“Anything truly novel is invented only during one’s youth”

This summer I read Walter Isaacson’s illuminating biography of Albert Einstein, the man who is widely considered to be the greatest thinker of the 20th Century. In 1905, when he was only 26 years old, he published four groundbreaking papers that forever changed the way people understood space, time, mass, gravity and energy.

By the time Einstein turned 40 in 1919, at a moment when he was struggling to devise a unified theory of matter, he complained to a friend that “Anything truly novel is invented only during one’s youth. Later, one becomes more experienced, more famous – and more blockheaded“.

Einstein’s frustration at his diminished capabilities as he aged is a phenomenon that is considered common with mathematicians and physicists who seem to make their greatest contributions to science before they turn 40. Einstein remarked to a colleague that as he got older he felt his intellect slowly becoming crippled and calcified.

Why does this happen? In Einstein’s case, it was partly because his early successes had come from his rebellious traits. In his youth, there was a link between his creativity and his willingness to defy authority and the universally accepted cosmological laws of his day. He had no sentimental attachment to the old order and was energized at the chance to show that the accepted knowledge was wrong or incomplete. His stubbornness worked to his advantage.

After he turned 40, his youthful rebellious attitudes were softened by the comforts of fame, renown, riches and a comfortable home. He became wedded to the faith of preserving the certainties and determinism of classical science – leading him to reject the uncertainties inherent in the next great scientific breakthrough, quantum mechanics. His stubbornness began working to his disadvantage as he got older.

It was a fate that Einstein began fearing years before it happened. He wrote after finishing his most groundbreaking papers: “Soon I will reach the age of stagnation and sterility when one laments the revolutionary spirit of the young“. In one of his most revealing statements about himself, Einstein complained: “To punish me for my contempt of authority, Fate has made me an authority myself“. He found it even harder as he got older acknowledging “the increasing difficulty a man past fifty always has adapting to new thoughts”.

Einstein brilliance is beyond compare, but I can relate to his observation about doing your best work when you are young. When I look back at my personal life and work career, I recognize that I was at my most ambitious and innovative during the decades of my 20’s and 30’s.

My adult life exploded with big events in 1982, the year that I turned 22. In the timespan of that one year I managed to graduate from college, marry my college sweetheart, start my first professional job as an engineer, buy a new house and a new car, and learn that my wife and I were going to become first-time parents. I remember filling out a survey designed to measure the amount of stress in your life during that eventful year and being surprised when the calculated stress numbers registered so high that they indicated I should be dead!

But all of it was exhilarating to me at that point in my life. I was experiencing new things and accumulating knowledge like a sponge. I knew that my growing family would be counting on me to be a good provider – which gave me the incentive I needed to focus on building a stable career.

I was determined to be successful in my engineering role and threw myself into learning everything I possibly could about the company I worked for as well as the electronic test and measurement equipment that they manufactured.

Many of my co-workers had graduated from more prestigious universities than me and I felt that I had something to prove. I wanted to make a name for myself and grow my reputation and value within the company by making important contributions to the projects to which I was assigned.

I took several continuing education engineering classes at night to improve my knowledge of subject areas that I knew would be helpful to me at work, I sought out brilliant co-workers who could mentor me and give me wise advice on how to approach complex technical projects, and I questioned everything – wondering if there might be a better solution to the problems we were trying to solve.

This drive in my early career to be successful enabled me to do my most innovative and important work for the company during the decades of my 20’s and 30’s. In the span of my first 18 years working for the company, I was awarded two patents, helped develop multiple new test products which generated millions of dollars for the company, created automated software regression tests significantly lowering product development times while improving software quality, and published frequent technical articles for industry conferences and trade journals.

By the time I turned 40, I could point to many important career milestones and had achieved recognition as a top performer and leader within the company. The rewards of my hard work were a comfortable home and financial independence. With this success I began to have feelings of contentment that lessened my drive to take on new projects or solve interesting problems. I became comfortable and happy with life as it was – I no longer felt the need to over-extend myself.

I was satisfied to rest on my past achievements and to take on less tasking roles that would improve the product in evolutionary, rather than revolutionary ways. Over time, I became the wise, experienced, older mentor to younger employees who came to me for advice and direction.

I felt okay with that transition as I considered it my good fortune to be in a situation where I was able to share my knowledge with a new generation of ambitious young people who were ready to make their own marks on the world by inventing novel new solutions that were now beyond me. In some ways, being a part of those collaborative efforts made me feel better than my individual personal accomplishments.

The famous journalist Ed Bradley once interviewed Bob Dylan in 1998 on the television show 60 minutes, at a time when he was approaching 60 years old. During the course of the interview, Bradley asked Bob what the source of inspiration was for his famous early songs, the ones that led to him being recognized as the voice of a generation while he was still only in his 20’s.

Dylan replied that his early songs were almost magically written and that he felt some kind of power, outside of himself, flowing through him while was writing them. When Bradley asked if he could still tap into that penetrating magic now in his songwriting, Dylan paused and said; “No, I don’t know how I got to write those songs“. Bradley followed up and asked if that disappointed him, Dylan replied softly; “Well you can’t do something forever and I did it once… and I can do other things now – but I can’t do that“.

That is a healthy way, I believe, of thinking about what is possible for each of us as we age. My days of endless ambition and innovative thinking are past. But I can do other things now that I couldn’t do then. I can indulge hobbies that interest me, I can find new paths to hike and rivers to fish, I can help care for my mother in her old age and I can share what I have learned through my life experiences and pass it on to my grandchildren and the larger community via this blog.

There will only ever be one Einstein, none of us will ever be as brilliant as him – but if you are under 40, get busy by putting your spry young mind and youthful ambition to work! Maybe you too can come up with novel ideas and ways of doing things that will help change the world or someone’s life for the better.

And if you are over 40, you can be like Einstein in his older years; contributing in a positive way to his community and sharing his wisdom, experience and good fortune with the next generation. In the end, many of our late in life pursuits that we share with others can end up being more rewarding and meaningful to us than any personal accomplishments we achieve along the way.

Dancing Our Sorrow Away

When I was in College, the Jackson Browne album “Late for the Sky” was in heavy rotation on my apartment turntable. The album’s introspective songs had a certain appeal to a young man growing up and just starting to make his way in the world because they asked big questions about the purpose of life and how to think about all the tricky emotions that come with adulthood.

His song “For a Dancer” acknowledges one of the sad truths about life: that one day everyone and everything we love will be gone. Knowing this, Jackson sings that we owe it to those we love to make a joyful sound with our lives while we are here – and to do our best to spread seeds that will blossom long after we are gone.

Listen on Youtube to: Jackson Browne: “For a Dancer”

The final verse of the song reminds us that we all know people who have had a positive impact on our life (a teacher, coach, parent, friend) and who helped us to become who we are. Those people did great things for us, usually without knowing it. We are likewise called, Jackson sings, to have a positive impact on the lives we touch – even though we may never live to see the fruit of our labors.

Into a dancer you have grown
From a seed somebody else has thrown
Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own
And somewhere between the time you arrive
And the time you go
May lie a reason you were alive
That you’ll never know

Jackson Browne “For a Dancer“

The song was written as a moving meditation on the death of Browne’s friend; who died in a fire at a young age. Browne explained that his friend was an interesting guy; a great dancer; a great tailor who would make his friend’s clothes; an ice skater who skated for the Ice Follies. “He was a Renaissance man and when I wrote him the song – I was trying to express the idea that your life is a dance”.

I like that image of our life as a dance and that we never know when it will be our last time on the stage. When I think of dancing, I think of being uninhibited, of letting my body react to the beat of the music, and of sharing a joyful personal moment with my dance partner.

When you are busy dancing, you are not worrying about your troubles, or the problems that that you will face tomorrow. Dancing is one of life’s rare human rituals; a moment of pure expression when you are able to forget about your ultimate fate and just focus on making a joyful noise.

A recent Youtube video created by the School of Life Company echoed a similar philosophy about the benefit of living life in the moment. The video was a commentary on the cultural expression “…rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic“, that is often used by people when they want to convey the futility or meaninglessness of a task.

Those familiar with the fate of the Titanic know that the hull was damaged and that the ship was destined to sink; so for the passengers on that ship to concern themselves with the position of the deck chairs is a failure on their part to recognize the true hopelessness of their situation.

Our life situation can become a little like passengers on a doomed liner. Our larger hopes in life have not come to fruition. We have come to see that our career won’t ever flourish; our relationships will always be less than ideal; we’ve passed our peak in terms of looks; our bodies begin to fall prey to ever more humiliating illnesses; society is becoming more dysfunctional than ever and political progress looks highly improbable.

It can start to feel like our ship is going down and that it would be silly trying to improve our condition, let alone find pleasure and distraction in our daily life. It would be to live in denial of the facts. Our instinct instead is to become pessimistic and gloomy about our ultimate end.

However, there is a crucial element which makes our predicament different from that of the passengers who lost their lives on the Titanic. Those passengers only had a few hours to contemplate their fate before the ship broke apart and sank into the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Our ship is going down too, but much more slowly. It’s as if the captain has let it be known that our ship is sinking and we can’t be rescued… but it will likely be a decade or more before we meet our final fate.

So, though we can’t be saved, though the end will be grim, we still have options as how to use our remaining time. We are involved in a catastrophe, but there are better and worse ways of passing the time and filling our days. Under those different circumstances, expending thought and effort on ‘rearranging the deck chairs‘ is no longer ridiculous at all, it becomes a logical step; one that can be turned into a higher calling.

When the larger hopes for our lives become impossible, we can learn to grow inventive around lesser, but still real, options for the time that remains. Keeping cheerful and engaged, in spite of everything, can bring some light through the dark storm clouds that you know are ahead.

Consider, for example, that you are on a very gradually sinking luxury liner in the early 20th century, you might every evening strive to put on a dinner jacket, dance the Foxtrot to the music of a string quartet, sing a cheerful song or settle into the ship’s library to read a good book – even as the water begins to pool at your ankles.

Or you might try to engage in a friendly game of shuffleboard on the slightly tilting deck; or decide to drop-in on a wild party in Steerage; help to comfort some despairing fellow travelers; or just try to have a deep and comforting conversation with a new friend – even though you can hear the sound of dishes smashing somewhere in a galley down below.

Of course your life would – from the big picture perspective – still remain a thorough disaster; but you might find that you were at least starting to enjoy yourself.

This kind of attitude and inventiveness is precisely what is need to help us cope with our state. Can we invest the days we have left with meaning even though everything is, overall, entirely dark? Our culture teaches us to focus on our big hopes, on how we can aim for everything going right. We crave a loving marriage, deeply satisfying and richly rewarding work, a stellar reputation, an ideal body and positive social change. What remains when those things are not attainable – when love will always be tricky, politics compromised, or the crowd hostile?

What is our equivalent to seeking the best spot for a deckchair on a sinking Ocean Liner? If marriage is far less blissful than we’d imagined, perhaps we can turn to friendship; if society won’t accord us the dignity we deserve, perhaps we can find a group of fellow outcasts; if our careers have irretrievably faltered, perhaps we can turn to new interests or hobbies; if political progress turns out to be perennially blocked and the news is always sour, we might absorb ourselves in nature or history.

In doing this, we would be turning to what our society might dismiss as Plan-B’s (what you do when you can’t do the things you really want to do). But there’s nothing wrong with that! It just may turn out that the secondary, lesser, lighter, reasons for living are, in fact, more substantial and enjoyable than we imagined.

And after a while we might come to think that they are what we should have been focused on all along – only it has taken a seeming disaster to get us to realize how central they should always have been.

My mother has always been a model to me of this kind of inventive thinking and an example of someone who has always been able to discover new things to do when she can no longer do the things she loves doing.

Now in her 94th year, she has good reasons to be gloomy about her present condition. Her ship has been slowly sinking over the last two decades. She is the last surviving member of her large, close knit, family; she lost her beloved husband after 66 years of marriage; she reads about the passing of friends and acquaintances almost every day in the obituaries; she has lived through several strokes and cardiac operations to place stents in her arteries; she struggles with gradual loss of hearing, eyesight, teeth and memory as well as the humiliating indignities of incontinence and lack of mobility that come with aging.

Despite these life difficulties, it is not in my mother’s nature to be gloomy. She laments what she has lost, yet she finds a reason to be optimistic about her situation and to be happy with the things that she can do. Here are some of the ways my mother has learned to stay cheerful, smiling and engaged in her diminished old age:

• She has learned to navigate an iPad so she can keep track of the Facebook lives of her eight children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
• She has become a late-in life sports fan, following with anticipation the exploits of her favorite New England Patriots and Boston Red Sox teams.
• She volunteers for her Church prayer line ministry, spending time each day praying for those in her parish who are in most need.
• She visits her husband’s grave regularly to sit in contemplation and tend to the flowers and plants.
• She tries to include some form of bodily exercise every day. Short walks with her walker outside on nice days, elderly chair exercises, rubber band stretching exercises.
• She communicates with her smart speaker to listen to music or hear the news (even though she worries about Alexa eavesdropping on her conversations).
• She stays engaged by reading books and bingeing her favorite TV shows.
• She visits French Youtube language web sites so she can enjoy hearing and practicing the French language that she grew up speaking.
• She has become the project manager of her house, assigning her children work to do around the house that she has historically done in the past and overseeing it to make sure it is done to her standards.
• She takes short field trips with her children to places from her past and shares happy memories of the people and events that shaped her life.

I co-share caretaker duties with my siblings and I feel blessed to spend one or two days every week with my mother. It has been a privilege for me to watch how she accommodates the frailties of old age without sacrificing her spirit. She knows the end is near, but she is not afraid; and until the end comes she is determined to wake up with a reason for living – and make sure the deck chairs are properly arranged on the deck.

May we too always find a way to dance our sorrows away.

Feeling Like a Stranger Nobody Sees

Bob Dylan recently celebrated his 80th birthday by releasing a film noir streaming art movie of him singing songs from his early career. The movie was filmed entirely in black & white and was appropriately named Shadow Kingdom because throughout the film dark shadows obscure the musicians and most of the surroundings.

Screenshot from Bob Dylan’s Shadow Kingdom Film

The set reminded me of something right out of an old twilight zone episode, a 1940’s style dark and smoky nightclub where the dozen or so people in the barroom sit at tables with their drinks and cigarettes, or mingle out on the dance floor slowly grooving to the music of Bob’s four piece band.

I realized while watching that Bob was clearly the oldest person in the film – there doesn’t appear to be a person in the band or in the audience who is older than 40 – most appear to be in their 20’s and 30’s. I’m not sure if it was his intention, but it would not surprise me to learn that Bob specifically wanted to surround himself with young people. After all, he is the man who wrote Forever Young and the one who made famous the observation that “He not busy being born is busy dying“.

For Bob it seems as if age is not a number but an attitude, and throughout his career he has refused to become a nostalgia act or to live on his past glories. Instead he has continuously changed and reinvented himself; and along the way he has succeeded in making music that is relevant and appealing to every generation. One look at the mix of young and old faces at his concerts demonstrates his ability to speak to all ages.

Which is difficult to do because in today’s society the elderly are often overlooked by the young. As people get older, they often get the feeling that they are being ignored and that they are becoming invisible within their communities. A couple lyrics from Bob Dylan’s later songs indicate that even someone as famous as him is not immune from this feeling.

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees
Feeling like a stranger nobody sees

Lyrics from song Mississippi by Bob Dylan

I see people in the park forgetting their troubles and woes
They’re drinking and dancing, wearing bright-colored clothes
All the young men with their young women looking so good
Well, I’d trade places with any of them
In a minute, if I could

Lyrics from song Highlands by Bob Dylan

In these lyrics, Bob ponders the predicament which many old people find themselves in. Just when they should start feeling fortunate for reaching their seventh or eighth decade of life, their bodies become old and frail and they find themselves becoming unvalued outsiders. It seems as if the world speeds up and they just become spectators to life happening around them.

Strangers who once smiled and acknowledged them as they walked past begin passing by without even a glance. They become self-conscious about their appearance and failing senses and withdraw further into isolation, sadly contributing towards their own “invisibility”.

The author Helen Garner, in her 2015 essay The Insults of Age, writes that women especially have always had an acute awareness of growing old. Her essay explores all the cruel ways in which getting older means being erased from a culture that equates youth and beauty with value. “Your face is lined, and your hair is grey, so they think you are weak, deaf, helpless, ignorant and stupid. It is assumed that you have no opinions and no standards of behavior and that nothing that happens in your vicinity is any of your business.”

My father as he got older suffered from COPD (which made it a struggle for him to breathe) and hearing decline (which made it hard for him to follow group conversations). Despite this, he was beloved by his eight children for his wisdom, good nature, and the code of honor with which he lived his life.

But I remember my mother telling me about an incident that occurred that was very hurtful to my father when he was older. There were a group of people sitting around the table having a discussion about a specific topic. My father ventured to offer his opinion on the subject when one of the young people interrupted and told him that “Nobody really cares what you think“.

Those words were a shock for my father to hear. He was a man of integrity who was used to being treated with respect and dignity throughout his life and whose opinion was always highly valued. To bluntly be told that nobody cared what he thought was like a slap in the face. With incidences like this happening to the elderly is it any wonder why they become confused and retreat into isolation?

There was a time in the past when the elderly were revered, cared for, and sought out for their wisdom. It seems that today they are instead viewed as a burden and out of touch with the way the world operates. There is a generation of people that are overlooked every day.

Age should not define a person or diminish respect from others. According to the American Psychological Association, people who do not feel connected are at increased risk of depression, dementia, and poor self-esteem – all factors that can affect physical and mental health and overall life satisfaction.

And this problem between the generations is only likely to get worse as aging adults shuffle themselves off into sterile retirement communities that bill themselves as “God’s Waiting Room” while young adults flock to the vibrancy and vitality of urban cities. Both sides lose in this segregation of the generations as it becomes difficult for the young to imagine what their life might look like when they are older and the old forget what it is like to see the world for the first time through new eyes.

In a society that idolizes youth and youth culture, it can be difficult to understand and address the challenges older adults face. Changing society’s perception of the elderly is beyond me, but I can try to go out of my way to fully engage with the older adults I encounter in my day-to-day activities – to show them that I see them and that they are not invisible!

If each of us made a small effort to be friendly with the older adults we encounter, to listen to what they have to say and to treat them with dignity, then we would all be richer for the experience. Old folks have a lifetime of experiences to share and many interesting stories to tell – if we only give them the chance.

Perhaps there is a selfish motivation behind my efforts to fight the stigma of aging. After all, pretty soon I will be considered an old timer (my ten year old grandson already calls me an oldster); and I hope people will still see me and treat me with dignity as my body runs down. Invisibility is a good Superpower to have in the movies but, I imagine it must get pretty lonely in real life when nobody ever really sees you.

Keep On the Sunny Side

It seems like everyone I talk to believes that 2020 was a terrible year. It’s easy to understand why given the COVID-19 pandemic, the global recession, numerous episodes of racial injustice, refugees fleeing their homes, continued global warming, and to top it off, a bitter election year battle for the soul of the America.

Every day we are assaulted with negative news about wars, shootings, protests, pollution, inequality, poverty and the proliferation of nuclear weapons. These stories suggest that the world is in bad shape and many people living today are convinced that things here on earth have never been worse.

Despite all the depressing news coverage, people ought to be told that the world has actually never been better than it is right now. As hard as it is for us to believe – humans, as a species, are doing a lot better than we ever have.

That is the conclusion that Harvard professor and acclaimed science writer Steven Pinker comes to in his 2018 Ted Talk and in his book Enlightenment Now. Pinker argues that the world is not that bad. In fact, he says when you look at all of the objective data, our world is in the best shape it’s ever been and humanity is improving every day. He concludes that now is the best time in the history of the world to be alive.

We know that people did not live well in the distant past, regardless of how much money they had. For the vast majority of human history — if you were lucky enough to survive childbirth, life really was nasty, brutish and short. It was lived at the edge of starvation, and to modern eyes it looks unpleasant, boring and sometimes terrifying.

Pinker uses numerous categories as a yardstick to measure the variety of ways that the world is better for humans now compared to the past:

We’re all Living Longer

The average life expectancy of people today compared to the past clearly shows that humanity is flourishing. Just 250 years ago, one-third of children in the world’s richest countries did not live to see their fifth birthday. Today, even in the world’s poorest countries, more than 94% of children survive past their fifth birthday.

The life expectancy of a person born in England in the year 1558 was 22 years old! It slowly increased over the next few hundred years but it wasn’t until 1907 that the average life expectancy reached 50.

Today the average worldwide life expectancy is 70 years old and in developed countries it is over 80. There is nowhere on Earth where life expectancy is less than 50.

The advancements we’ve made globally in the last 100 years, even in our poorest, most war-torn countries, are incredible. The life expectancy in Somalia today is higher than the highest life-expectancy of any country in the world 100 years ago. In this respect even the poorest of third world countries is better off today than the richest, most powerful countries were in the early 20th century.

It is hard for those of us living today to imagine living during a time when so many people died so young. But all you have to do is walk around an old cemetery of people who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries to get an idea of how commonplace it is to encounter the gravestones of infants and children who died at a very young age; and how remarkable it is to encounter a gravestone of someone who lived past 80.

As an example, during a recent hike I came upon an old cemetery and was struck by the tragic family gravesite of Ansel & Esther Howard. They had three daughters: Sally born in 1825, Silvia born in 1827 and Nancy born in 1834. All of them died young. Nancy in 1836 at the age of 2, Silvia in 1845 at the age of 18 and Sally in 1846 at the age of 21. What heartache their parents must have suffered.

Family Gravesite of Ansel & Esther Howard

We’re Healthier Now

A big factor behind the gradual increase of human longevity has been incremental advancements made by the medical field over time. The discovery of antibiotics, vaccines, targeted medicines and proven disease treatment protocols – along with the increasing availability of clean tap water – have kept us alive and made our lives less miserable.

Our increasing knowledge of the human machine and how to keep it healthy has directly led to more people adopting healthy lifestyle regimens (diet, exercise and sleep) that when followed prevent or delay the onset of aging related diseases.

Thanks to the discovery of antibiotics like penicillin, developing an infection does not have to mean death or the amputation of a body part; and thanks to vaccines, virulent contagious diseases like Smallpox (which was responsible for the deaths of more than 300 million people in the 20th century) no longer terrorize the earth.

We’re Safer Now

If you only paid attention to the news, you would probably think that crime is at an all-time high, when in actuality the American crime rate is at a 50 year low and roughly half of what it was in 1990. In the last thirty years alone, the homicide rate has dropped from 8.5 per 100,000 to 5.3 per 100,000.

There is also less conflict between countries today. Before the advent of modern democracies most of the world was run by fanatics and madmen like Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan who would destroy entire cities and murder their populations over the slightest provocation.

During the 1950s, there were an average of six international wars per year going on, with approximately 250 people per million dying war-related deaths. In the last ten years the world has averaged only one war per year with less than 10 people per million dying per year. There has also been a reduction in the number of nuclear arms from more than 60,000 in 1988 to 10,325 in 2017.

There are still far too many conflicts in the world, but as hard as it might be to believe, there are much less of them than there ever have been before.

And let’s not forget that a great Civil War was fought to eliminate the scourge of a robust slave trade that abducted millions of Africans, shipped them to foreign shores where they lived in bondage and were subjected to the atrocities of rape, beatings, family separations, lynchings, racial hatred and political disenfranchisement.

Other developments over the last 50 years years that have served to make us safer include:

• Labor laws ensuring greedy businesses do not exploit children or force workers to toil under unsafe operating conditions.
• Civil rights laws preventing discrimination against employees and job applicants on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age.
• Department of Transportation agencies establishing codified safety standards for automobiles, highways, railroads, aircraft, boats and the safe transport of hazardous materials.
  • Because of our adherence to these safety standards over the last century we’ve become 96% less likely to die in a car accident, 88% less likely to be killed on the sidewalk, 99% less likely to die in a plane crash, 95% less likely to be killed on the job, and 89% less likely to die from a natural disaster.
• Environmental Protection regulations protecting the nation’s air, land and water from being polluted by the waste generated by the Industrial Revolution.

Prior to these environmental protections laws, the industrial waste generated by factories was allowed to be dumped directly into the environment poisoning the air, land, and water and sickening the people who came in contact with it. Thirty years ago in the US, there were 35 million tons of hazardous particulate matter in the air, today that has been reduced by 40% to 21 million tons.

As a young boy growing up in the 1970’s I remember there were rivers that were considered too polluted to fish because they were downstream from a paper mill or factory. Other rivers had no fish because they had been killed from the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide compounds that poured into the streams in the form of “Acid Rain”. Today, these rivers run clean and the fish thrive.

There is Less Poverty Now

Global poverty is one of the worst problems that the world faces. The poorest in the world today suffer with diminished health because they are often hungry, poorly educated and have no reliable access to electricity, plumbing or medical care.

For much of history, only a small elite enjoyed living conditions that would not be described as ‘extreme poverty’ today. But with the onset of industrialization and rising productivity, the share of people living in extreme poverty started to decrease. Over the course of the last two centuries, one of the most remarkable achievements of humankind has been the reduction in the share of people that are living in extreme poverty.

Two hundred years ago 90% of the people in the world suffered from extreme poverty, today less than 10% do. As recently as 50 years ago, half of the people in the American South lived in extreme poverty and had no hope of improvement – but today no southern state has a poverty rate higher than 20%.

Cutting the global poverty rate in half since 1990 has translated into approximately one billion less starving, desperate people in the world today.

The trend continues to be positive due to globalization of the world’s economies and government social programs that provide aid to the needy. It is important however, for us living today to recognize how incredibly privileged we are to live at a time when, thanks to technological advancements, even the poorest citizens live in more comfort than the richest kings of yesterday.

We’re more Educated Now

When my mother was a young girl growing up in the 1930’s she was lucky to attend elementary school through the 7th grade. She was part of a farming family and her father thought it was more important for her and her seven siblings to stay home and help him run the farm.

That was the norm back when children were put to labor at an early age on the farm or in the factories. Educating children was not a priority or a requirement, so many children never participated in formal school training.

Before the 17th century, only 5% of Europeans could read or write. Today, more than 90% of the world’s population under the age of 25 can read and write. Literacy is at an all-time high and a more educated populace has had a direct effect on lowering the global poverty rate.

In addition, patriarchal dominated systems around the world are now being pressured to offer equal education opportunities for the women in their country that were denied in the past.

We’re more Productive Now

Constant advancements in science and technology have been the foundation underlying most of the reasons why humans are better today. Poverty, life-expectancy and quality of life are all better because science is being harnessed to make us more productive.

Take hunger as an example. Back in the 1970s, many people were concerned that the world would not have enough food to keep up with the growing population. That fear was portrayed in the old movie Soylent Green. Food shortages would have been a major problem indeed, had not science made remarkable advancements in the areas of agriculture and food-resource management which enabled the food industry to exponentially increase their crop yields.

People also have more free time today to devote to productive pursuits because new labor-saving gadgets have been invented that dramatically reduce the amount of time we spend doing housework. In the last 100 years, the average time spent doing housework has fallen from 60 hours a week to fewer than 15 hours a week! That gives modern humans an additional 45+ hours per week to spend pursuing productive activities, making it possible for women to leave home, join the workplace, and make positive contributions to society.

Finally, the advent of the world-wide Internet and global cellular communications has had a tremendous multiplying effect on society’s productivity. We take it for granted today that most everybody has a smart phone genie in their pocket that, within seconds, can connect them to anyone at any time, give them precise directions on how to navigate to any destination, play any song ever recorded or answer any question that they can think up.

None of this technology existed 20 years ago. Think about how amazing it is that you can find just about anything you want within seconds – a book, a movie, a new pair of boots. We get to live in the kind of world that used to be imagined only in science-fiction novels. My 92 year old mother, who we are training to use an iPad, stares at us in wide-eyed wonder when we show her what she can do with the device. She can attend her Church service, visit with her grandchildren and watch her soap opera all without leaving her chair!

Of course, constant communication and information overload also plays a part in explaining why everyone is so convinced that things in the world are so bad now. Everything is so immediate, the entire world laid out in real-time before us – and that can be scary and stressful.

But the information overload may actually help save us because it makes us look the world in the face and confront all the evil that has nowhere to hide anymore. We can’t pretend George Floyd wasn’t unjustly killed because we all watched him slowly murdered by the police on our TV screens and Twitter feeds. In a sense, the outrage, horror and disgust that gets generated by exposing these heinous events actually helps keep the world from spinning further out of control by bending the arc of the moral universe further toward justice.

Contemplating all the ways that the world is better for humans today compared to the past was a good exercise for me because, as my wife reminds me, I do have a tendency sometimes to focus on the negative (when I do this, my wife calls me Eeyore because my behavior reminds her of the gloomy sidekick character portrayed in the Winnie the Pooh children’s books).

You can always fool yourself into seeing a decline if you compare the constantly bleeding headlines of the present with the rose-tinted memories of the past.

Pinker concludes that while the world still has plenty of problems to solve, it’s healthier for us to look at the big picture and see the glass as half full. “We will never have a perfect world, but there’s no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing and if we think of issues like climate change and nuclear war as problems to be solved instead of apocalypses in waiting.”

I have a new appreciation for all the blessings that come with living in the present age, I feel grateful to be a beneficiary of all the progress the world has made, and I look toward the future with optimism, in the hope that it will be an even better world for my grandchildren.

So, I salute 2020 as the best year ever! Henceforth, whenever I feel my inner Eeyore rising, I will remember how good I have it and remind myself to always keep on the sunny side of life.

There’s a dark and a troubled side of life
There’s a bright and a sunny side, too
Though we meet with the darkness and strife
The sunny side we also may view

Keep on the sunny side, always on the sunny side
Keep on the sunny side of life
It will help us every day, it will brighten all the way
If we’ll keep on the sunny side of life

Lyrics to old Folk Spiritual “Keep on the Sunny Side of Life” as sung by the Carter Family

No Gain without some Pain

When the Coronavirus epidemic first began to shut down the economy and close the schools, the audio book company Audible announced that they would offer free access to a collection of classic audio books – “so that kids everywhere can instantly stream an incredible collection of stories… that will help them continue dreaming, learning, and just being kids“.

I took advantage of Audible’s generosity by listening to several classic novels, one of which was Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray“. The 1890 novel tells the story of of a cultured, wealthy, and impossibly beautiful young man named Dorian Gray.

Dorian’s artist friend Basil, is so taken by Dorian’s appearance and noble bearing that he badgers him into sitting for a portrait. While putting the finishing touches on the portrait, which elegantly depicts the young Dorian as a handsome mythological figure, Dorian is introduced to Lord Henry Wotton.

Lord Henry is an upper-class intellectual who is popular in social circles for his amusing wit and charms, and for his selfish pursuit of pleasure. Upon observing Dorian’s portrait, Lord Henry praises it as a masterpiece and proceeds to give a speech about the transient nature of beauty and youth.

The speech worries the impressionable young Dorian because he begins to realize that over time his most impressive youthful characteristics will inevitably begin to fade. This leads Dorian to curse his portrait, because he sees it will only come to remind him of the lost beauty he once had. In a fit of distress, he pledges his soul if only the painting would take on the burden of his age while he remained forever young.

His wish is granted. Throughout the years, Dorian’s friends age while he stays the same. His picture, however, gradually changes over time to reflect his increasingly evil and corrupt lifestyle.

Lord Henry corrupts Dorian’s mind and soul by encouraging him to live a life dedicated to the pursuit of pleasure. He gives Dorian a book describing the wicked exploits of a nineteenth-century Frenchman which becomes Dorian’s bible as he sinks ever deeper into a life of sin and corruption.

He lives a selfish lifestyle devoted to garnering new experiences and pleasures, with no regard for conventional standards of morality or the consequences of his actions.

Eighteen years pass. Dorian’s reputation suffers in circles of polite London society, where rumors spread regarding his scandalous exploits. His peers nevertheless continue to accept him because he remains young and beautiful. Meanwhile, the figure in the painting that is locked away in Dorian’s attic grows increasingly hideous. 

Near the end of the novel, Lord Henry asks Dorian how it is that he has managed to remain so young after all these years. He wants to know the secret behind what he believes is Dorian’s “exquisite” life.  

“Tell me Dorian how you have kept your youth. You must have some secret. I am only ten years older than you are, and I am wrinkled, and worn, and yellow. But you are really wonderful, Dorian. You have never looked more charming than you do to-night. You remind me of the day I saw you first. You were rather cheeky, very shy, and absolutely extraordinary. You have changed, of course, but not in appearance. I wish you would tell me your secret. To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.”

Quote from “Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde

While listening to this novel, it struck me how strong the human longing is for eternal youth and how many schemes have been promoted over the years promising quick and painless ways to achieve it.

Since the beginning of recorded history, people have been searching for a Fountain of Youth. Tales of a mythical spring that can restore the youth of anyone who drinks or bathes in its waters show up in many historical writings – some dating as far back as the 5th century BC.

Based on these many legends, early explorers and adventurers looked for the elusive fountain, or some other remedy generally associated with magic waters, that when drunk or bathed in would reverse the aging process and cure sickness.

Even today, society’s unending pursuit to find some type of easy ‘medicine’ that will keep us forever young continues strong. One of the songs from 79 year old Bob Dylan’s latest album wistfully praises Key West as the place where the rejuvenating virtues of the sun and wind can be found:

Key West is the place to be
If you’re looking for immortality
Stay on the road, follow the highway sign
Key West is fine and fair
If you lost your mind, you will find it there
Key West is on the horizon line

Lyrics from “Key West (Philosopher Pirate)” by Bob Dylan

Fortunately for those of us living today, modern medicine and the discovery of life-saving vaccines have delivered on the promise of extending the human lifespan.

According to the organization Our World in Data, the average global life expectancy for the human species when Oscar Wilde was writing his book was 29 years old. By 1950, the average life expectancy had increased to 46 years – and by 2015 it had grown to 71 years. So, in the course of approximately 200 years mankind has successfully managed to more than double the average human lifespan.

Despite the incredible advances made by the medical and scientific communities to increase our longevity, science teaches us that nobody can live forever – everyone has an expiration date.

There is a ceiling on human lifespan. The longest living person as verified by the Gerontology Research Group was a French woman named Jeanne Calment who died in 1997 at the age of 122.

Theoretical studies suggest that the maximum lifespan a human can achieve under circumstances that are optimal to longevity is approximately 125 years. The process of aging itself constrains our lifespan, which means that until mankind figures out a way to stop aging, not just treat or prevent specific diseases, there isn’t much chance humans will be able to increase their maximum lifespan beyond that age.

Though we accept there is no fountain of youth or chance at immortality, we also know that certain lifestyle habits can help us stay healthy and younger looking as we grow older. Scientists have provided overwhelming evidence that the following lifestyle habits positively contribute to human health and longevity:

• Maintain Healthy Body Weight – Maintaining a healthy body weight lowers the risk of developing diseases and conditions associated with aging such as diabetes, clogged arteries, heart attacks and strokes. People who limit their calorie intake have healthier heart muscle elasticity, blood pressure and inflammatory markers.
• Eat Smart – A healthful diet includes a variety of fruits and vegetables of many colors, whole grains and starches, good fats, and lean proteins. Eating healthfully also means avoiding processed foods with high amounts of added salt and sugar. A 2015 study showed that eating a healthy diet slows cognitive decline, improves bone strength and enhances gastro-intestinal health.
• Exercise – Working out helps combat the loss of bone density and muscle mass that naturally occurs in our skeletons as we get older. A study, published in the International Journal of Sports Medicine concluded that 70-year-olds who regularly lift weights had as much muscle as 28-year-olds. Consistent mobilizing and stretching of our bodies also helps to reduce the effects of aging on joints and muscles.
• Sleep – Sleep acts as a true fountain of youth for our bodies by providing a pathway for our bodies to repair and rejuvenate itself. People who get a good night’s sleep report feeling more alert, energetic, happier, and better able to function. Research shows that sleep plays a critical role in our immune system, metabolism, muscle growth, tissue repair, memory, learning, and growth hormones. It clears away all of the harmful by-products of the cells’ activities that are produced while we are awake. Sleep is so important to our functioning, that animals who are entirely deprived of it lose all immune function and die in just a matter of weeks.
• Form Connections – Positive social connections with other people and a belief in a higher power have been shown to improve physical health and mental and emotional well-being. One landmark study published by Science Magazine showed that lack of social connection is a greater detriment to health than obesity, smoking and high blood pressure. Strong social connections were shown to strengthen our immune systems, help us to recover faster from disease and increase our longevity. People who feel more connected to others have lower levels of anxiety and depression, higher self-esteem, and greater empathy for others.
• Minimize Environmental Toxins – Prolonged exposure to harsh environmental toxins like smoke, pollution, direct sunlight and loud noise can damage and prematurely age our bodies. Without protection from the sun’s rays, daily exposure can cause noticeable changes and damage to the skin and facial wrinkles start forming on the faces of smokers as young as 20.

We have all been given a map that shows us how to maximize our longevity and stay feeling young and healthy for as long as possible. So why is it that so many of us, myself included, have such a hard time changing our lifestyles to adopt these healthy lifestyle habits?

We know what we should do to maintain our health but our human nature gets in the way, making it difficult for us to sacrifice those momentary un-healthy pleasures that tempt us every day for the promise of benefits that we hope to see sometime in the future.

Most people tend to choose the path of least resistance. It is difficult for many people to limit calories and maintain a healthy body weight; it is unpleasant to eliminate unhealthy foods that you love and replace them with healthy foods you do not enjoy; it is painful to motivate yourself to exercise when you feel tired; it takes discipline to shut off today’s 24/7 news and entertainment options so that we do not shortchange our sleep cycles; it takes commitment to cultivate and nourish our social networks; and it is almost humanly impossible to overcome chemical addictions that become rooted in us.

All of those things are hard so it is no wonder that many of us are like Lord Henry Wotten, who strongly desires the youthful qualities he sees in Dorian, but is also unwilling to suffer any pains to his lifestyle habits or pleasures in order to achieve the gains he covets.

The challenge for all of us is to develop the strength to reject our instant gratification tendencies and to keep in mind the eventual long term rewards that we hope to accrue from today’s short term pains. It helps to think of the struggle we are in today as developing the strength we need to have a better tomorrow. As Coco Chanel once remarked, “Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; but it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.”

I do not fear death because I see both birth and death as good things. Death frees up the planet’s limited resources to make room for the next generation and drives us to live purpose-driven lives. But I am apprehensive of a future in which I gradually deteriorate as I age because of sickness, feebleness, pain and cognitive decline. I imagine that living life with those age-related conditions would cause my life to lose much of its flavor.

My goal is to stay healthy and active up until the day I die. I know that is probably unrealistic but at least it is a goal that keeps me motivated to put up with the pains that come with pursuing healthy lifestyle habits.

Even though I often fail by making unhealthy lifestyle choices, I do not give up trying to achieve my goal. Because doing something is better than doing nothing and winning some of the time is better than giving up altogether.

The surprising thing I have found is that the more I try, the easier it gets. I actually feel better when I eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep and connect with friends and family. The effort to live healthy doesn’t have to make us miserable – it can pay dividends that make us happy both in the short and the long term.

So, unlike Dorian Gray, I hope the picture of your journey shows a full life that is well-lived; and may you be healthy and happy until the day you die.

The Eye is the Jewel of the Body

I have been battling a stubborn eye infection for the past 6 weeks. It started with symptoms of redness, swelling, weeping and tenderness in my left eye. Within two weeks my right eye also became infected – eventually becoming worse than my left eye.

To complicate matters, this infection happened to occur during the peak of the coranavirus pandemic – which made it very challenging to meet with doctors and schedule health care appointments.

I managed to book a remote tele-health appointment with my primary care physician, who guessed that I had some form of bacterial conjunctivitis. He prescribed a 7 day course of both oral and eye drop antibiotics that he believed would clear up the infection.

At the end of my seven day treatment, however, my eye infections were really no better. I scheduled a second tele-health visit with another physician who prescribed a different eye drop treatment that contained a more powerful antibiotic.

As soon as I began the new treatment my eye condition became dramatically worse . My eyes began to water constantly and the eyelids became so inflamed and swollen that I could barely open them. My eyes looked and felt as though they had been through a losing 15 round boxing match.

Panicking a little at this development, I began to put double doses of the eye drops in my eyes, hoping that the extra antibiotics would hasten my recovery from the infection. But this only seemed to make my condition worse.

At this point, my doctor recommended that I visit my nearest Urgent Care facility to have my eyes examined. The doctor there believed that my body was having an allergic reaction to the antibiotic eye drops which was causing my eyelids to swell and my eye ducts to become clogged. I was told to discontinue my current treatment immediately and see an eye specialist.

Fortunately, I was able to get an office appointment with an eye doctor who looked at my eyes under a microscope and swabbed them to determine what type of bacteria was the culprit. Based on the examination, I was prescribed a combined steroid/antibiotic treatment and instructed to regularly massage my eyes with hot compresses to help open up the clogged eye ducts.

It was a relief when my eyes began to slowly improve under the positive effects of this new treatment and I am thankful that my eyes have almost returned back to their normal condition.

The whole experience though has given me a greater appreciation of the role the eyes play in our daily life and how important they are to our overall well-being. As Shakespeare observed in Romeo & Juliet “He that is stricken blind can not forget the precious treasure of his eyesight lost“.

Picture Courtesy of Colin Maynard @invent

A number of emotions and concerns took root in my mind while I was battling the course of this malady:

Vanity – According to Henry David Thoreau “The eye is the jewel of the body” and the eyes are indeed the focal point of human relationships – and usually the first thing we notice when we encounter somebody new. It is considered a sign of respect and good manners in our society to look directly into a person’s eyes when you greet them.

So you can imagine that during my ailment I became very self-conscious of my appearance and was reluctant to be seen in public without covering my eyes with sunglasses. My own wife suddenly shrank from my embrace and jokingly began calling me lizard eye.

Because one of the symptoms of the Covid-19 virus happens to be inflamed eyes, the people I encountered seemed to become especially nervous around me. Believe me when I say that once people had a good look at my face they went out of their way to keep socially distant from me.

Fear – As my eye condition continued to deteriorate and stubbornly resisted all forms of treatment despite the use of powerful antibiotics, I began to experience feelings of fear and anxiety over the inability to use my eyes during my everyday routines. I started wondering if there were a real possibility that the illness might cause some kind of permanent damage to my eyesight.

My right eyelid became so swollen that I could only pull it open using my fingers and both eyes watered so much that my vision became very blurry. It became difficult and uncomfortable to do all the everyday ordinary things that requires functioning eyesight (like reading a book, watching a show, working on the computer or tying a fishing knot).

It forced me to consider in the back of my mind how different life would be and how my daily activities would need to change dramatically in order to live with diminished eyesight.

Magnification of other senses – Studies have shown that people who are blind tend to have enhanced abilities in their other senses. Detailed brain scans comparing the brains of people who are blind to the brains of people who are not blind show that individuals with impaired sight have heightened senses of hearing, smell and touch.

I’m not claiming that my other senses increased to superpower levels to compensate for the deterioration of my eyesight – my loss was too short term to re-wire my brain – but what I can say is that my malfunctioning sense of sight caused me to focus more on my other senses and to derive increased pleasure from them.

I closed my eyes and amused myself by listening to music and audio books, I delighted more in the smell of the pleasant scents wafting in the breezy Spring air and in the satisfying mix of flavors in my food, I relished the feel of soaking in the tub and submerging my tender eyes in the warm water.

Now that my eyes are on the mend I must remember that I am failing to appreciate the fullness of life when I let one or more of my senses dominate at the expense of the others.

Simultaneously employing all our senses in concert to their full capacity helps us to live our life in High Definition with Surround Sound quality rather than the limiting Black & White and Mono soundtrack experiences that are provided by the individual senses.

Compassion and Empathy – When we are in the bloom of health, it is human nature for us not to think about the difficulties that other people living with disabilities and impairments must face during the course of their daily life.

My brief encounter with sight impairment gave me a new appreciation for people who must live permanently with one or more disabilities that makes living inconvenient and challenging.

We are told it is a healthy practice to count our blessings and to have a grateful heart. Most people when they count their blessings only think about how grateful they are for the good things in their life. This experience has reminded me that it is equally important for me to be thankful for the afflictions that I have been spared.

When our lives are not burdened by birth defects, diseases, sicknesses, poverty or addictions we find it difficult to show compassion or relate to those who struggle with one or more of these issues every day.

It is good every now and then to put yourself in the shoes of those who are walking a hard road and to remind yourself how you would like to be treated if you were in their shoes – because someday you may be.

As unpleasant as my adventure with this eye infection has been, it has also been a positive learning experience because it has given me a new perspective about the vanity of vanity, forced me to confront and overcome my fears, reminded me to use all my senses to their full capacity and encouraged me to treat with compassion all those who are living with handicaps.

I know that my eyes will eventually fail me as I age, just like the rest of my body will, but I do believe the overall vision I gained from this experience will stay with me until the very end.

“Why can’t I find my words?”

An ailing 93 year old man struggling with terminal health issues was recently talking with my wife about his care preferences and how he would like to spend his remaining days.

The man was a highly-respected member of his community as well as the dignified face of a successful family business whose duties often required him to interact with people during times of great stress in their life. He seemed to have a gift for knowing what to say to people when they needed a kind word or affirmation.

While struggling to explain his wishes for his end of life care, he paused in frustration and said “Why can’t I find my words?“; then in resignation he simply acknowledged “I can feel death coming for me“.

It is sad to see a man who always knew just what to say to suddenly find himself bereft of the one gift he felt he could always count on. Here he was, a lover of language, eloquent no more and unable to transform the thoughts in his mind to words on his lips.

It is only natural that he would become discouraged by his loss of language skills, but his simple statement questioning why he can no longer find his words was profound in itself and carries a lesson that we should all consider.

For me it is a reminder of the importance of having meaningful conversations with the ones we love while we still have our full faculties and can still find the words that express what we want to say. I hope that man did not die with regrets because of words he left unsaid.

As far back as I can remember I have been a lover of language, books and reading. That is probably the reason why I have such a deep connection to the poetic nature of Bob Dylan’s music and why the blog I have been writing since 2013 is called “Words to Live By“.

It has been gratifying for me to see that my two intelligent daughters have also inherited a joyful connection to language and history and to watch them as they pursue rewarding careers that benefit from the skillful way they use their words.

Those skills were on display in these heartwarming excerpts from a sixtieth birthday letter they wrote to me.

I inherited a lot of what makes me myself from you . My cowlick, my reflective manner, my intelligence; with language, ability to think critically, tendency to reflect on what’s important in life, love of music and even the disappointed face I show my children when they’ve misbehaved. I am so grateful.

After Mom’s death, we both did a great deal of growing on our own and figuring out our new places in the world. I am so lucky you gave me the space to explore the world on my own and yet you were still there to catch me every time I made a not so great decision. You supported me every step of the way even if you didn’t understand where I was coming from, and you still do to this day.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ultimately, it was language that always connected us. It’s no surprise to me that your blog posts are prompted by quotes and phrases that inspire you, but it’s ironic because your own words have always been the ones I’ve lived by. From the time I was old enough to read, you’ve written in my birthday cards, “remember who you are”. Little did you know how important the concepts of memory and identity would become in my life, or that my career would be centered on them.

I can’t tell you how many times throughout our relationship I was terrified to tell you about a new life development or decision I made — thinking, surely, THIS will be the thing that pushes my peace-loving and tolerant father over the edge — only to be met by a sweet and reassuring phrase like, “You don’t have to live your life the way that I did — live your life for you.” Or a well timed reference like, “Bob Dylan says this is America. You can be whoever you want to be”.

Letter excerpts from my daughters

It means the world to me that they took time out of their busy lives to “find their words” and communicate them to me so tenderly. So often we look back over our life with regret, second-guessing our actions and wondering if we should have done some things differently. To hear directly from the people we love that overall they think we did a good job is a priceless gift.

The lesson I take from this dying man is that while I still have power over my words, I should use them to nourish all the important relationships in my life – before it is too late. Finding the right words to say about someone who was, or is, meaningful in your life is like a superpower that you can use to enrich somebody else’s life for the better.

A powerful example of the great power and joy words can bring to life can be found between the covers of John Bartlett’s famous book of Familiar Quotations. My daughter gifted me a used copy of this reference book which I have found to be quite mind expanding.

I liken it to drinking from a fire hose of the world’s collected wisdom from the beginning of mankind’s recorded memory. Imagine the curated and condensed wisdom of the world’s best minds (including Solomon, Homer, Confucius, Sophocles, Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Hugo, Dickens, Melville, Whitman, Dostoevsky, Dickinson, Twain, Kipling, Yeats, Proust, Frost and too many other to mention) – all packaged in a single 1100 page volume!

As much as this blog entry advocates for speaking out in a positive way, it was a quote by Publius in 35AD that I read in Familiar Quotations that reminded me that sometimes wisdom is best born in silence – especially when speaking out could hurt people:

“I have often regretted my speech, but never my silence“.

May you always know when it is time for you to speak up and when it is best to keep silent.

It’s Not Dark Yet, But it’s Getting There

I recently celebrated my 60th birthday – a moment of reckoning in one’s life when it seems appropriate to reflect on the bygone days of youth while also wondering what form life will take during the inevitable transition to old age.

The 60th birthday is considered a major milestone in many cultures. In China, someone who has reached the age of 60 is considered to have completed a full life cycle. The 60th birthday is commemorated with great extravagance because it is considered by them to be the beginning of a second life. 

When I think about it, it does seem to me as if I have lived a full life cycle. After all, what more can a man ask out of 60 years of life than to be born into a loving family; be bestowed with good health and a good education; be fulfilled with a satisfying job and rewarding career; be fortunate to find and share in the love of two beautiful women – who made me a proud father, step-father and grandfather to children who are now on their way to living out their own successful life cycles.

It’s funny to think back now of memories I have of playing the old Milton Bradley Board Game of Life in my College apartment with my future fiance and our friends. The game simulates a person’s travels through his or her life, from college to retirement, with jobs, marriage and possible children along the way. The overall goal is to retire as the wealthiest player at the end of the game.

Milton Bradley’s Game of Life

The decisions players make along the way – which include purchasing insurance policies, bank mortgages and stock investments – determine who wins the game of life and who spends their retirement days in Millionaire Estates, Countryside Acres, or the Poorhouse Farm.

Seems like only yesterday I was playing that game, but it was 40 years ago, and I realize I am now at a point where I have completed most of my personal life decisions and ought to be thankful for getting to the end with a winning hand.

I may not have retired the wealthiest man, or live in a Millionaire Estate, but I do live in a comfortable home in a bucolic setting which could easily pass for Countryside Acres. No matter what happens now, I can’t really lose at the game of life because I’ve already won – I’m playing with house money!

One glaring omission in the Life board game that I didn’t notice at the time (because no one who is young ever thinks about getting old) was that it stops at retirement – the end of our 1st life cycle.

The game does not ask the players to consider Medicare or Social Security benefits, Long Term Care insurance, Health Care Proxies, Wills and Trusts, Durable Power of Attorneys, Assisted Living and Nursing Homes, Disability, Hospice, Death, Funerals and burial decisions. All of those elements make up the domain of the second life cycle.

The unrecognizable face of the old man staring back at me from the mirror reminds me that I’m running out of time; as do these song lyrics that I find shuffling more often now in the soundtrack in my mind:

“I don’t look like I used to, I don’t walk like I used to, I don’t love like I used to. Oh… I can’t do the things I used to because I feel old”

“I feel Old” by the Heartless Bastards

“Ain’t gonna need this body much longer, ain’t gonna need this body much more. I put in 10 million hours. Washed up and worn out for sure”

“Don’t Need this Body” by John Mellencamp

“I was born here and I’ll die here, against my will. I know it looks like I’m moving, but I’m standin’ still… Don’t even hear the murmur of a prayer, It’s not dark yet, but it’s gettin’ there”

“Not Dark Yet” by Bob Dylan

I am beginning my journey into the realm of the second life. From what I have observed, people who first enter this realm can become bewildered and embarrassed by the onset of old age and all of the infirmities that begin to come with it.

I was struck by this paragraph from the Grace Paley short story “Friends“, because it captures the awkward unsaid sentiments aging friends can experience when they haven’t seen each other in a while:

People do want to be remembered as young and beautiful. When they meet in the street, male or female, if they’re getting older they look at each other’s face a little ashamed. It’s clear they want to say, ‘Excuse me, I didn’t mean to draw attention to mortality and gravity all at once. I didn’t want to remind you, my dear friend, of our coming eviction, first from liveliness, then from life’. To which, most of the time, the friend’s eyes will courteously reply, ‘My dear, it’s nothing at all. I hardly noticed’.

“Friends” by Grace Paley

My wife’s work at a hospice agency reminds me every week that the end comes before we know it and when it does it is usually painful and undignified. To focus only on this inevitability, however, is a distraction that diminishes all the possibilities for living a rewarding second life.

Instead it is better, I think, to focus on encouraging past research that shows people tend to grow steadily happier as they age. As the moodiness and demands of youth subsides, maturity seems to bring more contentment.

In a Pew Research Center survey, seven-in-ten respondents ages 65 and older said they were enjoying more time with their family, more financial security and more time for volunteer work, travel and hobbies. Sixty percent said they feel more respected and have less stress than when they were younger.

But there is some conflicting research on the subject of aging and happiness and some experts say contentment, no matter what the age, boils down to one thing: Attitude. They say attitude is everything and that the qualities that most contribute to feelings of contentment as we age include:

• Optimism – Older people seem to display a more positive outlook on life than their younger, stressed-out counterparts. As a person’s life expectancy decreases, they tend to focus on what makes them feel good today; rather than mulling over past regrets or future worries. They live in the moment focusing on what is good in their life rather than what has not been achieved.
• Less Want – Jackie Coller wrote: “There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little.” The Buddhists believe that it is the human mind’s craving for things that is the source of suffering. As we age, we tend to become more comfortable and accepting of our lot in life and our role in society – thus reducing the conflicts and anxieties that come with constantly wanting to change our situation.
• Humor – Mark Twain said that “Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place.” Being funny is possibly one of the best things you can do for your health. You can almost think of a sense of humor as your mind’s immune system.

Even though humor improves people’s overall quality of life, it is a hard habit for some people to adopt and practice. They take life too seriously and find it difficult to laugh at themselves or the frequent absurdities that make up our daily life.

In the novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes about an encounter an overly serious young girl has with her wise old Chinese friend:

“Do you think it’s funny to be so serious when I’m not even out of high school?” she asked. “I don’t see how it could be any other way, ” said Lee. “Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn’t in time.”

“East of Eden” by John Steinbeck

With all this in mind, my simple goals for pursuing a second life filled with contentment are:

• to stay optimistic (60 may be old, but it is the youth of old age!)
• to want less (have few desires, be satisfied with what you have!)
• to cultivate my sense of humor (like George Carlin who joked when he turned 60 years of age that he was only 16 Celsius!)

If I am able to a accomplish those goals then maybe I will be lucky enough to feel like Ben Franklin who, at the goodly age of 84, wrote these words as he was preparing for the end of his remarkable second life…

“Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. I look upon death to be as necessary to to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.”

Taken from “The First American – The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin” by H.W. Brands

Greatest of All Time

After New England’s most recent Super Bowl triumph – and the unprecedented success the Patriots have experienced while Tom Brady has quarterbacked the team – it is common to hear sports media experts debating the merits of whether Tom Brady should be considered the “Greatest Of All Time” football player.

Graphic Drawing Courtesy of Felix Yadig

I find these debates amusing because no matter where you stand on the topic it is an argument that is impossible for either side to win or lose because the word “greatest” is ambiguous and it can be defined to mean different things to different people.

Some people equate greatness with athleticism and argue that Tom Brady is not as fast, agile or accurate as other quarterbacks; therefore he does not deserve the honor of being named the greatest of all time. Other people claim Tom Brady has no equal because greatness is measured by wins and championship titles.

In my previous job at a technology company it was stressed by company management to avoid using ambiguous adjectives when describing product results, competitive performance and customer satisfaction. Whenever ambiguous adjectives made their way into a company report, meeting or business email, they would be singled out by management and the author would be asked to replace what were called “Language of Affection” terms with more precise “Language of Report” terms.

Language of Affection terms such as great, beautiful, like, happy, cheap, expensive, fast, slow, satisfied, dissatisfied, terrible, hot, cold, etc. are considered ambiguous because they express subjective opinions. The company considered it misleading and potentially dangerous to make decisions or take actions with company capital based on these type of subjective feelings.

Language of Report terms, on the other hand, are based on objective, demonstrable facts that are specific and measurable. When data is presented using Language of Report terms, it becomes easy to set goals, measure performance and come to agreement about what objectives have been achieved.

In that spirit, rather than trying to debate whether or not Tom Brady should be considered the Greatest quarterback of all time, I have instead researched Tom Brady’s career and produced an itemized list of his accomplishments using Language of Report terms. These are facts and statistics that are specific, measurable and backed by evidence which cannot be disputed.

As impressive as these accomplishments are, it is possible that Tom will only improve upon this list if he continues to play at a high level for another 2 or 3 seasons before he retires – he says he is not done yet.

Tom Brady’s Career Accomplishments

• Player with most Division titles (16)
• Player with most Playoff game appearances (40)
• Player with most Playoff game wins (30)
• Player with most Super Bowl appearances (9)
• Player with most Super Bowl wins (6)
• Quarterback with most regular seasons wins (207)
• Quarterback with most Passing yards (81,693)
• Quarterback with most passing touchdowns (590)
• Most touchdowns thrown to different receivers (71)
• Most Playoff touchdown passes (73)
• Most Playoff passing yards (11,179)
• Most consecutive years scoring at least 400 points (12)
• Player with most Super Bowl MVPs (4)
• Quarterback with most Super Bowl touchdown passes (18)
• Quarterback with most Super Bowl passing yards (2,838)
• Most team wins in the last two decades (252)
• Only team to win 11 or more games for 9 straight seasons
• Most seasons with an undefeated home record (7)
• Most consecutive years earning a postseason playoff Bye (9)
• Most postseason playoff Bye’s since 2001 (13)
• Second most game winning drives (54)
• Second most Fourth Quarter comebacks (44)
• Second most Games started (267)

As important as these objective, measurable facts are for having an intelligent discussion on this topic; they do not paint a complete picture. Tom Brady also possesses many positive intangible qualities – qualities that are not easy to categorize or measure using the Language of Report but have undoubtedly contributed to his success in the league.

• Work Ethic – Tom Brady was not a top NFL prospect. He was the 199th player selected in the sixth round of the 2000 NFL draft. Nobody expected him to be more than a backup quarterback. Yet, he did not lack for confidence – telling the owner Robert Kraft when they first met “picking me was the best decision this organization ever made“. Tom did not start out as an elite quarterback, he made himself into one over time, through hard work, study and sheer will power. Teammates over the years have reported that Tom is usually the first one at the practice facility and the last one to leave.
• Unselfishness – Tom has agreed to team friendly contracts throughout the course of his career. Rather than insisting that he be paid as an elite quarterback, Tom sacrificed a portion of his pay so that it could be used to help improve other player positions that would make the team stronger.
• Football IQ – One of the major things that makes Tom excel at the quarterback position is his ability to read the defense prior to the snap – understanding before the play begins where the opponents weakness is and what the most favorable matchup will be for his team. Because of this innate football intelligence he can get the team in the right play and throw the football quickly before the opposing defense has time to react.
• Team Building – It is often said of the transcendent players in most professional sports that they have the capacity to inspire their teammates to play beyond their capabilities – they somehow know how to get the most out of their teammates. Despite the lack of top-flight receivers throughout his career, Tom ranks consistently near the top of the league every year in passing statistics. He does this by spreading the ball around to all the receivers and making it difficult for the defense to focus on stopping just one person. Tom gets the whole team involved because he is not predictable – his favorite receiver is always the one that is open.
• Leadership – Whenever Tom is given accolades for his accomplishments, he generally credits his success to the players and coaches. He recognizes that football is a team sport and to achieve success requires every player doing their part. One of the New England defensive players told a story about Tom Brady walking around the locker room before the start of a big game delivering individual messages of affirmation to each player to build them up. This kind of leadership makes players feel connected and important and it is why they leave their all on the field for the team.
• Single Mindedness – “Damn you Tom Brady! Why aren’t you dead yet?” screamed a frustrated Kansas City Chief’s fan as he watched Tom Brady methodically lead the Patriots down the field to beat his team in overtime and earn his ninth trip to the Superbowl. Tom continues to perform at a high level because he treats football as a complete lifestyle commitment. He has integrated Football into all aspects of his life, the food he puts into his body, the books he reads, the training he performs, even the pajamas he wears. It is this single minded focus on what he calls “giving up his life” for football that contributes to his longevity and enables him to play the game he loves to the absolutely best of his ability.

You can decide for yourself whether this list of accomplishments and positive personal attributes entitles Tom Brady to be labeled as the greatest quarterback of all time. For Patriots fans it doesn’t really matter how he is judged. What’s more important for us is the countless hours of entertainment and joy we have experienced over the better part of two decades watching football excellence and witnessing team dominance on a scale the likes of which is likely never to be seen again.

May you too strive to be great in all that you undertake.

Time out of Mind

Time is a familiar but mysterious concept. We think about and use it every day, yet it is difficult to describe what it actually is. Saint Augustine puzzled about time when he wrote, “What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I wish to explain it to someone who asks, I know not.”

Poets and philosophers throughout the ages have eloquently tried to capture how their senses perceive Time by using phrases such as; “Time is fleeting“, “Time waits for no man“, “Time heals all wounds” and “Time stands still“. None of these phrases, however, succeed in advancing a deeper understanding of the mystery that is Time.

My background in engineering led me to wonder about the concept of Time beyond the typical artistic and philosophical musings – to explore what science actually had to say about the mysterious subject. So, with curiosity and time on my hands, my search led me to an online course called the Physics of Time. In this month’s blog I will share some of the interesting insights I learned about Time from that course.

Time can be examined from two separate scientific perspectives. The first is a biological perspective which deals with internal human body clocks and how the brain processes and perceives time. The second is an external cosmological perspective which has to do with the origin and evolution of time in the known universe.

Human bodies and brains have a natural way to recognize the passing of time because we have predictable biological clocks – like breathing and the beating of our hearts – that exist within each of us .

With a heart rate of about 60 beats per minute and a lifespan of roughly 70 years, the human heart will beat approximately 2 billion times. Chickens have a much faster heart rate of about 275 beats per minute, and live only 15 years – but their hearts, in the end, will also have 2 billion lifetime heartbeats.

Science has observed that the hearts of most animals will beat somewhere between 1-2 billion times but there is an inverse relationship between heart rate and lifespan. In general, the faster the heart rate, the shorter the life span. I wonder if those animals who live fast and die young perceive time any differently than us longer life-span creatures.

Besides the heart and the breath, Neuroscientists have identified three kinds of timekeeping devices inside our brains. One part of the brain keeps track of what time of day it is, another part keeps track of how much time has passed while doing certain tasks and still other parts of the brain serve as alarm clocks for events set to happen in the future.

Different neuron pulses working together in the brain help us to perceive the passage of time. These pulses can be affected by stimulants, such as caffeine, and depressants, such as alcohol which interfere with neurotransmitters in ways that make our internal clocks speed up or slow down.

We experience other biological processes that don’t repeat themselves but still contribute to our awareness of time passing: We age; we think; we make choices; we plan for the future; we remember the past. All these different aspects of time are crucial to what it means to live our lives and be human beings. Perhaps the most important aspect of our awareness of the passage of time is the accumulation of experiences.

People have observed that when they are focused on a task, they don’t pay as much attention to the outside world or to their internal clock. This causes their internal timekeeping devices to slow down while the outside world speeds up. For example, I am surprised how quickly the hours elapse while I am engrossed watching my favorite sports teams compete in a big game.

In contrast, when we are bored and not focused on any one task, the opposite effect happens. Our internal clock seems to go faster while the outside world seems to slow down. For example, when I am stuck on an airplane with nothing to do, the plane trip seems to last forever.

Scientist have reported that subjects in high-stress experiments recollect that time slowed down for them during stressful events. One theory behind this phenomenon is that the more memories we accumulate, the more time we think has passed. Our brains, when we are in a high-stress situation, does its best to record absolutely everything. It accumulates a huge amount of data, so when you think about the situation afterward, you have more memories to leaf through—and, therefore, it seems as if more time has passed.

This theory gets support from the fact that time seems to pass more quickly as we age. Summer seemed to last forever when we were children, but it seems to rush by as we get older. It may be that when we were young in the summertime, such activities as going to the beach were new to us, but as we get older we experience fewer interesting new things. Our brains don’t take in as much new information and we create fewer memories than a child would; thus, time seems to pass more quickly for us compared to when we were a child.

To understand Time from a cosmological perspective is difficult because it requires the human mind to reckon with complex physical laws of the universe that were set in place at the beginning of the universe – and to consider hard to grasp time spans that are billions of years in length.

Most physicists believe Time began approximately 13.8 billion years ago with a singular event known as the Big Bang – the so called “birth” of the universe – a point where space underwent rapid expansion and the laws of physics as we understand them came into being. The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old, so it is a substantial fraction of the age of the universe.

At the beginning, all matter in the universe was densely packed and its temperature was extremely high. About 380,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe cooled sufficiently to allow the formation of subatomic particles and simple atoms. Giant clouds of these primordial elements later coalesced through gravity into matter, eventually forming early stars, galaxies and the other astronomical structures that are observable today.

The feature of matter that is inextricably linked with time is called entropy. Entropy is a way of talking about the disorderliness of “stuff” in the universe. It is the natural tendency of things to lose order over time. For example, a whole egg is very orderly, but if we break the egg, it becomes disorderly; if we scramble the egg, it becomes even more disorderly. A scientist would say that the egg moves from a low entropy state to a high entropy state.

In the long run, nothing escapes the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Entropy is the only quantity in the physical sciences that seems to imply a particular direction of progress, sometimes called an arrow of time. As time progresses, the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system never decreases over significant periods of time. Entropy measurement can be thought of as a clock and things only happen in one direction of time – not the other. The past is always defined to be the direction in which entropy was lower.

The pull of entropy on matter is relentless. Everything decays. Disorder always increases. The increasing entropy of our universe over time underlies all the ways in which the past is different from the future.

It is the reason why you can disperse the scent of perfume from a bottle into a room, but cannot put the scent back into the bottle; the reason why you can mix cream into your coffee, but cannot un-mix it; the reason why cars eventually break down; the reason you remember the past and not the future; the reason you are born young and grow older; the reason you can make a choice about what to have for dinner tomorrow, but not about what to have for dinner yesterday.

When energy is in a low-entropy form, it can do useful work. When energy is converted into a high-entropy form, it becomes useless. We have fossil fuels sitting in the ground with energy in them in a concentrated form. We can extract the energy to do useful work because the entropy of the fuel is low. Once the fuel is burned it is converted to its high entropy form and it can no longer perform useful work. You can heat a room in your house by burning coal, but you cannot cool off a room in your house by unburning fuel and turning it into coal.

The common thread in these examples is irreversibility: Something happens in one direction, and it is easy to make it happen, but it does not happen in the other direction, or if it does, it is because we put effort into it. It does not spontaneously happen. Things go in one direction of time. They do not go back all by themselves.

It’s not time itself that treats the past, present, and future differently; it’s the arrow of time, which is ultimately dependent on all the “stuff” we have in the universe. It is the arrow of time that gives us the impression that time passes, that we progress through different moments. It’s not that the past is more real than the future; it’s that we know more about the past. We have different access to it than we have to the future.

Stephen Hawking combined the biological and cosmological elements of time into three distinct “arrow of time” components. First, there is the thermodynamic arrow of time—the direction of time in which disorder or entropy increases. Second, there is the psychological arrow of time. This is the direction in which we feel time passes—the direction of time in which we remember the past, but not the future. Third, there is the cosmological arrow of time. This is the direction of time in which the universe is expanding rather than contracting.

At the moment of the Big Bang our universe was in a condition of very
low entropy and very high organization. That’s what got time started in the way we experience it in our everyday lives. Ever since the Big Bang, we’ve been living out the process by which the universe increases in entropy. That’s the influential event in the aftermath of which all humans live.

At this point in time the universe is in a condition of medium entropy. It is today that we have galaxies and stars and planets and life on those planets. Complexity depends on entropy; it relies on the fact that entropy is increasing. We don’t have to worry about how complexity can arise in a universe that is evolving. The simple fact that entropy is increasing is what makes life possible.

Scientists have confirmed that the universe continues to expand. Distant galaxies are moving away from us, and the farther away they are, the faster they are receding. The amount of space between us and the other galaxies is increasing.

The second law of thermodynamics predicts that the total entropy of the universe will continue to increase until it reaches equilibrium. The universe will calm down and become colder and colder. Everything will scatter to the winds, evolution will stop and we will have empty space once again. It is speculated by some that after a googol (1 x 10 to the 100th power) years from now, our universe will be empty space and that empty space will last forever.

There are some however who believe instead that multiple universes exist. According to this idea, the Big Bang was an event that is quite small in the history of a much larger multiverse. We see only a finite bit of the universe;
perhaps farther away than what we can see, the universe looks very
different. The fact that our own universe is inflating gives some credibility to this idea.

Those who talk about the possibility of a multiverse are simply observing that there is a barrier in our universe’s past beyond which we cannot see.
Is there a finite amount of stuff out there? Is there an infinite amount of stuff that works exactly like the stuff we can see? Or is there an infinite amount of stuff and conditions that are very different from place to place? Until scientists can answer these questions, they can only speculate.

Regardless of which theory you believe about how the universe will ultimately evolve, we can say that all scientists agree that the universe is a complicated system, embedded in an environment that is far from equilibrium and that there is something called entropy that characterizes the organization or disorganization of us and our environment and results in the evolution of matter.

No discussion of Time would be complete without mentioning
one of the most important contributions ever made to science – Albert Einstein’s 1905 publishing of the Theory of Special Relativity. Before Einstein, physicists thought of time as simple and absolute, a steady linear flow separate from the three dimensions of space.

Einstein showed that time is not simple and absolute but is actually influenced by speed and gravity. He stated that there is a link between motion in space and the passage of time. Space and time are fused together in what Einstein called 4 dimensional space-time.

Einstein theorized that Time runs more slowly for an object if it is in motion. Scientists proved this by synchronizing two atomic clocks and placing one clock in a stationary location and the other clock on a plane that was flown around the world. Upon landing, the clocks were no longer synchronized, the one that had been on the plane was milliseconds behind the one that was stationary – indicating less time had elapsed for the moving clock.

With Einstein’s relativity discovery, there is no such thing as one moment of time throughout the universe that everyone agrees on. Space and time are not absolute; they are relative – which means what we call time can be different for different observers.

How much time passes for an object depends on how you move through the universe. The network of satellites in space that carry precision atomic clocks for the global positioning system must be constantly compensated because they “lose” seven microseconds per day compared to ground clocks that are operating in a “slower time stream”.

The faster something moves, the “slower” it ages. Physicists call this effect time dilation. Theoretically, under its influence, a space voyager could return to Earth after a 20-year voyage to find himself hundreds of years in the future. To carry time dilation to its absolute extreme—as we approach travel at the speed of light, it is possible that time stops and immortality begins.

Space-time, Einstein’s four-dimensional reality of our universe, is a collection of an infinite number of events, just as space is a collection of an infinite number of points indexed by the three dimensions of space. Just as we think of all space as being “out there”, Einstein said we should think of all time as also being out there: “The difference between Past, Present, and Future is only an illusion, however persistent“.

I must admit that my deep dive into the science of time raised as many questions as it answered – but that doesn’t mean my study was a waste of my time. On the contrary, I gained some wisdom about life and walk away with a list of important things to remember that will help me make the most of whatever time I have left.

• Remember that we are very, very small – Mankind is like a grain of sand in the vast Sahara Desert, occupying an infinitesimally small place in the universe. The astronomer Carl Sagan said that earth is nothing more than “a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam and our time amounts to nothing more than a blip“. Compared to the enormity of the cosmos and the eternity of time, it is wise for us to keep an attitude of humility, remembering the short duration of our life and the insignificance of our daily struggles.
• Be grateful we are alive – In a world full of matter, humans have been fortunate to form over time into a remarkable collection of atoms that are alive, conscious and capable of love and memory. As far as we know, we are the most advanced form of life in the wide universe. In his book Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut expresses wonder and gratitude for the gift it was to have become what he called some of the “sitting up” kind of mud in the universe.

“God made mud.
God got lonesome.
So God said to some of the mud, “Sit up!”
“See all I’ve made,” said God, “the hills, the sea, the
sky, the stars.”
And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look
around.
Lucky me, lucky mud.
I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done.
Nice going, God.
Nobody but you could have done it, God! I certainly
couldn’t have.
I feel very unimportant compared to You.
The only way I can feel the least bit important is to
think of all the mud that didn’t even get to sit up and
look around.
I got so much, and most mud got so little.
Thank you for the honor!
Now mud lies down again and goes to sleep.
What memories for mud to have!
What interesting other kinds of sitting-up mud I met!
I loved everything I saw!
Good night.
I will go to heaven now.
I can hardly wait… Amen

Kurt Vonnegut “Cat’s Cradle”

• Embrace change – Entropy is a natural law, we can’t repeal it or wish it away. Entropy is what helps us to evolve and it is what makes life complex and interesting. So, rather than fight change – which is inevitable – it is healthier for us to embrace the change in our life and determine how we can best use it to evolve in ways that make us better.
• Be Mindful of the Present – Sometimes it can be impossible to focus entirely on the present because it comes with an echo of the past and a foretaste of the future. Our minds typically refuse to stay in the present, constantly regretting a past that can never be undone or anxiously awaiting a future that may never arrive. The mind can be trained with Mindful Meditation techniques that teach us how to live “outside of time”, focusing our attention on each passing moment, slowing our perception of time and relieving us of our anxiety over past and future events.
• Get busy and try something new – Time moves more slowly for a body in motion and we perceive the passage of time as moving slower during those moments when we are creating new memories. That tells me if I want to make the most out of time I should be pursuing activities that keep me moving and learning new things.
• Don’t rule out the Divine – There is agreement among scientists that the universe started in a dense state of very low entropy and that it is expanding over time towards higher entropy. The questions that still puzzle scientists however is what triggered the Big Bang event and why did the universe start in such an unlikely state of low entropy? As a man of science and a man of God, I am somehow comforted when all questions cannot be answered and there is room in the discussions for us to ponder the possibility of a divine hand in the origin of the universe.

May you enjoy your own personal time travel trip – here’s hoping that you live every moment and love every day before your precious time slips away.

Going Inside to Greet the Light

This month’s blog will be brief because I have not had much time for contemplation or reflecting on the examined life.  My former employee has commissioned me to work on a software project with a tight deadline that has occupied most of my waking and sleeping thoughts.

I must admit, though, that it has been a good experience to get my hands busy coding and my mind devising algorithms again. I’m happy that it is all coming back to me after 14 months away. There is something to be said about the restorative benefits the mind and spirit derives from doing productive and useful work.

However, one of the things that I have sacrificed over the last few weeks in order to get this work done is meditation. I started practicing meditation a couple of years ago and recently took an online class on Mindfulness Meditation that helped expand the practice for me.

The Quaker community characterized Meditation as “going inside to greet the light“, and my time spent going inside has helped me to better live in the moment, to see events and situations as transitory in nature and to let go of the things that typically bothered me in the past.

One of the meditation exercises in the Buddhist tradition is called the “Five Remembrances“. It calls for contemplating the five statements shown below during the meditation session:

 

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The Five Remembrances

1.  I am subject to aging; aging is unavoidable

2. I am subject to illness; illness is unavoidable

3. I am subject to death; death is unavoidable

4. I will be parted from everyone and everything that is dear to me; there is no way to escape being separated from them

5. Whatever I do, for good or for ill, that I will reap  

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I find that meditating on these five remembrances is a very grounding experience for me. It brings to the forefront things like the impermanence of life that most people tend to block out of their daily consciousness – and it helps me to consider that all my actions will live on in some way and have ripple effects in the world.

Some people believe that meditating on these subjects is too gloomy and depressing, but for me the practice leads me away from denial towards acceptance, increases my gratitude and appreciation for the life I have been given, and teaches me about the freeing power of detachment and generosity. It helps me to look at the world with new eyes, be fully present with my loved ones and make sure they know how special they are to me.

Once the reality of impermanence is accepted, you begin to realize that time spent struggling and fighting against unavoidable events are causes of suffering – and only letting go allows you fully celebrate every moment of life. After all, the problem is not that things change, but that we try to live as if they don’t.

Here’s hoping that you find the light inside of you…