They say you become an expert after 450 hours of study on a topic.
Since I turned 21, if I had studied an hour a day, I would be an expert in
23 topics.
If I was a redwood tree I would only be about 3 and a half.
If I was a dog, I'd be 350.
If I was a fruit fly I would be older than recorded history.
I have my auto, motorcyle license and am qualified to drive a nuclear submarine
I have an ivy league college degree, an MBA, and lots of formal education
I've been married and divorced twice.
I have all my original parts, minus 7 teeth for orthodontic work
I've been in excess of 700 feet deep in a submarine, traveled over
underwater volcanos (water temperature gets to be 80 degress at 200 feet deep),
sailed submerged over the Marianas trench (7 miles deep),
and heard conversations among whales chatting with their neighbors
I've flown across the English Channel at Mach 1.3 on the Concorde
I've skiied the Swiss Alps, windsurfed in Hawaii, and own a record album
of me performing in a repetory company while I was in high school.
I've witnessed the birth of my son, and maintained my sanity
to charish sharing a Guiness with him on his 21st birthday.
What's different about 50?
You're more aware of the locations of bathrooms and the interval since
your last visit.
Your body seems to absorb fat particles out of the air while you sleep.
The amount of alcohol you can drink before you regret it the next morning
gets drasticly smaller.
You really appreciate your knees, and wish you had treated them better.
You still think a lot about women, but you focus more on the warmth
of waking up with them than the wildness of the prior night's passion.
You spend a lot less time thinking about new toys, cool cars, and
the latest widgets and more time
on gentle exercise and being with friends.
You finish the decade of forgiving and trying to understand your
parents and really start to love and cherish them.
As the pace of life slows, you question the value and essence of things.
You begin the archeological dig to excavate through the layers of your life.
You unearth the precious things, clean them up, and put them in your living room
to enjoy. You try your best to find those rotten things that interfere with
your life and try and get rid of them. Weeding your garden... some days it is
a lot of hard yucky work. Some days just a joy.
What's Important?
Friends
Family
Health
Learning
Me. I'm important. I deserve royal treatment from myself. I deserve
respect from others, but if they don't know that, it's a waste of my
time to worry about it or try and educate them.
In fact, if I look at everything I consume (food, media, conversation,
etc), I deserve the best: tasty fresh food,
edifying information, lots of encouragement and appreciation.
You. You are important. I look forward to meeting you, getting to
know you, and enjoying what we have in common. You deserve the same
quality of consumables. I look forward to encouraging you and sharing some of my
edifying information.
Today. Every day is Easter. There are lots of Easter eggs hiding
under bushes and in the hearts and souls of the people you will bump into in the
day ahead. They don't reveal themselves from afar, you have to look for them.
Every morning I look forward to seeing what new flavors and how many I can find today.
