to live a few more years after that. She just did not want to die. She lived many happy if not healthy years on borrowed time. I often wondered who she paid this time back to and who she actually borrowed it from.

I think if you live life like there will be no tomorrow you are living on borrowed time. We all know people who disproportionately flaunt the risks of life. People who drink and drive are living on borrowed time. People who ride motorcycles without wearing a helmet are living on borrowed time. People who do not exercise or watch their weight are living on borrowed time. People who smoke are living on borrowed time. Each day you take unnecessary risks, you are living on borrowed time. You may cheat death each day, but it is also a day that you owe to someone and you will eventually be called upon to pay. The actuaries are betting millions that you will die when they say you will and people living on borrowed time generally pay up when due.

Are you one of the people living on borrowed time? What is the cost you pay for living on borrowed time? Who do you borrow this time from? Who do you pay it back to? When do you think they will come to collect? I think you borrow it from those who love and those who care for you. They would rather have you than the money.

Do you have what it takes to live to 100?

The oldest person in the world! This is a title that takes years to earn and once you earn it, you probably will not hold it very long. Last week, the oldest living person in the world was Besse Berry Cooper, a 115-year-old great-great-grandmother from Tennessee. The chance to earn the “oldest living person” in the world designation is slim for most of us. However, recent studies report that the odds of living past 100 are growing. The US Department of Census projects that there could be over four million Americans reaching age 100 or more by 2050. Super Centenarians are those people who live to over 110 years of age. A study by Robin and Vaupel (2001) shows that in the world as a whole, the number of validated super-centenarians for whom adequate documentation is available is increasing. Other evidence also points to a world-wide increase in lifespan, thus making the age of 100 increasingly more likely for many of us.

Have you ever thought of what it would be like to live to 100 or more? You would have set foot in two centuries during one lifetime. You would have lived in five generations and possibly be a great great or greater grandparent. If you had been born in the year 1900 and had lived past the year 2000, you would have lived through the horse and buggy era and now be living in the age of rockets and space travel. You would have lived in a time when there were no TV’s, cell phones, radios, computers or Internet and now be living in a time when all of these are common. What if you were born in 2000 and live to be 100? You would make it to the 22nd century. If we accept that we will make as much or more progress in the next 100 years as we have in the last, what changes do you think you would see? It is hard to imagine the same degrees of changes taking place between 2000 and 2100 as between 1900 and 2000 and yet it is inevitable. Furthermore, the changes will probably dwarf those of the past century. What do you have to do to live to 100? Studies seem to point to the following common factors among centenarians:

• Continuing to play a role in society
• Keeping in good physical shape
• Taking preventive measures against serious disease
• Looking on the bright side of life
• Being intellectually stimulated
• Believing that happiness can be achieved
• Having financial security
• Having a good life expectation
• Maintaining satisfactory social relationships

(Quality of life and longevity: a study of centenarians, Mariosa Dello Buono, Ornella Urciuou, Diego De Leo in Age and Ageing 1998; 27: 207-216)

Well, looking at this list, do you have what it takes? Will you live to 100 years of age? Do you think you might even obtain the oldest person in the world title? What would have to change in your life for you to be in the running? Which of the above factors do you need to work on? Would you like to live to 100 if you could be healthy and happy to that age?

Is this the worst of times or the best of times? Are you optimistic or pessimistic?

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” This is the opening sentence of A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens. He was referring to the time of the French Revolution. It is perhaps the most famous line in all of literature. Why? Not because we relate to the French Revolution, but because we can all relate to the sentiment. How many days in your life have you felt it was the best of times, but also the worst? We would probably all be rich if we had a dollar for each day or each time we felt this way. Life brings us many ups and downs. Life is seldom all joy and happiness. In one day, in one hour, many of us can go from high to low. A brief moment can bring us news that will make us supremely happy or thoroughly sad. Death and destruction come at inopportune times. We can not plan them or control them. Happiness can be equally whimsical. One minute we can feel elated over some momentary triumph and the next minute we are dejected because it was not greater.

We have all had many days that were the best of times and the worst of times. Each day of our lives that we awake healthy can start out to be the best of times. By the end of some days, it has become the worst of times. We may end the day feeling totally used up and wondering if there is not more to life. The pressures and tribulations of the day have beaten our spirits down. By bedtime, we are ready for the oblivion of sleep. Happy only for a good nights rest that will help restore our mind and body, but mostly our willpower to face the next day. We hope to awake refreshed and ready to believe again that today will be the best of times and not the worst of times.

Can you get up today and face live with optimism and not defeat? Do you get up each day and look forward to the challenges that the day will bring? Have you been able to grow older but remain optimistic about life? Do you fully expect that there will be much pain but also great happiness in your life? Is today the best of times or the worst of times for you?

Why time is a metaphor and the value of thinking of it as such.

There are many metaphors that involve time: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” (John 2-12-22) “God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh.” (Genesis 1-2). A metaphor gives us an alternative picture of reality. Some metaphors can be taken quite literally, others are more symbolic. Since we cannot feel, taste, see or touch time, most time metaphors have to be symbolic. However, we can measure time, and that fact makes some symbolic interpretations of time very problematic. Could Jesus Christ really have destroyed the temple and rebuilt it again in three days? Did God really create the world in only seven days? Here is a good explanation of the relationship between symbols and metaphors from the website of Dr. Rick Singleton, a professor at Southern Virginia University:

"One of the most recognizable objects from J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is the One Ring. It is the object that controls the other ring wielders, yet it is also the only one that has that power and will of its own. The One Ring symbolizes power, dominance, corruption, and evil. When we take the phrase “One ring to rule them all,” it then becomes a metaphor. Because the One ring is the subject and the object of the phrase, but it’s A is B relationship is simple to understand once we know the idea behind the ring and the phrase behind the metaphor."
http://www.hatrack.com/svu/tolkien_lewis/OSC%20Paper.html

It would be impossible to speak about time without speaking in symbols and metaphors. Each reflection in my these blogs I do represents an abstraction that hopefully many of you reading them can relate to. I have tried to make these reflections interesting and useful by putting these abstractions on time into a different light or by creating new metaphors for some of them. The power of symbols and metaphors is in helping us to see and understand the world and ourselves in a different light. However, as we become accustomed to symbols and metaphors, they lose this power because we take them for granted. We allow them to become worthless because we no longer think about them.

For instance, when you see the Statue of Liberty, do you think about all the immigrants that came over and about the fighting that went on to free us from the British? When it is the Fourth of July, do you see Thomas Jefferson and the Continental Congress debating the text of the Declaration of Independence? Many metaphors become clichés such as: “sharp as a knife”, “he was a lame duck” or they were “like two ships passing in the night.” Repeated use brings dullness to the edge of metaphors. We say them, think we understand their meaning and quickly move on. In doing so, we ignore the deeper implications of each. We miss the more profound thoughts that are hidden beneath our surface understanding. For instance, why were they like ships passing in the night? What happened to them that they lost or missed their chance for a relationship? When did they first start to pass each other? What could they have done differently to not miss each other in the dark night?

My goal in this blog is that these many metaphors, symbols and concepts about time I am presenting will help you to think about the world and your life differently. I hope you will begin to see a different picture of those things that you may take for granted about time. Did God really make the world in seven days? Does it matter? What do you think?

What does dinner time mean to you?

Dinner time - “The word "dinner" comes from the French word dîner, the "chief repast of the day", (Wikipedia). It is a time for family and bonding in some homes. In others, it is simply a time of eating. Dinner time in many cultures is associated with ceremony and a degree of formality. There once was a time in the U.S when people dressed up to come to dinner on a regular basis. Traditionally, the head of the household said a blessing and then dinner was served. Increasingly, in our strapped and harried culture, dinner time has become a time simply to grab a quick microwave meal and catch the latest sports event on TV. The time for socializing and sharing the day’s experiences has been traded for time in front of the TV watching the news. Mom’s homemade cooking has been traded for Mrs. Field cookies and Papa John’s Pizza. Dinner is simply a time to stock up on high fat, high calorie pre-processed foods. Witness the current obesity in American society.

We can yearn for the past, but the past is not always as we remember it. Dinner time in some historic periods has been a time of fasting and even deprivation. There simply was not enough food to go around and many would go hungry. A blessing would have been said to simply help find food and to survive until food could be found. Today there are still places in the world where people do not have enough to eat. The following facts are from the site:
“Bread for the World” ( http://www.bread.org )

• 854 million people across the world are hungry, up from 852 million a year ago.
• Every day, almost 16,000 children die from hunger-related causes--one child every
five seconds.
• In essence, hunger is the most extreme form of poverty, where individuals or
families cannot afford to meet their most basic need for food.

These figures come from studies done by Global organizations working to reduce poverty. Perhaps in twenty years or so we will have made a larger dent in these figures. Perhaps we will not if the world has to keep struggling with war and terrorism, if we do not see the urgency or we do not make it a global priority to help reduce poverty. The value of sitting together at a well stocked dinner table gets trumped by the value of security and freedom from oppression. Have you ever wondered why we cannot have both values together? How do we bring this choice upon ourselves in the first place? Are war and poverty inevitable? Have we accepted that they are beyond our control? Is it simply our nature as human beings to have to suffer? Would we really want a world that was like the Garden of Eden? Or would we soon become bored and start throwing apples at each other?

Have you ever sat down at dinner and not had enough to eat? Have you ever passed the plate so someone else could eat and you would not? Have you ever passed the plate to help others in the world to eat? Is dinner time a time of joy for you or a time of strife? What would help to make it more joyful? Would more food help? Would more socializing and talking to each other help? Would doing more to help those with even less than you have help?

Whats more important, the journey or the destination?

Do you measure journey time or measure destination time? I have a patch on one of my jeans which says “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey.” How often in life do we get so wound up with what we are going to do, or where we want to go that we forget the joy in the journey. Our destination, our goals become so overpowering that we forget the process, we forget to live each day. We live in the future and never enjoy the minutes which are happening one at a time. We become so consumed with our purpose or goals that we ignore the flowers and birds that surround us. We forget to smell the roses. The famous atheist and socialist Emma Goldman said “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” We take ourselves and our lives too serious. How often have you known someone who upon experiencing their first heart attack and surviving it suddenly decided to reprioritize what was important in their life? This wakeup call for mortality helped them to realize that they were missing out on what life is meant to be. Why take a trip if you cannot enjoy the journey?

Every so often when I was growing up, my father would take us on a trip. It was usually to visit my grandparents in Alabama. I hated those trips. My father would drive like a maniac, watching the clock every minute to see how he could cut minutes or seconds off the trip. He was obsessed with how fast he could get there. Sometimes we would sleep in the car through the night. We would often pass restrooms because he would not waste time stopping. When he finally got around to it, we would pee at the side of the road. There was no stopping for road side rests. No stopping for any sights or marvels that the world might put up for display. My father’s sole and unremitting quest was to see how fast he could get us from NY to Alabama.

These trips were hated by me, my mother and my siblings. They were never fun nor do I remember one minute of pleasure on any of these trips. It was not until I was 13 that I had a good trip down south. My mother decided to take a train with my two sisters and leave early and my father and I were going to go with my Uncle Paul and his father (Pop Hofer). My uncle was not going to let my father spoil a perfectly good trip by ignoring the sites along the way. For the first time in any of these trips, we stopped. We stopped in Washington D.C. to see the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial. We stopped at Luray Caverns and visited the underground caves. We stopped at Ruby Falls to see the underground waterfall. We stopped at Lookout Mountain and rode the train up and down. We stopped to eat along the way. We stopped at a motel and stayed the night. I will never forget this trip or my uncle for helping me to find a life along the way. I learned then that the journey can be as important as the destination.

What if you get there and you hate it? What if you have not learned to enjoy life along the way? What if you never get there? What about the people who had a first heat attack and it was their last? Do you stop to smell the roses? Do you stop to pick raspberries? Is your life so busy that you don’t enjoy the journey? Do you have to have a “heart attack” to teach you to enjoy the journey?

Every now and then

Every now and then:

“Every now and then I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound
of my tears,
Turn around,
Every now and then I get a little bit nervous that the best of all the
years have gone by.” (Total Eclipse of the Heart, Bonnie Tyler)

I love the words in this song. They have a way of causing me to reflect on those things in my life which seem to happen “every now and then.” I have made the following list of my most important ones:

• Every now and then, I get wistful, thinking of the people I once loved.
• Every now and then, I think of the friends and relatives long gone.
• Every now and then, I feel sad about the things I cannot undo.
• Every now and then, I go back to memories and places I will never see again.
• Every now and then, every now and then, every now and then, I just get
stuck. I wonder whether life makes any sense and if living longer is of any
value.

I think of the mistakes that I have made and wonder if I can undo them. I think of the people whom I have hurt and wonder if forgiveness is still too late. I think about the people I used to know who no longer talk to me or seem to want my friendship. I think about the opportunities I have missed and wonder whether I have learned anything from these mistakes. Every now and then I wonder whether my life has come to its apex and I should just “retire” like so many other people my age. I think of those fighters who fought past their prime when we all know they should have hung up their gloves. I wonder whether I am fighting for fame, fortune, glory or simply to make a difference. Every now and then, I wonder whether or not anything I have done has made one difference to the world and whether it’s worth the ongoing fight to make a difference.

We all have our every “now and then.” There is a sadness to my list. Perhaps your list would be more joyful or fun. What are the things that pop up for you “every now and then?” Can you make a list? Why do you think these things keep popping up? Do they represent regrets or unfinished business? Do you think they would come up less often if you could somehow put them to rest? What stops you?

What would the greatest philosophers in history say about time?

What would Aristotle, Plato and Socrates say about time to Confucius and Lao Tzu? What if the greatest philosophers of the Western world met the greatest philosophers of the Eastern world? What would they say to each other about time? Confucius emphasized doing the proper thing at the proper time. Lao Tzu believed that time was created in our minds and to say “I don’t have time” was to really say “I don’t want to.” Socrates would have asked “why do you think time is in your minds? Could time not be in our hearts?” Aristotle would have pointed out that the planets, stars, and earth all do their own thing independent of what humans believe or want. Aristotle defined time as a kind of ‘number of change’ with respect to the before and after (Ursula Coope, “Time for Aristotle,” 2005, Oxford online Monographs).

By this time, Plato, totally exasperated would note that “no human thing is of serious importance.” “Thus, why waste time quibbling here over what time is or is not, let us go find a tavern and have a drink together.” And so the philosophers all went off in search of a tavern. Legend has it they spent the rest of the day drinking and making fools of themselves with the young women in the bar who could not understand what they were talking about. Well, such is the folly of most men when their minds meet their basic instincts and needs.

My question for you and for all up and coming philosophers is: “does time rule your life or does instinct and nature rule your life.” Do you live according to the clock and logic or do you live according to your feelings and instincts? What most guides your choice of activities and times? Are you a thinking person or a feeling person? What if you could switch? How would your life be different?

Is God Time? A being that simply decides the birth and death of every object in the Universe.

Is God time? God is perfection. God is omnipotent. God is omniscient. God could build the universe in seven days. Did God create time or is God Time? What if God was like a giant pacemaker; all the beatings of each heart, all the changes of nature, and all the changes in humanity, governed by a God with infinite pacemaker capabilities? Everything that is going to happen is already known. Each act in the universe already scripted in God’s timepiece. All events pre-determined. Some people would call this determinism and say it has no place in the freewill that God gave humans. Other philosophers would disagree and say that determinism and free-will can coexist. (See Bea Best: “A Case for Freewill and Determinism,” http://www.benbest.com/philo/freewill.html)

If God was time, it would explain many things that we never seem to understand. Accidents and random events that do not make sense in the short term might make more sense when understood on a cosmic level. Perhaps we could understand why justice seems to occur very slowly but nevertheless inevitably. God does not forget, there is just a time and place for everything. If we could look at God’s schedule we would be able to foretell all that is to come and perhaps comprehend why things unfold as they do. If God was time, we would not have to worry about the lateness or earliness of anything, nor would we worry that the world was going in the wrong direction or the wrong political parties were in control. According to God Time, things would happen for the best in the long-term.

We puny humans cannot understand time on a cosmic infinite scale. We are constantly left wondering as to the complexity and strangeness of the universe. Even our own lives and actions constantly surprise and befuddle us. Why do we act like we do, why do others act like they do? Most of the universe is like a giant jigsaw puzzle that we just can not figure out. All of our theories and hypotheses and scientific findings cannot account for this infinite puzzle that seems to strangely unfold before our eyes. It is like a play with most of the action happening unseen off stage. We never know what will happen next or why it will happen. We are just content to say “its time to go.”

Do you think God is time? Can you understand what you are about or why you were put on this earth? Do you think you serve a larger cause or are you just a random event in time?

The Opportunity Costs of Time refers to a concept in economics that values the costs of anything by the other possibilities that are foregone by your present choice of spending time. For instance, if I spend time today washing my car, I could have been working, going to school, making love or doing any number of alternative endeavors. Each of these other choices entails a “cost” in terms of both money and my perception of the value of the time spent. Some things I can do will provide me more money either now or in the future and some things will provide me more pleasure. Some things will probably do neither (taking out the garbage) but they are necessary to prevent possible future unpleasantness or costs.

Here is an example from my life. When I decided to go to school to get my Ph.D. degree, a number of years ago, I gave up a decent paying job. My “opportunity costs” of going to school would include the following:

1. Salary for 4 years
2. Possible raises and promotions
3. Cost of tuition and books
4. Cost of loans
5. Interest on loans
6. Time to spend on more pleasant activities
7. Study time
8. Class time spent in some boring classes

If I were thinking rationally before I started my school program, I would have considered all of these costs and measured them against the expected benefits of getting my degree. As it turned out, I do believe that I came out ahead. The one factor that cannot be calculated in this mental effort is the “risk” factor for time spent. For instance, I wonder each time I go out and run a rugged trail if I will break my leg. In over 5000 runs, I have not broken my leg yet, but as they say “there is always a first time.” I try to compensate for this possibility by taking my cell phone with me when I go trail running. Two small problems I often encounter are, first, that I cannot get T-Mobile reception anyplace on my Ice Age Trails in Wisconsin and second, that I often forget to take my cell-phone holder. Thus, my risk factor escalates some.

It is interesting to think of Time as Risk. We often talk about time as money but the opportunity costs of time also imply a risk. For instance, I might not have been able to get a good job when I left grad school or I might not have found that my Ph.D. degree opened any more doors than before I obtained it. If we think about the idea of Opportunity Time rather than Opportunity Costs, it may provide a different set of insights into the activities we pursue. Another striking example of this concerns the oft given wisdom that the value of obtaining a college degree is worth the time spent beyond merely going to high school. However consider the following facts:

•Average net worth of a Forbes 400 member without college degree: $2.27 billion
•Average net worth of a Forbes 400 member with a college degree: $2.13 billion
•Percentage of Forbes 400 members with college degrees: 66%, without 33%.
•Richest self-made Americans without a college degree:

William H. Gates III
Harvard University, dropout
Net worth: $43 billion
Source: Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people )

Paul Allen
Washington State University, dropout
Net worth: $21 billion
Source: Microsoft; Charter Communications (nasdaq: CHTR - news - people )

Larry Ellison
University of Illinois, dropout
Net worth: $15.2 billion
Oracle (nasdaq: ORCL - news - people )

Michael Dell
University of Texas Austin, dropout
Net worth: $11.2 billion
Dell (nasdaq: DELL - news - people )

The above facts can be found at http://www.forbes.com/2003/07/28/cx_dd_0728mondaymatch.html

When I look at the facts above, it makes me wonder what the real value of a degree is. It does not appear that it can simply be measured by monetary returns for the billionaires without a degree are richer than the billionaires with a degree. Perhaps, the real value lies in how confident it makes us feel or how much more literate and wise we are? If so, I have yet to see any evidence that going to college makes one either more confident or wiser. So we return to the Opportunity Risks of spending time. Here are some quotes that I like that reflect on this issue:

“Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another man gets a full year’s value out of a week.” – Charles Richards

“A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life.” - Charles Darwin

Thus, I do not think that time can be measured as simply money or simply opportunity costs. I think we need to measure time as a risk and time as rewards and costs that go beyond monetary considerations. I am not making any money writing this blog today. I have been writing it for over two years now and have not made one dime yet on it. No one has picked me for a “reality” show and no one has called me up to be on the Oprah show. Nevertheless, I write these blogs and am sustained by the faith and hope that somehow each day or perhaps only once a month, I might make a positive difference in someone’s life. There is a great risk in my spending this time with this hope, but without hope and risk what would our lives be. If we can go through live and do no harm or do more good than we do harm, then we may have done all that is possible as a human being. The simple calculus of time as money or time spent on activities that pay a dividend reduces life to a pure equation with no emotion or no feeling. We are not automatons to be driven by calculators that measure the dollar value of every minute spent. I think we need more choices and a wider set of criteria in which to measure the value of the time we spend.

Do you spend your time well? Are you satisfied with the efforts and goals you have set for your life? Are you doing what you want to with your life and time? If not, why? When will you start making the choices that bring you joy and satisfaction?

How timeless are these reflections on time? Does it matter?

Are my reflections on time timeless? As I have worked on the reflections and ideas in this blog, I have wondered about how timeless or not timeless these thoughts will be. Will they speak to other cultures if translated into their language? Will they be readable 25 or 250 years from now? Will the ideas, questions, comments and theories still be interesting and thought provoking long after I am dead? Or will this just be another collection of faddish ideas and my reflections soon relegated to the bottom of the “used blog” pile?

How long will my blogs be readable and how many people will really find value in my blogs? Will future generations coming upon this blog, still think it is worth reading and reflecting on? It is my hope that the readings in this blog will still be useful whether you read them today, tomorrow or a hundred years from now. But of course, we all have blinders on and how can I know the future or what needs, wants, desires and problems people will be dealing with 100 or 200 years from no? Today, these issues and ideas seem meaningful and important. Tomorrow, they may just be another set of quaint ideas. Someone in the year 2300 coming upon my reflections may think that we were really very simple and naïve people in the 21st century.

A second question I have pondered while writing these blogs deals with how many times you could read my reflections and still get any value out of it? Or how many times, you will need to read them before you get any value out of them? I have often read something several times before the light bulbs went on and I understood what the author was getting at. There are many questions in my blogs for you to answer. Have you been taking the time to answer these questions or do you just read the reflections and skip the answers?

What if you did answer all of the questions? Do you think you would get more out of my blogs? Is it too late now or could you go back and start over if you have been skipping the questions? Would these reflections be more valuable to you if you did answer all of the questions? Have you found any value in answering the questions? Do you think you will ever read some of them again? Why not?

A Comment From a reader about how to Control Time

The following comment was posted on my blog site by an old friend whom I have not seen for over 30 years. We recently reconnected and he has been following some of my blogs. His comments have added quite a bit of depth and perspective to each blog that he has reviewed and left his impressions on. This comment was in respect to a blog that I posted last Thursday asking "Is Time too Fast or too Slow for You?" I think Bruce offers some interesting personal advice on how to deal with the flow of time. I asked him if he was okay with my posting his comment as a blog and he said "sure." Here are his comments. Please feel free to add your own. As a writer it keeps my ego and writing going to know that someone is out there and cares enough to comment or add their ideas.

"I think I can counteract the tendency for time to seem to pass more quickly as we get older. I can manage the feat (perhaps) but cannot say how I do it. It may have something to do with attending to at least some things, some of the time, intensely just about every day. It isn't that I'm engraving these things in my memory. Unfortunately, my narrative memory is rather sketchy and unreliable, but just that I'm focusing on them for a minute. I think time stretches out for the motorcycle rider as he crashes because he is automatically paying as acute attention as is possible for him to what is happening right now. It is as if we were like cameras that normally take in one frame per second, but we can up that to many frames per second, at least in fairly short bursts. Of course, its not just the visual aspect of experience, but many others that we can intensely focus on, and thus get extra psychological time. And by trying to habitually generate intense attention on a regular basis, even though it amounts to a tiny fraction of my overall experiences,leads me to perceive time, in general, as if it were passing more slowly.

I worked with a guy years ago who was concerned about mortality and who wanted time to pass slowly. He said he had deliberately taken a job he found boring because that would make his life seem longer. I could never tell if he was joking or not. If unpleasant experiences do seem to take longer, I guess it would work, but he would be extending his psychological time only be living a generally unpleasant life. And I'm not even sure if it would work. I think the sense of dragging time during unpleasant experiences has a lot to do with gnawing impatience, of so wanting the thing to be over. Every day, my friend would be released from what to him was a boring cubicle prison, and if that release engendered more joy in the evening than his pain during the day, he might have a positive net for manipulating himself that way. Why did the moron hit himself on the head? Because it felt so good when he stopped. This strategy would be a rational one, if the good feeling more than outweighed the pain (and possible tissue damage). But I doubt that this would really work because I think our painful attention to unpleasant things is proportional to our expectation of their being ended. If there is some relatively permanent circumstance that causes us pain, I think we quickly go numb to it, and sort of zone out about it in a way that makes it take little subjective time at all. Or at least so it seems to me. If he really felt he was stuck in his job permanently, it would have to stop bothering him so much, and his joy at being released would lose its kick as well. It would be like riding a roller coaster over and over."

Do Bruce's ideas make sense to you? Have you experienced anything like he describes in your life? Do you control the flow of your time and if so how? If not, have you ever thought that you might want to or might be able to? Are you stuck in a cubicle watching the clock slowly move and waiting for life to begin?

Are you a millionaire when it comes to time? How do you spend your time?

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. Now the 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 many minutes 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

What can funerals tell us about living now?

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?

Is time too fast or too slow for you? The Key is in your mind! You control the flow!

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 feels like this when we are on vacation or spending time with people we like and really enjoying ourselves.

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 spent at a conference listening to a boring speaker can seem like an eternity. Time spent at an amusement park or something entertaining will seem to pass much too quickly. However, even at the same event, time for one of us may be too fast while for someone else it will 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 that 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. 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?

How the earth began? Who is right Creationists or Evolutionists?

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 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 Xboxes, IPhones, disposable diapers and fertilizers to grow really pretty green lawns on desert golf courses 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 and how the earth was created and in denying the reality of problems that we see today? Or will we spend our time and 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?

Is planning possible? Can Chaos trump order in our lives?

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. 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 now 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 naive 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 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 and planned for. 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?

How long do you think you will live?

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, 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. In fact, it has been stretching our life for some time now but there is definitely a cost attached to the effort.

Nevertheless, most of us would be willing to trade a few more dollars for a few more hours on earth. Some people however do think it foolish to try to extend their life beyond a reasonable point and opt to forego any 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 would 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 difficult decision for anyone to make.

No Time for Bargains!

I am almost loath to use the term “BF”, but it does inspire ones thinking. The bargain hunters out there are looking for bargains. However the type of bargains being hunted is rather restricted. The only bargain that most hunters seek is what I will call “Bargainus Discountus.” This is the species of bargain wherein you “reportedly” pay less for any item than its reputed worth. Thus a Sony 42 inch HDTV that normally retails for $500 dollars is sought for the bargain price of $200. Those that are able to bag such game must have fortitude, patience and a certain amount of aggression. There are many other “hunters” out there today who are seeking the same game. But what of the other types of big game “bargains?”

• The Free Online Dictionary has the following definition for the term Bargain:
N.
1. An agreement between parties fixing obligations that each promises to carry out.
2.
a. An agreement establishing the terms of a sale or exchange of goods or
services: finally reached a bargain with the antique dealer over the lamp.
b. Property acquired or services rendered as a result of such an agreement.
3. Something offered or acquired at a price advantageous to the buyer.

V. bar•gained, bar•gain•ing, bar•gains
1. To negotiate the terms of an agreement, as to sell or exchange.
2. To engage in collective bargaining.
3. To arrive at an agreement.

As you can see from looking at this definition, there are many other possibilities that await the true bargain hunter. There is the possibility of negotiating a price with some skillful trading skills and there is the possibility of negotiating a service or trade agreement. The last has to do with time perhaps more than money. For instance, what if you could find a bargain in “Time” rather than in money? As an example, let us say you wanted to get a BA degree in Business. The average time for completing such a degree is close to four years. However, what if you could bargain with a University and get a 20 or even 50 percent discount on time so that the degree would only take 2 or 3 years to complete?

Imagine the possibilities if we could start finding and negotiating more bargains and discounts around the concept of time. If time is money and the two are (if not interchangeable) at least linked, it makes perfect sense to be able to negotiate time as well as money. Here are some examples of where it would be great to negotiate time:

• The time to get the government to do just about anything it currently does
• The time it takes to get your car repaired
• The time to schedule a doctor or dentist appointment
• The time to complete any education program
• The time to wait until I can retire
• The time it takes to get my driver’s license renewed

What can you add to my list? I would love to hear your ideas on what you think we could negotiate or bargain with in terms of time. Why should we only be able to bargain on money? As time becomes more valuable in our multi-tasking environment, perhaps we should all become hunters of “Bargainus Timus.” Now if I can only get there before the rest of the bargain hunters!

What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving?

Holiday time or Holy-Day time? Each holiday season, I wonder what time people are really celebrating. Christmas becomes X-Mass, holy-days become holidays, days of remembrance become good days to host a backyard barbecue and Thanksgiving becomes the springboard to "the shopping season." The big kickoff being "Black Friday." Where is our soul? Where is the spirit in our natures? Is time off meant to be simply another day to watch the “big game.” Are holy-days meant to be spent shopping? Is Black Friday now the most important day of the year? Is Santa Claus a Good Christian because he gives toys to tots? Was that Jesus Christ’s message, to spend Christmas roasting chestnuts round an open fire singing Jingle Bell Rock?

Please note, it is not my intention to sound like the Grinch or to “cast stones” at sinners. We all need time to relax and we all need time for fun and games. However, when do we say enough? What about the meaning of the time that we are granted. Do we simply see our time off as a holiday or do we embrace this gift as a time to remember our dead, our veterans, our special leaders and those they helped pave the way for the lives we can live today. These “holidays” we are given each year, whether in remembrance of a religious or civic event should not pass by without our taking the time to remember what their true meaning is.

Thanksgiving is meant as a time to remember the blessings that we are all given. Regardless of how much or how little we all have, there is generally something we can be grateful for in our lives. I have so much but I am continually looking at people that are more successful, make more money, have more friends and are in better condition. Yet once I pause for just a few seconds to reflect on my blessings, I realize that I have the greatest wife in the world and I am healthy and moderately well off. I have six happy and wonderful grandchildren. I have more friends than I have time to spend with. In short, I have nothing to complain about. I have nothing to be selfish or greedy or jealous about. I have been blessed with a wonderful life and I hardly ever stop to say "thank you God for what you have given me." I am usually too worried about what I have not been given.

This Thanksgiving, will you take the time to say a prayer of thanks, will you ask all present to thank God or whomever or whatever you believe in for the gifts and the life you are living? This year, I will ask all present at my Thanksgiving table to take a minute to express what they are thankful for in their lives; then we will dive in on the turkey, stuffing, and dressing. The true meaning of Thanksgiving lies in being grateful for what you have. Do you know a prayer of thanks? What is your favorite prayer?

Time is money or is it really?

Time is money. This week in Time magazine they note that $37. 7 billion dollars is the amount U.S. workers lose each year waiting for repairs, installations and deliveries. This equates to 11 hours and 37 minutes per worker or $242 dollars for each worker (Time, 11-28-2011). That sounds like a lot of money. If only we could speed up those lazy repair people up, we could save almost ½ day each in time, not to mention billions of dollars. So let’s just suppose we could save all this time, what do you think the average American would do with it?

My best guess is the average American would probably spend more time watching TV, buying lottery tickets or waiting in line for “Black Friday” specials. Just think, this year many of the stores are going to open at 12 mid-night on Friday. At church on Sunday, our pastor said that people were already lined up and camping out at Best Buys around the country. You may argue that these exuberant shoppers are going to save money and are also stimulating the economy but somehow the idea of spending over 72 hours waiting in line for a bargain does not seem to me to be a very effective use of time or is it?

Let me assume for a second that the average American worker earns $23.19 per hour (http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.us.htm) , then waiting in line for 72 hours equals $1669.68 of potentially lost productivity and wages. Now you may say I am exaggerating here. Most people are not going to stand in line for 72 hours to get a bargain. Well, let’s assume a more modest time of say 4 hours. That equates to $92.76. If your bargains total more than $100 dollars than an economist would say that spending the four hours is a rational use of your time. However, many experts note that on the average these probably aren't the lowest prices of the season. Retailers will see how well sales go this weekend, then mark items down between now and Christmas. You can even shop online and find better bargains and not waste any time waiting.

However, we all know that the real reason for getting up early is the fun and excitement that goes with the bargain “hunt.” We are not really being economic beings who are coldly calculating dollars and cents against time spent. Most of the calculations on the rationality of spending time really miss the point. We do not watch our time and measure it in dollars and cents. If we did, perhaps watches or cellphones would calculate wasted time for us and translate it into wasted productivity. Watches and cellphones could have a Central Dollar Time that they would beam to that would provide the latest updates in average dollar earnings and let us know exactly what each minute we were spending was costing us. As I write this blog, I fear I have just lost 1.5 hours or $34.78.

Time is more of a qualitative metric than it is a quantitative metric. Like beauty, time spent, time wasted and productive time are all in the eyes of the beholder. What is a waste of time to me is time well spent to you. What are you going to “waste” your time on today? What things are you going to do that are productive? How do you tell the difference? Do you have too much wasted time in your life? How can you better balance your productive and wasted time?

Do you have enough fun time in your life? What does it mean to re-create?

Recreation time is something we learn to value as little children. It is that time when we can “re”-create; meaning we can go out to play and have fun. Every culture in the world knows the meaning of recreation time. Doctors and scientists tell us how important it is for adults as well as children to have recreation time. It is an essential time for growth and development. We actually re-create ourselves. How do we do this? By using recreation time to pursue other interests, by being less goal oriented and by exploring things that have no immediate payoff. Recreation is doing things just for the fun of doing them without expectation of gain or reward.

As the world becomes more global and more competitive, perhaps we all need more recreation time both at work and at home. The fifteen minute break time you get at work is not the same as recreation time. That brief respite is designed to prevent you from having a nervous or physical break down. It is not nearly enough time to help you to recreate. Organizations pay lip service to the idea of growth and development but provide hardly enough time for it to happen. Colleges are one of the few institutions that give paid sabbaticals. I have often thought sabbaticals should be mandatory for all institutions both profit and non-profit. Imagine, if you could get paid to take off for a year. You could use this time to attend classes, go on vacation, pursue new hobbies or learn some new skills.

Why should a company pay for you to have time off? The simple answer is because new skills and training will benefit the company. Ideally what helps any of us become better people will help our society and our economy. This is taking a long term view of growth which is not widely recognized in organizations. Many companies refuse to reimburse for tuition and schooling unless it is directly related to the present job. This is taking the short view of life.

Well, enough writing for now. It is time for me to re-create. What are you going to do today for recreation? How much time each day do you allow for recreation? Can you say that you have fun each and every day of the week? Why not? What would it take to change your life to have more fun? When do you propose to start? How many people do you know who started a career or a business based on something that they once did for fun? Why not get paid to do what you think is fun? Maybe you can put the joy and creativity in your career that you found in your hobby. Why should work not be fun? Why can’t fun be work?

Can history ever tell us the truth?

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?

How do time zones affect our lives, for better and for worse?

Time Zones are regions of the earth that have adopted the same standard time, usually referred to as the local time. Before the adoption of time zones, people used local solar time but this became a problem as railways and telecommunications improved. As people began to travel more, it became even more of a problem because clocks differed between places by an amount corresponding to the difference in their geographical longitude. The “solution” to synchronize all clocks to the same time meant that in some areas of the world, 12 midnight would occur during broad daylight and 12 noon would occur in absolute darkness. “Time zones are thus a compromise, relaxing the complex geographic dependence while still allowing local time to approximate the mean solar time” (Wikipedia).

With the advent of high speed plane travel, time zones have become somewhat of a major nuisance to many travelers. We have all experienced the concept of Jet Lag which appears to be induced by crossing multiple time zones. This has the effect of throwing our bodies into a state of disequilibrium which can take several days to readjust. There are 24 time zones spaced at intervals of 15° in longitude. You can go forward in time and lose time or backwards in time and gain time depending on your direction of travel. If you go west, you will gain time as you cross time zones and if you travel east, you will lose time as you cross time zones. What makes this system even more confusing is the International Date Line.

The International Date Line is the imaginary line on the earth that separates two consecutive calendar days. The date in the Eastern hemisphere, to the left of the line, is always one day ahead of the date in the Western hemisphere. Without the International Date Line, travelers going westward would discover that when they returned home, one day more than they thought had passed, even though they had kept careful tally of the days. (http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/international_date.html)

If you have ever traveled very much, you will find that these systems are very irritating and perplexing. It is easy to lose track of what time it is where you started from and what time it will be where you are going. You may gain a day or lose a day. I have almost arrived back before I left from some trips. For instance, if you cross seven time zones from say Paris to Minnesota and you leave Paris at 7 AM and your plane could make the trip in 6 hours, you would arrive back one hour before you left. On the other hand, the flight there would take 13 hours even though the plane could make it in six.

There are all sorts of tips, tricks, etc, to follow to minimize the impact of jet lag. Over the course of several years, I have tried quite a few of them. I am still not sure which if any really work. Going west, going east, coming home, going there have all been equally hard or easy at one time or another. The more you travel, the easier it is to adjust, but it always takes some adjustment. I was more than happy a few years ago to stop flying as much as I had. With the new changes in airport security, I would just as soon stay home unless I was going on vacation.

How have you been affected by time zones and date lines? Do they impact your life at all? Do you ever notice their effects? Do you call across time zones or travel frequently across time zones? What do you do to minimize jet lag when you travel?

Do you spend enough time dreaming? What if we all dreamt more?

Dreamin', I'm always dreamin'.
Dreamin' love will be mine.
Searchin', I'm always searchin'.
Hopin' someday I'll find,
Someone, someone to love me.
Someone who needs me, but until then,
Well, I'll keep on dreamin'.
Keep right on dreamin'.
Dreamin' till my dreamin' comes true.

“Dreamin”by Johnny Burnette (1960)

The above song was popular when I was in high school and deals with love and longing and dreaming. I can still hear the lyrics and tune today and the theme is rather haunting. “Dreaming, I’m always dreaming.” How many of us are dreamers? Have you ever been called “a hopeless dreamer?” I wonder why you hardly ever hear the term in a more positive sense. We call people hopeless dreamers but what about hopeful dreamers. Martin Luther King’s famous dream speech echoes the hopeful thought that “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Robert Kennedy said “I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” Proverbs 29:18 says that “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Where there are no dreams, people are hopeless and aimless.

I have been teaching and consulting for over 25 years now and it is my observation that wherever people have dreams and a vision, there is hope. They say hope springs eternal in the human breast, but I think life tries to beat it out of us. Life seems even more hopeless when we are engaged in “eternal wars.” We suffer from politicians who cannot agree on anything. We read daily of scholars and scientists who keep changing their minds; what was good yesterday is now bad today. I see students in school every day who are bored and see no hope. How many students are asked to dream? Most are told that if they study hard, keep their mouths shut and pay their outrageous tuition, they too may someday share the good life. Where are their dreams?

How many students and employees do you know who go to work or school every day with a dream in their hearts? Perhaps that is why we resonate with the words of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. How many of you reading this blog have a dream? Is a dream a waste of time? Would a dream help us to transform our lives? Imagine for a second if the goal of government was to help every citizen to transform their dreams into reality? I tell my students and clients that dreams become reality when we set a plan in place to transform our dreams into concrete action items with dates and priorities and sequencing. How many students and employees learn how to do that and are encouraged to do that?

Yesterday, I was substitute teaching for a group of students who had been expelled from their mainstream classes for a variety of reasons. Several of these students had parole officers. You would think given their behavior and attitudes that they would have given up on the idea of a career but that was not the case. One student had to ask five others (as part of an assignment) what they wanted to be when they left school. The answers included: police officer, firefighter, architect, computer game designer and business person. Given that the probability of these students getting into college seemed more remote than their getting into jail; I was touched by their goals and aspirations.

You could argue that they had brought their present circumstances on by their own behavior and you would be right. However, what is the behavior that resulted in their becoming pariahs in the school system? For the record, it was fighting, drugs, disobedience and unwillingness to conform to school rules. Looking beyond these surface reasons, the underlying problems with all of them were boredom and an inability to find any meaning in the traditional school curriculum. I assisted one student with an on-line algebra quiz (he got a 95%) and I could not help but think that I had the same material when I went to high school 47 years ago and have never had to use any of it since then. When was the last time you had to multiply 7 5/33 X 14 2/9? Maybe I am missing something, but I think we are forcing everyone through the same molds and expecting rabbits to fly, ducks to climb, eagles to run and monkeys to swim. We have a one size fits all school program and you either conform, drop out or are kicked out. In too many organizations, employees are hired based on “whether they will fit in or not.” We say we want innovation but then we reward and hire for conformity.

I wonder how many of us would continue to hold onto a dream if we were systematically ostracized by our friends and the community we lived in. What are your dreams? What are your dreams for your country? What are your dreams for your loved ones? How do you plan to help make these dreams a reality? What if you were measured by the breadth of your dreams? How would you stack up?

What is crazy time? Have you ever done anything to earn the label of crazy?

Crazy time today often has a very negative connotation. We think of the crazies in our world and the damage they often do. We try to figure out what made them crazy or what ticked off their crazy streak. We wonder “How could anyone do something so bizarre? What made them do such things?” However, being somewhat crazy and having some crazy time can have other connotations. For instance, many of us are straitlaced and very uptight. We are constantly honed to think about our duties, responsibilities and obligations to others and ourselves. There comes a time when maybe we all need to let go of these, to become somewhat “crazy.” Here are four definitions of the word crazy:

1. Mentally deranged; demented; insane.
2. Senseless; impractical; totally unsound: a crazy scheme.
3. Informal. Intensely enthusiastic; passionately excited: crazy about baseball.
4. Informal. Very enamored or infatuated (usually fol. by about): He was crazy
about her. (www.dictionary.com)

No one wants the first definition to apply to them, but the second definition has often been applied to geniuses and entrepreneurs, while the third and fourth definitions have probably applied to all of us at one time or another. Who among us is not crazy about something? Thus, craziness is simply a state of being that others do not share at that time. Craziness may also be the essence of nonconformity. Those who dance to their own drummers seldom share the same state of being that others do.

Thus, going a little crazy might be good not only for our spirit but also for our creative side. Who among us would venture out and do anything really unique or different if they afraid to flaunt convention and practical reality? In fact, craziness might just be the sine qua non of the adventurous and spirited. Crazy people can not care what others think or whether they are being "normal." Was Steve Jobs normal or Albert Einstein or Dr. W. E. Deming? Maybe we should all be more crazy.

Have you ever been called crazy? Why? Do you ever indulge in activities that others think are crazy? What would your life be like if you were just a little more crazy? What if you danced a little crazier? Acted a little crazier? Dressed a little crazier?

What is the meaning of life? Did Shakespeare know it?

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 Act 5, scene 5, 19–28

Did Shakespeare really write this and all of the other works we give him credit for? A recent movie Anonymous plumbs this centuries old canard again. Amazing we spend more time worrying about who said this, then what the author meant. I don’t really care if Shakespeare wrote this or some miscreant wrote it who will forever remain unnamed. The profundity of the writings and the messages in these writings will echo down the halls of history for as long as humans walk the earth. They have infinitely more meaning than we can ever fathom and it matters not one wit who wrote them.

Think about the above passage. We are but fools whose time is short and we do not recognize it. We prance and clown and pose as though we were so important that whatever we do or say really matters. Our leaders (politicians, educators and ministers) act as though their ideas and positions are the most important in the world and everyone else's position is that of a fool. Brown eyed people are superior to blue eyed people. Conservatives are superior to liberals. Catholics are superior to Jews. Americans are superior to everyone else in the world. Rich are superior to poor. Educated are superior to uneducated. Hard workers are superior to lazy workers. We learn all of these lies and more in one monstrously and hideously orchestrated effort to make our lives have real meaning.

We (you and I and everyone else) have not the slightest clue as to what real meaning is. We don’t know the difference between fact and theory or between science and art or between a truth and a lie. However, we have experts and thousands of talking heads to tell us what the difference is. Armed with the beliefs of the righteous, we sally forth upon the stage to strut our stuff. Our scenes will be over all too shortly but for a few brief moments, we can pretend that our petty lives are so important that everything else is secondary to them. This gives us the meaning that we all seek to sort out the reason and purpose of our existence on this planet.

However, there is no real meaning in ideas or in things or in egos that depend on being right or better or greater than others. Having more stuff, being wealthier or having more money has never been a passage to meaning. Any meaning we have from these positions is like the proverbial house built on sand. We see this every day in our “heroes’ who strut briefly upon the stage only to find that a short time later they are being booed off it. Meaning does not lie in things, or status or stuff or positions.

Meaning is a process. Meaning is ongoing and never ending. Like the horizon that keeps retreating as we get closer. You never obtain meaning since you must forever be reconstructing it. It changes every day and is never the same. What has meaning for you will not have meaning for me or perhaps for anyone else. Meaning is timeless and cannot be captured or bottled. Once you “capture” meaning it is no longer meaning. Then you have status and ego. The company position you so badly wanted might have created meaning in your life as you worked diligently and faithfully toward obtaining it. However, once it was obtained, you now began to define your life by it and you slowly but inexorably lose the meaning of your life.

This is how it happens with everything we want. Once we obtain it: fame, fortune, status, a custom motorcycle, once we have it, we now have lost our purpose and the meaning (for better or worse) of our life slowly erodes. Meaning is killed by stagnation and stagnation is a position while meaning is motion. Meaning is fluid and dynamic and each day brings new meaning when we are in process. Once the process becomes a product, we are no longer in meaning. Once we are defined by what we have or what we own, we have lost our meaning. Life becomes a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.

What is the meaning of your life? Have you found your meaning? What can you do to find it if you have not yet found it? Have you ever thought you had found the meaning of life and then lost it? Why?