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TIME TO THINK
ABOUT TIME |
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I walked into the kitchen the other morning and saw my wife
eating the same old yogurt-fruit concoction that she eats every morning.
"Life is passing you by," I casually mentioned as I
slapped a big, fat burger on the grill.
"And why is that?" she answered. "And may I
ask why you're cooking a burger for breakfast?"
"Because I've never had a hamburger for breakfast,"
I replied as I pulled a bun out of the fridge. "I'm trying to slow
down the passage of time."
As usual, she was bewildered. So I explained that I've been
researching why time is flying by these days. Things needed to slow down.
When you're in the seventh or eighth inning, you want a long inning.
I found two reasons. One is fairly obvious. As you get older,
every year becomes a shorter version. Turning 11 is only 1/10th of your
life. Turning 71 is 1/70th. Naturally, things move a little faster.
Nothing you can do about that.
The second reason, though, is why I had a hamburger for
breakfast. The longer you live, you have less new experiences. As a
result, we absorb less information, which means that time passes more
quickly.
"You're eating the same thing you always eat," I
explained as she clearly didn't understand. "It's routine and
predictable and mindless. Time will fly by. On the contrary, my hamburger
is a new experience that I will think about and savor. That takes
time."
She wasn't convinced. "I like my breakfast. Leave me
alone."
Not me. I was going to eat my hamburger and then take a
slightly different route when driving to my office. Routine was the
nemesis of time. I was going to add more and more experiences to my aging
brain and slow the passage of time.
Abraham Lincoln said, "The best thing about the future
is that it comes one day at a time." It didn't work all that well for
him, but I planned on making it work.
I'll look forward to pleasurable events, but I will never use
the term, "I can't wait." I'm very happy to wait. It will surely
come, and I'm no longer in a hurry like I used to be.
Even the bad times, and everyone has bad times, can slow
down. I always think about a 2006 movie few people saw. It was called
"Click," with Adam Sandler. He had a remote control where
he could click through the boring and negative periods of his life. He
loved doing it until he realized he was suddenly old and feeble. He had
missed out. Good lesson.
The most precious resource we have is time. Most of us take
time for granted. But as I get older, I've decided to try and slow it to a
crawl. That's why I was having a hamburger for breakfast.
"We need newness in our lives," I said as I flipped
my burger on the stove. "New places, new hobbies, new people."
That got my wife fired up. "You always say you don't
want to travel anymore and you don't want any new friends. You hate
newness."
She had a point. But since the last year flew by with hardly
a notice, I was changing my tune. I was intent on showering myself with
new experiences, and I told her so.
"I'll believe it when I see it," she said.
"Having a hamburger for breakfast isn't much of an adventure."
"It's a start," I replied. "And I'm going to
look into that trip to the Galapagos Islands and I'm driving a different
way to work and.... I'm going to get a girlfriend."
I knew she wasn't listening anymore--that's why I threw in
the girlfriend. But I was determined to change my routine and create new
and vivid memories. Hopefully, time and I were in for a long battle.
My brain may be stuffed with experiences and memories, but
there's always room for a little more. I'm going to try and enjoy every
moment, every hour, every day. And if it's not enjoyable, that's okay,
too.
Time doesn't care. |
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