Relative Something

This morning dawned as my final day at the lake after a week of vacation. The weather is just about as perfect as it could possibly be, just like the day before, and the day before that. In fact, the entire previous week has been divine, even with a couple of thunder showers tossed in. For whatever brilliant reason out of the mysteries of psychological behavior, I found myself, twice, waking from a dream about a past workplace. That sure felt like a stab at my attempts to completely dissociate from work during my time off. Maybe that was my mind attempting to purge work from my thoughts, by doing so while I was sleeping. Thanks, anyway.

One project that I resumed during the week was sculpting the wood bracelet I am making for Cyndie. I tend to work meticulously slow, and that gives me ample time to enjoy the transformation from a chunk to the flowing shape. I am fascinated by the variety of visuals that appear as the grain is revealed. Lines appear that I would love to keep, but then must sacrifice in the effort of working toward a more refined shape. These are a couple of shots that I captured a few days ago. It is now even more finished than is shown in these images. It is a real trick to capture all the detail in a 2-dimensional image. Maybe a video is in order…

There is something that I have discovered about how fast this week has passed in my mind. These days of doing almost nothing have flown by so quick that today feels like we have only been up here for a long weekend. In fact, today is day 10. Tomorrow, I return to work. A few days ago, I discovered that I had no idea what time it was. I have rarely looked at a clock all week. When I checked for the time that day, it turned out to be 2:30 p.m., about 3 hours later than I imagined it might be. It occurred to me that on a normal work day, by that hour I would probably have checked the clock about a hundred times.

My thinking is that I should try checking the time repeatedly, while on vacation, so I can absorb how much time is passing while I am doing nothing. That way, maybe the glorious days will feel like they last as long as a day of work.

I’m just sayin’…

Is it possible to keep pace with everything life offers? I am not able to do so myself. Somehow, I know enough to navigate a very small amount of technology in my daily life. I don’t tend to double-click live links. There are those who do. However, I have never been one to make full use of all the bells and whistles available in any device I have ever owned. I am inclined to be happy with a power button and a volume control. Good to go.

Recently, our kitchen audio component demonstrated a decisive change in behavior from its previous usual. The onboard pushbutton controls no longer function. There is absolutely no response to pressing any button, or combination of buttons. I have been forced to actually use the remote that came with it. That should be enough for me. It has a power button and volume controls. Unfortunately, there is no way to adjust the clock time by remote.

The tunes box in the corner of our kitchen now continues to boldly display its clock in Central Standard Time, even though we’ve obviously sprung ahead to Daylight Saving Time. How annoying is that?

Maybe if I would just go out and buy this week’s latest version of smart phone, with a prominent power button and volume control, I won’t need any other devices. Do phones display the current time?

I’m beginning to think maybe life itself may actually be based on a true story. I woke up yesterday and found the weather was just like what the forecast had predicted. Everything that happens is just like what really happens. It’s impressive. It would make a great marketing campaign. “Life …Based on a True Story!”

It seems odd though, since we are all just made-up characters.

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I am experiencing the weirdness of time perceptions again. The ‘long-ness’ and shortness of passing time. Both happen, simultaneously, and I am smack dab in the middle. I waited while Cyndie was having knee surgery and it was a classic moment of ‘killing time.’ Minutes, and then hours, pass by and I am static. When that phase ends, I move to being a companion in her recovery process. My normal activity is placed on hold. It was a long day.

Yet the day passed by very quickly. It seems like we just got up, and then we were home. A brief rest on the couch in the afternoon and suddenly we’re off to bed for the night.

It reminds me of my perception of having children. At first, they were around the house a lot and required frequent attention, and then not so much of either being around the house or needing attention. In the time it took me to bend down to put my socks on one morning, they were done with college and entering the work force.

The same things that seem to take a long time to pass, are also passing by very quickly. It’s true, even if it seems like I just made it up.

Take a look at the years the University of Minnesota Gophers enjoyed success in the Big Ten conference.

I wonder how much of a reflection that is of the players that coincidentally attend the institution at the same time.

If a player was just average, yet happened to make the team in his Sophomore year back in 1909, he’d be able to enjoy a pretty good college football experience. If a player was exceptionally great, but arrived at the U during the many decades when the Gophers have failed to challenge for a spot at the top of the conference, that greatness doesn’t appear to carry enough sway.

Cyndie and I were generously invited to join her parents for this year’s home opener against the University of South Dakota, but it turned out to be a stinker for the home team. They were out-smarted and out-played by a team from a smaller school in a lower division. Next week the Gophers host the Trojans of the University of Southern California, making us the BIG underdog. I wonder how it feels to be a player on the football team this year.

I don’t think the average player has a lot to look forward to, and if there are any exceptionally great players hiding on the team, I’m going to guess that their greatness won’t be enough to bring a championship to the program.

Much as it may seem that the miracle of friendship is manifest in the way our friends support us in times of need, the bigger miracle worth noting may occur at the moment we allow ourselves to actually ask our friends for help. I think most of us recognize the difficulty in determining when it is time to ask.

I’m reminded of a thought that occurred to me last weekend when I was biking with Jack through the woods in Wisconsin:

How do you know when you are carrying too much speed into a corner?

The answer is, you don’t know you have too much speed until it is too late and you are unable to stay on the trail through the end of the turn. “Oops, should have applied the brakes a bit there!”

How do you know when it’s too late to ask a friend for help?

It is never too late to ask.

In a vivid depiction of a moment in time, these blossoms shout, “Here today, gone tomorrow!”

Last night there was an awesome sunset. Filled with multi-colored clouds, it just commanded attention. It bathed the rooms of our house in a luminescent golden glow. It was sheer luck that I wandered to that side of the house to notice. It brought a couple of thoughts to my mind. Whenever I enjoy the opportunity to witness something like a fabulous sunset or spectacular rainbow, I find myself wondering how often, when nature’s dramatic visual events occur, I entirely fail to notice. Nature certainly doesn’t pause for one moment to allow us extra time to enjoy.

When a tree falls in the forest, if no one is there to hear, it’s as if it made no sound.

I am not one to fret too much over being unable to be outside on a spectacular sunny day; I came to that awareness in direct contrast to others around me who tend to make a big fuss about not missing out on a ‘great’ day. I may be severely neglecting the moment of time that is ‘a nice day,’ but as much as I appreciate the wonders of nature, I am disinclined to become enslaved to weather, good or bad.

If I fail to notice a nice day, it has no bearing on what kind of weather will actually emerge. I’m more inclined to take whatever weather I get, when I am able to be out in it, and to enjoy the moment, regardless.

Some things wait and some things don’t. I was contemplating writing about the subject of patience. You know the saying, “Wait for it, wait for iiiit”? It’s all about not jumping the gun. Not being so over-eager as to miss the better opportunity that presents itself in the next moment.

Don’t ask me about that question of how you know there is a better opportunity coming in the next moment. I have no idea. That is the mystery. That is why, when it happens… when you do wait and are rewarded with the prime opportunity, it is so magical.

The place I see this manifest most often is in the sports of indoor soccer and floorball that I play. If you rush your decision, the number of times you succeed in your objective is less than when you have the patience to delay your action. I watched this happen several times yesterday as players in front of me held the ball long enough for the defensive position to get impatient and shift, opening up a new opportunity to score which the shooters then took full advantage of. It was a beautiful. It’s the magic of the game!

However, on my way home from work, my focus on the art of waiting became distracted by Mother Nature. There is no waiting going on out there right now. Tree branches are filling with buds of new leaf growth. Dandelions are blossoming en masse. Shrubs are going gonzo with new growth, and any plan I had of doing some preliminary pruning to improve their shapes before the new growth happened is now well past the prime opportunity moment.

Another classic lesson on the duality of things in this life. Things aren’t so much either/or as they are both/and. Things wait, and things don’t.

It’s all in the timing. The trick is, each of us measure it differently. Some people become fixated on it and others make a conscious decision to disregard it. My time that remains prior to departure for the Himalayan trek is now inside 2 weeks. I’m hoping to pull together the many little things I’ve been doing to prepare and this weekend maybe even pack as if I were leaving, in order to better sense if there is something I have overlooked. This would give me time to take care of things if I find I don’t have what I need or want. I guess I am also interested to determine whether I have too much. Not too much time, but too much stuff.

I’ve made time to watch some basketball of the NCAA Men’s Tournament. As with almost all sports, time is all-critical. Obviously, there is the shot-clock to be managed, repeatedly throughout the game, and then the final buzzer to be beaten. But most importantly, the timing of each and every decision, as well as the athletic ability to respond in critical time to each decision, reveals outcomes of success and failure. For me it provides the beauty or the banality of the game. There are many times when players are so totally open to receive a pass, yet that moment is so incredibly short, infinitesimally small even, that completing it doesn’t happen. If their timing is off, the game can seem boring as hell. And when it is on, I find it a work of art.

Some athletes speak of slowing the action down in their minds, or of feeling as if that is what happens to them when they get in a ‘zone’. But I think the real secret is in the ability to think ahead. Anticipate what is about to happen and you just might be ready when it does. Maybe that is just another way of describing the same phenomenon, I don’t know. Makes it pretty fascinating with regard to team sports when you think about the nuances of timing and are able to witness a group of individuals mesh in ultimate synchronized anticipation and micro-second reactions, to achieve success. Especially when they are doing it against another team of individuals employing the same skills and effort to thwart them all the while.

I measure the time in two ways: the time remaining is getting short and yet it is still a long time until I leave. It is all relative.