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

Roses And Buckle Bunnies

Shakespeare wrote a number of sonnets about love and they remain some of the most romantic ever written. The bible also has some beautiful verses about the love between a man and a woman and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s, “How do I love thee,” is considered by many to be one of the most romantic poems ever written. These verses have stood the test of time and are still read and shared by those who fall in love.

It got me thinking about how we will be remembered for the way we expressed love. Certainly, thanks to the music industry, there are more songs about love today than all of the poems in recorded history and music is nothing more than poetry put to music. So what are we leaving to the generations to come after us? In a hundred years from now, will they still use some of those songs and verses to express their love for someone?

Let’s take a look at some of the modern expressions of love with which we have been blessed and will leave for future generations.

Barbeques and Dirty Words

Ours wasn't quite as bad as this one
but it was getting close

We started this summer in the knowledge that we had to replace our barbeque. It was a decision that we had managed to find excuses to put off: we were going to Paris and there was no time, we had other priorities and had no time, we didn’t like barbequing and had no time…..we would have to assemble the new one. 

It was this last excuse that was the real reason.

I dread buying things that require assembly. I’m as handy as a turnip and despite having a fair number of hand and power tools, the truth is that most of them were gifts and I don’t really know what they do or are for.

Paris-Day 3: The Fleas

It’s Day 3 in Paris and we’re acclimatizing quite well. Air Canada is a distant unpleasant memory, we’re over our jet lag and Maggie has shopped. For my part, I have completed my transformation and have been fully assimilated. I have become a Parisian. La vie est belle. Toujours elle est belle!

We shower and dress for breakfast. While Maggie is touching up her makeup, I adjust my neck scarf to give my look that jaunty, casual Parisian touch and we head down on the Schmurf Express for some café crème and croissants.

Day 3 was originally intended to be dedicated to Montmartre and Sacre Coeur but I suggest a change of plans for Maggie. This isn't a first visit to Paris for either Maggie or I. Maggie attended university here in her final year and I lived in Europe for three years. We have seen most of the major tourist sites in the past and feel somewhat free to amend our planned assault on the city from time to time.

I have come across a large outdoor market that I thought might be fun to explore. Maggie goes one better. She has come across an even larger outdoor market and bazaar and, of course, that is the one to which we will be going.

Responding To The Criticism That Our Generation Wasn't Green

I remember my nephew coming to me a couple of years ago and giving me a good natured shot about his generation and all the technology they use so easily now. His closing comment was that I was probably envious of the gadgets they now had and I responded that I agreed that all this technology was pretty neat, which is why my generation invented most of it.

If you’re like me, you’re getting just a bit tired of the arrogance of the young lecturing us on how much smarter they are or how much harder things are today. One of their favourites is how environmentally illiterate we were when we were younger and what a mess we made of the planet for future generations.

There is nothing quite as silly as the arrogance of youth, especially those who never bother to do a little research before they open their mouths to lecture us about how unenlightened we are. For their benefit, here’s an article of just how environmentally unenlightened we were back in the old days.

I didn’t write this but I wish I had. It’s brilliant.

I Hate Golf!

I hate golf.

That is a statement I make about fifteen to twenty times every time I play a round. I hook, I slice, I chip onto the green, putt off it. 

I hate golf. 

On Saturday, Maggie and I played a round at a course five minutes from where we live. It was a beautiful morning that started well but went downhill quickly. My first drive of the day disappeared into the woods and we never did find the ball.

I hate golf.

I dropped a ball and three shots later finally got onto the green where I three-putted.

I hate golf.

The next drive hooked into the woods on the other side of the green. I dropped a ball and chipped it into the sand trap. Three shots later, I was finally onto the green where I three-putted again.

I hate golf.

This went on for five more holes. I lost six balls, was running at 11 over par and that was if you were counting  the par for all eighteen holes. We had only played nine.

I hate golf.

On the tenth hole I whacked the ball off the tee and managed to keep it on the fairway. It landed about 35 yards from the green and about 44 yards from the flag. I pulled my pitching wedge ready to send the ball into the sand but it lofted perfectly, bounced onto the green and rolled into the hole. A birdie!

Maggie stood with her mouth open and finally said, “Nice shot, Bear.”

All I could think was, “I love golf.”

It got me thinking that golf and life have much in common. 

 I don't want to get all touchy feely (it's not my nature) but it seems to me that like golf, life has its challenges and difficult moments; but like golf, it also has its sweet moments, those moments when just being there is eminently worthwhile.

It could be something major like landing a new job, successfully recovering from a serious illness, getting married or the birth of a baby. It can also be something seemingly small like finding twenty bucks in a pair of slacks you haven’t worn for awhile or having your grandson reaching for your hand and saying, “Grandad, please come” as he leads you across the yard to share with you some discovery he’s just made.

I think we often allow the negative things to overwhelm our blessings. Like golf, we tend to allow the bad shots we’ve made or the sand and water hazards that have been put in our way to become more important than the fact we are there, on a beautiful day, doing something we enjoy with someone we like.

When the nice thing happens, it tends to dispel all that negativity but too quickly the benefit of that moment gets swallowed up in the part of life that is hard, sad or threatening. Perhaps, we should try to reverse that and let the positive things that we also experience and that are part of our lives become more important than the negative.

Perhaps if we focused more on our blessings than on our curses, we might find that for all its challenges and difficult moments, life is pretty good for most of us. 

I love life. Whether or not I will still love golf next time out will very much depend on how many balls I whack into the woods. Sometimes, just sometimes mind you, it is very difficult to count your blessings.

RELATED

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http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2012/01/those-who-have-succeeded-have.html

Arguing With A Saint

http://bearsrant.blogspot.ca/2011/10/arguing-with-saint.html

© 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 Better Alternative To The Politics Of Today

After watching a half dozen elections over the past year in Canada and voting in a couple, as well as, the ongoing GOP primary I’m all but electioned out. It isn’t that I’m tired of elections or voting, I’m tired of hearing the same old stuff over and over again. We need a political party with vision, a political party unafraid to face the challenges of our times with bold ideas and innovative thinking. 

There was such a party in Canada once. It stood tall and campaigned on the issues that mattered. It fought for those issues from the 1960s through to the 1990s and then finally dissolved in frustration and disappointment as the bigger and better financed parties overwhelmed it with election ad spending.

It was called The Rhinoceros Party of Canada and I intend to encourage the resurrection of the principles and values for which it stood and the issues for which it fought so hard. 

The Rhinoceros Party platform was solid. It was made of wood and was about 2’ high.

Canada Revenue Agency Sends Santa A Letter re: His Tax Return

Canada Revenue Agency - Agence revenue du Canada

proudly serving Canadians whether they want us to or not!
Canadiens servants fièrement à s'ils nous veulent ou pas!

December 14, 2011

Mr. S Claus

Santa Claus Enterprises

1 Icy Road Way

North Pole

H0H 0H0

                                                         RE: PERSONAL INCOME TAX RETURNS

A Letter To Santa From The Government Of Canada

Government Of Canada
Gouvernement du Canada
MINISTRY OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL
MINISTERE DU PROCUREUR GENERAL



December 12, 2011


Mr. S. Claus

Santa Claus Enterprises Inc.

1 Icy Road Way

North Pole

H0H 0H0

                            RE: VIOLATIONS OF GOVERNMENT LEGISLATION AND POSSIBLE

                                          PENDING CRIMINAL CHARGES

Why Occupy Is A Pretty Good Gig

We are Occupy and it’s good to be us and here's why. (Feel free to jump in on the chorus whenever you feel comfortable.) We are Occupy and we love large crowds who chant along with us. If you need a sign or banner to wave, please see the folks in our media tent. So join us because  Occupy is a pretty good gig.

Customer Service That Makes Your Head Explode

A few hours ago, I was working at my computer which entails being online and suddenly, I had no internet connection. My first thought was that the modem needed to be rebooted so I did that but still couldn’t connect. Then I tried disconnecting the modem from the computer, turning everything off, reconnecting everything and turning all back on. Still nothing.

Finally, I was forced to call my provider, something I dread for many reasons.

It starts as soon as the provider answers the phone. “Welcome to…….” and goes downhill from there. A pleasant, somewhat mechanical, recorded female voice asks me to indicate my language of choice. Then the voice proceeds to give me a variety of initial options. Once I have determined my option and it is always the last one the voice mentions, I press a number on the touchtone key pad of my phone. This brings up an entirely new set of options and after about five minutes of this, I am finally told that I’m being connected to a customer service technician only to immediately hear this. 

“All of our customer service technicians are currently helping other customers. Please stay on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.”

To make my time waiting for them to provide me with service, my provider plays a random selection of elevator music that would be an embarrassment even for Muzak. Every sixty seconds (I timed it because I had nothing else to do while I waited) a voice would interrupt the music to remind me to “Please stay on the line to maintain your calling priority.” The use of the word priority in this circumstance is pretty much an oxymoron.

Fifteen minutes later, I was finally connected to a real person and while I was rapidly losing my sense of humour (as difficult as you might find that to believe), I calmed down because I was finally connected with someone who was going to solve my problem and make all my wishes come true.

Wrong!

Her name was Moyna  and she was half way around the world in Mumbai. Personally, I don’t care where my provider puts its customer service call centre even though their head office is about twenty minutes from where I live. If they want to set up their service centre some ten thousand miles from here, no problem. Just fix my bloody connection.

It became evident immediately after Moyna and I had exchanged initial pleasantries that we had an accent problem. I could barely understand her English because of her soft voice and thick accent and she didn’t understand mine all that well either (no doubt because I was muttering a lot under my breath). It reduced us to repeating every thing two and three times and to spelling out almost every command that  Moyna  had me enter into the modem software on my computer.

Moyna was unbearably patient while she told me to do various things. The tone and inflection of her voice never changed and increasingly sounded more and more like the recorded voice that had first walked me through the initial phone menu. Nonetheless we persevered and after  Moyna  and I spelled out the latest data entry back and forth, I eventually would get it entered only to have the modem fail to respond.  Every now and then, she would politely excuse herself for a couple of minutes on the pretext that she had to check on something. Personally I think she was going for a cigarette but I can’t be sure. She would switch on the elevator music and disappear for a bit.

When she returned,  Moyna would thank me for waiting and then we would begin an entirely new set of procedures which involved even more spelling and brought even more frustration to us both. Neither of us were particularly good spellers as it turns out.

I began to believe that  Moyna  kept disappearing and leaving me with the music as her way of coping with her frustration. It caused me to think that after dealing with so many of us, she probably believes most North Americans are idiots and was cursing her life for having to deal with us night after night, or in her case, day after day.

For my part, I had already taken  Moyna  off my Christmas card list.

After many absences and many failed attempts,  Moyna  excused herself one last time. She was gone for quite a bit and I began to think either she was considering terminating our relationship or had simply gone for lunch. But she came back and announced with some satisfaction that she had tracked down the problem.

The provider’s network was down in my area, for which she apparently felt personally responsible and  apologised, but they had people working on it, she reassured me, and they hoped to have service restored shortly.

I can’t even begin to express how I felt at that moment. Telling me that the service was down after a twenty-five minute wait to speak to a human being and forty minutes of back and forth with  Moyna  was like telling me that that the reason the television wasn’t working after waiting all day for the repairman to show up was due to a power failure in the neighbourhood.

It's unbelievable!

The state of customer service today
is enough to make your head explode!

I had been on the phone for an hour including almost forty minutes with my pal  Moyna  and she only thought to check to make sure that there was no interruption of service after exhausting her technical expertise.

How can a service department not know about service disruptions in advance? We live in the age of instant information. Everything is connected. Surely to God, when she typed my account number into her computer, there should have been some kind of flag that service was disrupted in that area or at the very least an email sent around to the techs advising them of where service was down. Remember, this is an Internet provider, not a shoe manufacturer. Shouldn't they be the most capable of knowing when their service is in trouble?

I wasted an hour and my provider wasted an hour and whatever the associated cost was of that call and  Moyna’s time for nothing. But that is the state of things today. For all the automations, for the billions of dollars spent on technology and employees, there is no real service anymore and I’ve finally figured out why. Nobody is paid to think so nobody does.

Still, after another hour, the crack field team back here in the homeland got the network back up and running and I was back online. I logged on, wrote my column and was in the middle of saving it when…..the network went off line again.

I didn’t bother calling  Moyna . I was sure she had her hands full and too busy to talk to me right away. Besides, I was so frustrated, all I really wanted to do was go out and occupy something.

© 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

Some Of Life's Bigger Questions

I suppose we could all agree the single biggest question we ponder is "What is the meaning of life?" Certainly, I haven't got a clue. The only thing I know for sure is that none of us make it through life alive but I have discovered that the journey reveals other, equally as important questions.

Not all of us have the same questions although many of us may share some in common. These are some of the questions I have asked myself over the years but still haven't found an answer for:

If a gay man is only attracted to a transvestite dressed as a woman, does that make him a closet heterosexual?

If the plural of mouse is mice and the plural of louse is lice, why isn't the plural of house, hice?

If men and women are equal shouldn't women have as much responsibility to leave the toilet seat up as they claim men have to leave it down when they're done?

How is it that we have ethical oil but don't have ethical politicians?

Why is it illegal for a fan to throw a piece of fruit on the ice at a hockey game but perfectly acceptable for players to assault and beat the crap out of each other?

If there were high winds, would Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper's hair move....even a little bit?

If prostitution is legal, why is it illegal to solicit the services of a prostitute?

Why do people who just shouldn't, wear spandex? Don't they have mirrors at home?

If we believe that there are no stupid questions only stupid answers, isn't it counterproductive to ask the questions?

Why do people with nothing to say, talk more than everyone else?

Have you ever wondered whatever possessed the first person to look at a lobster and think "that crawling rock is probably good to eat"?

Wouldn't it make more sense to call the people who invest our money earners rather than brokers - or at least instill a little more confidence in them?

Why does a culture that has rice as its staple food develop chopsticks to eat it with?

Why does my dog Jasper get annoyed if I blow in his face but he loves sticking his head out the window when he's in the car so the wind will blow even harder in his face?

In North America we call good dinnerware china. What do the Chinese call their good dishes?

Why do we pay $1 for a bottle of water when it is almost free and available in unlimited quantity at home?

Why is a word to the wise necessary? If they're wise, don't they already know?

Why does everyone think they're right even when they don't agree with each other?

With pretty much all of the knowledge of the world at our fingertips online, why is society dumbing down rather than getting smarter?

and the one that frightens me the most when I hear it because I know there is no answer that won't get me into trouble....

"Bear, which of these two dresses makes my bum look less fat?" I break out in a cold sweat and just stand there trembling whenver I hear that one.

I'll leave questions on the Space/Time Continuum to Dr. Steven Hawking as I continue to ponder these. I haven't found answers for any of them yet but I am nothing if not committed. Apparently my wife is less sure of that, however. Just the other day she told me I should be committed.

© 2011 Maggie's Bear
all rights reserved

What Men and Women Really Mean

I had a friend who met his wife through an online dating site. I was single at the time so I thought I would try it. My friend and his wife seemed very happy and I thought it might just be the ticket to meeting someone. I was naive. Dating sites are like Dodge City before Wyatt Earp showed up and if you haven't been there, you need to tread carefully if you do go.

Gareth Scissorhands

I was at the birth of my daughter and held her for the first time within moments of the doctor delivering her. Two things happened to me in that moment. I loved her instantly and almost as quickly began to worry about her. That moment changed my life. From that moment on, I worried she would die of SIDS, I would drop her or that I wouldn't be a very good father to her. Later it was all the ever-present dangers in the world. I worried about her even though my sisters and I had navigated our way safely through our lives and I worried even though a voice whispered that I was being a tad irrational.

Jasper

A couple of months ago, we lost our dog Bud, an oversized black Lab trying somewhat successfully to impersonate a Great Dane. He was huge, all legs and 140 lbs. Bud was my wife Maggie's dog and as he got older, he followed her around with an attachment that bordered on obsessive. Despite his hip displacia and the pain it caused him, if she moved, he got up and followed her.