It's About Time

My grandson turns three this month and while he understands that birthdays mean birthday parties and birthday parties mean birthday presents, he has no concept of what it means to have lived for three years. Even though he has been fascinated by clocks since he was barely a year old, time is irrelevant to him. It simply doesn’t exist.

It’s like that for all of us. Time is a relative concept in our lives and its value changes as we move through the years of our lives.

When we are very young, just as it is with my grandson, we have no awareness of time. When we grow a little older, it moves too slowly. We can’t wait to be 8 or 10 when we will be allowed to stay up an extra half hour or perhaps ride our bike all the way to the mall and back. We tend to wish time away in our hurry to get to be older because the age we are is not the age we want to be and time is limitless. Time has no end for us then.

By the time we have become teens, we have become immortal. Time is once again irrelevant but it is not because we are unaware of it but simply because we feel like we will live forever. Sixty or seventy years seems like infinity so there isn’t much reason to worry about time. Puberty becomes far more intrusive in our lives than time and we give ourselves over to it.

In our later teens, time has value only in so much as we never have enough time. We’re in a rush all the time. We have friends to meet, hair to do and make up to put on before the big date. We have to have yet another bloody assignment handed in by tomorrow morning and we haven’t even started the assigned reading. Nothing clarifies the value of time like having a final exam in the morning and the knowledge that you haven’t even begun to study the night before.

Time moves more slowly when we get out into the workforce and start building a life of our own.

We’re busy and time is important in and only because it managing time is how we organize our lives. We schedule appointments, have deadlines for projects and may be late for work because we missed the bus. In terms of our lives, however, time stands still until one day suddenly; we’re celebrating our fortieth birthday.

Where the hell did that come from?

Forty is a benchmark along time’s road. We all experience and we pretty much all react to it in similar way, more or less. Like turning twenty-one it’s a big deal but the difference is that when you turn twenty-one, it is with a sense of liberation and time stretches before you like the ocean. When you turn forty, you become aware that at best, half of the time you have been allotted may be gone.

Beyond the party with the sarcastic cards and the joke gifts, turning forty is a time of reflection for most of us. It is when we become aware of what we have accomplished so far and how much we have yet to get done. For some it is a non-event but for most it is mildly traumatic or at least the reawakening of our awareness that we are not immortal and that while time may be infinite, our time is not.

By the time we turn sixty we have mixed emotions about time. On the one hand we are becoming increasingly aware that we are staring our own mortality in the face but on the other, we are fairly happy not to have shaken hands with it yet. At sixty, the end of time becomes a real, if faint shadow on our lives.

Some try to reverse time with plastic surgery, diets, vitamins, exercise and various other practices but we know in our hearts that time is moving forward and it will continue with or without us. Some fear the end of their time. Death frightens them, others never give it much thought but we are all aware that the end is coming. It may be soon, it may not be for awhile but unlike when we were fifteen, we are aware that it is coming.

We are constantly reminded as people we knew start to die. When we were teenagers, it was a rare event for one of our friends to die and usually it was the result of an accident or some other tragedy. Now our friends are dying from illness and old age and we seem to go to more funerals than weddings.

I personally have always felt that whatever age I was at the moment was the perfect age to be. I feel that to this day even though my arthritis is painful at times and I’ve lost too many friends and family to their end of time. I wouldn’t trade this age to be young again for anything because time not only takes life, it gives it.

With age comes knowledge from experience. There is richness in a life that has lived for many years and their satisfaction in seeing your children grow up and take on successful lives. It brings grandchildren and less emotional turmoil than we experienced when we were young.

Scientists have complex theories about the true nature of time but for you and me, it is simply linear. It travels in a straight line and it travels in only one direction.

Time is infinite. Life is not and we look at time differently throughout our lives but in the end, however much time we were given, our time is measured by the life we lived. It isn’t death that should be our great fear, death is natural. The great fear should be reaching the end and realizing we squandered the time we were given and have little to show for our time on this earth.

What a sad waste of time that would be.

© 2012 Maggie's Bear

all rights reserved

The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

How Much More Stupid Can It Get?

There are days when I have to remind myself that I am living in the 21st Century and not the late 1800s. Some of the commentary and opinion, the beliefs and prejudices that get thrown about are so out of touch with today’s reality that I wonder if the Internet and the iPhone are part of a technological conspiracy to warp us back in time to a bygone era.

This week, for example, Missouri Rep Todd Aikin mused about ‘legitimate’ rape on national television. It wasn’t just his attempt to characterize rape as legitimate and illegitimate that was so bizarre; it was his assertion that the female body can actually prevent pregnancy in cases of legitimate rape. Apparently Mr. Aikin is of the opinion that a woman’s body not only can differentiate between the two but will actually make a judgment call as to whether or not to allow the pregnancy to proceed.

Is it possible, in this day and age, to get more stupid than this?

Well….actually yes it is.

The Paradox

The world is changing and the pace of change is accelerating but for all that change, we have failed to make the world a better place. Instead we are building a bigger and bigger paradox, one that may eventually be too big for us to ever overcome.

We have more security all around us but are less safe and feel less secure. Violence is increasingly more random and less targeted.

We have more government but less satisfaction with how our nations are governed; increasingly higher taxes but more government debt and fewer government services.

We have more expensive and sophisticated educational opportunities but only teach students what, not how, to think.

We provide better clothes, more gadgets and expensive education  for our children because we love them but we spend less time with them. Instead, we fill their free time with play dates, organized sports, dance classes and other activities to replace the time we don't have for them.

We have more channels on television than ever before but less and less that is worth watching or remembering.

We have more opportunities to become informed but prefer simply to be entertained.

We have more mainstream news coverage but less actual news reporting. Truth is biased, controlled, edited, scripted, manipulated, massaged, distorted and often just ignored.

Arguing With A Saint

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.

-Martin Luther

In his letter to the Corinthians, St. Paul wrote that of faith, hope and love, it was love that was the greatest of the three. It probably isn't smart to argue with a saint, even a dead one but fools rush in where the politically correct fear to tread, as they say (or something like that). I think St. Paul was correct in identifying the big three, I just believe that it is hope, not love that is the most important.

 Many live without faith in much beyond themselves and their own abilities. Even animals feel affection (I only have to look at Jasper to be reminded of that) but only people experience hope. Unlike faith which is purely intellectual and love which is purely emotional, hope is both; a human mix of emotion and thought.

Hope is what gives us the strength to stand again when we stumble or are driven to our knees. It is hope that gives us the courage to struggle on in the dark until we find light again. It is hope that drives us on when we are alone and have lost our faith and hope is what gives us the belief that we will find love again. It is the ability to hope that separates us from all other living things because it is hope that makes us human.

The tradition is that the sign over the gates of Hell read, "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter." Hell rejoices in those who place their faith in vain and celebrates love unrequited but it can't countenance hope because it is the belief that there is something better. Hell is not a place for me; I believe that Hell, like despair, is the absence of hope.

I have learned in my life that you can live without faith and get through the days without love but not without hope. Without hope, you lose the ability to believe in anything and your faith is lost. Without hope you lose the ambition to love again or trust the love that may be around you already. Without hope, there is little but despair and I have learned that despair is just another name for Hell.

I am one of the fortunate ones. I found hope again in my life and am filled with it every day. That hope gives me faith in those I love and that my faith in something beyond myself is not in vain. I have lived without that faith and without love and survived. It is hope that leads me on and causes me to believe in myself and this place we all share.

Someday, I hope, we all will get it right, maybe not in my lifetime but some day.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
all rights reserved
The content of this article is the sole property of Maggie's Bear but a link to it may be shared by those who think it may be of interest to others

A Place Of Greater Safety In The 21st Century

Two newspaper columns caught my eye today. The first was by Warren Kinsella writing in the Sun newspaper. Mr. Kinsella wrote a column about dirty politics which is more or less like having Dick Cheney lecture us on abuse of the rights of the accused. I guess it's true, the biggest lies we tell are the ones we tell ourselves.

The other column was by Ottawa Citizen columnist David Warren. Mr. Warren, a self-professed Christian and convert to Roman Catholicism, wrote about the Wall Street protests. It isn't surprising that he would be opposed to the protest as he is also a well-known conservative thinker. I take no issue with that. What I do take issue with is his characterization of the poor. He wrote:

"the poor have their investments, too: cigarettes, liquor, candy, lottery tickets, wide screen TVs"

Separation Anxiety

Not so long ago, my wife Maggie and I were at one of the larger shopping malls looking for a birthday present for our grandson. She was determined to buy him some books and clothes while I was pretty much focused on toys, especially anything Thomas The Train. The fact that he is only two didn't deter me. I believe that great toys are like clothes that are a little to big, your grandson will grow into them and while we're waiting for that to happen, your can play with his toys. I already have my own Play Doh and am getting quite good at making things with it.