Timeless Words from the Past

Years ago, my father encouraged me to write down my thoughts and experiences. He was a very good writer. He taught that subject at a university and even wrote for a national magazine. Although I didn’t do those things, I did a lot of writing in my life as well.

I began writing many years ago and have written six books as well as writing this blog for over 15 years now. When I was looking for what I would write for the blog’s post this week, I came across one of my journals and started reading through it. That’s when I came across what I had written on March 29th of 1998. I thought I would share some of the lines from it with you here.

We value so many activities—games, sports, work, relationships, eating, drinking, etc.–to distract ourselves from ourselves. Is making it in the world the important thing about our being?

Climbing and coming back down from Mountain Everest is a perfect metaphor for life. Note that when you get to the top, you’re really only halfway. But it’s easy because it’s almost all downhill. The basic message of life is… RELAX.

Love is what we are born with; fear is what we learn. Love is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.

Meaning doesn’t lie in us. We overvalue what we perceive with our physical senses and undervalue what we know to be true in our hearts.

Time only exists in the moment of right now. Time is a series of “Now”. The way we spend each “now” creates our destiny.

All those thoughts really got me thinking but it came down to a single idea we can all work on, and I’ll share that with you today: The challenge to myself (and to you, my readers) is to love yourself, RELAX, and live in the “right now” time.

Living Well and Healthy on the Way to 100

I would like to share with you some more thoughts about life and living and, yes, a few more things that you and I can do to increase our chances of living to be 100.

First, let me tell you about my super crazy few days this past week. The day after I wrote about how important it is to have great health I suddenly got very sick. It started with a severe case of acid reflux but then I could not eat or drink anything without huge chest pains and throwing it all up. I began to feel better after 3 days and so got some time in on beautiful Poipu beach. However, there I witnessed a guy being pulled from the ocean by a lifeguard just 20 or 30 feet from where we were relaxing and just having a good time.

Five paramedics went to work on this guy. They pounded his chest, did CPR on him, and shocked him many times–they worked on him for 20 minutes. Everyone on the beach just froze and watched as they tried to save this guy’s life. Many people were in tears, but even with all that effort and skilled professional work done by the paramedics, the guy did not make it.

The mood of all of us beach goers changed dramatically. We went from fun, games and joy to quiet and very somber. It is amazing how so many people care deeply about a person they do not even know. The young lady next to us broke down in tears. I was fighting back my own tears. The loss of life is a sad thing and, yes, we will all get to that point eventually. But this was a reminder that it is so critically important to live life to the fullest every single day, to do virtually everything we can to stay healthy and extend our lives —yes, to like 100 years old–in good health.

With that said here are a few more of the 100 Wonderful Ways to Live to Be 100:

• Find reasons to laugh.
• Do unto others but do not forget about yourself.
• Do not dread getting older.
• Get busy and stay busy.
• (This one alone can add an average 7 years to your life.)
• Turn off the TV.
• Eat less.
• Practice positive self-talk.
• Use your brain–engage in games and intellectual stimulation.

Let’s not wait until illness or some unexpected tragedy makes us realize how valuable our life is. We can honor this gift we have, every day, by doing everything we can to not just live, but live well and healthy. And to live, yes, to be at least 100.

Life Should Not Be a String of Sundays

It’s so easy to get overly relaxed when you are in Hawaii as I have been these last few weeks. These relaxing days do allow me to reach some major mental breakthroughs and really think through the ideas that come to me. This trip out, I was really struck by how lost I can feel, even during these relaxing days and it got me thinking about how common this feeling can be for people in mid and later life. You’ve worked so hard for years, looking forward to retirement, and then once you get there, you start having these days where you simply have no direction. And you start to realize, the carefree retirement life isn’t quite what you expected.

I see this all the time in people around me and many times inside myself. When one retires or semi-retires it becomes like one long string of Sundays. For most people in America, Sunday is the lazy day, the day when you don’t have any particular plans, a day to unwind and not answer to the clock. But when you do this every day, it actually can get depressing.

As it turns out, Sunday morning has been found to be the most depressing time of the week. Seems very odd that this can be true but the reason is pretty simple. It’s because we don’t usually have any particular goals, plans or structure for that time of the week, unlike the work week and the often busy, errand and play day on Saturday. Likewise, when a person retires, the constant structure of their life is gone and without those goals and deadlines, they begin to feel lost.

Retirement is not a bad thing. I can certainly attest to its advantages. But even in retirement, there should be goals and plans. It’s just that this time, you don’t have an employer to please, or a family to provide for so you can determine just what you want to do without those concerns. The key is having the structure, the challenges, and the hopes that made you get up every day before retirement. You don’t stop having dreams when you get older, so there is no reason to stop making plans.