I could not get my head around ∑ √µȠ and standard deviations in high school. I could relate to maths being about having one right answer to one plus one – but maths with no right answers and lots of numbers did not make sense.
It has taken me over 60 years to realise that life is all about numbers.
To wait in a line, I need to take a number;
To make my plastic card materialise money, I need a PIN number;
To get a bank loan, I need all my financial numbers;
If I want to communicate with someone, I need to punch some numbers on the phone;
To be better than you, I just need better numbers;
The whole internet thing and everything digital are made up of only two numbers;
And when I die, I will be just a number on a death certificate.
The reason I failed statistics in high school was because I had no idea what life was about.
Old males have better mating opportunities
I was really shy in my youth. Put me in a dance hall and I would be the only person on the bench whilst everyone else were on the dance floor.
If you were to put me in a dance hall today with 99 other people who represented the Australian population over 30 years old, where would I be?
Well, I would still be the last male on the bench.
Not because I am shy.
…It is because I have learnt my statistics.
If every one paired off the old fashioned way (male plus female), I will still be the last male on the bench.
…But there will be 10 unmatched females also on the bench with me.
Even though it is a variation of the “A young bull and an old bull are at the top of a hill…” joke, the ‘Statistical Jack’ suddenly has far better odds.
… And I learnt this just by looking at the abs statistics…
The 65 year old question
I can’t wait until I get to 65. I am so excited to get a 40% discount on my racing licence after I get to 65.
If a person gets to 65, they reach a milestone in the way they become treated by the Australian government. Getting to 65 means entry into the chart….
The question then becomes: “What does society expect a 65 year plus person to do?”
Filling the VOID
People don’t fall into a black hole when they turn 65.
But there are some holes that need filling as they jump into the 16 % band of the population.
I have been keenly interested in the lives of this 16% – purely because I am going to be joining them in a couple of years.
Change is the dominant feature for the 16%. There are two categories of change – voluntary and involuntary. Both involves experiencing a void and finding ways to fill it up again.
…And here are my 3 void-filling strategies.
Shrinkage – Shrink the life. Live to the limiting resources
Replace – Replace the old life activities with new ones
Rinse and repeat – Wash out the old life and bring clarity to the new one.
I have two more years to figure out which one I will choose.
In just 3 birthdays, Olivia has made more progress in knowing how this world works than the meagre awakening that I have achieved over my last 4 decades of birthdays.
I had fallen prey to bursting into this world like a fireworks explosion and then rapidly imploding into the void of darkness.
In the animal kingdom, babies learn to stand up and move within minutes. Much of their sole purpose in life is to survive the hunger of a sniffing predator.
We humans are different. It is the mind that governs our survival.
When I was born, I was totally helpless physically. It would have taken almost two birthdays before I could even know how to use the two legs that were built for walking (and cycling)..
Yet……
The mind/ego/consciousness was starting to shift through the gears. A cry meant the familiar warmth of a breast and some mouth exercise to bring relief to an empty feeling. This was the beginning to knowing how this world works.
Life in 3 acts
The three-act structure is a model used in narrative fiction that divides a story into three parts (acts), often called the Setup, the Confrontation and the Resolution. (Wikipedia).
Over a span of decades, the 3-act structure has been the guiding light in my life:
I was born. The story structure builds:
Shit happens.This is happening over a long timeline and I am still fighting my way out of this part of the story.
I die.I am not there yet… but his used to fill me with a frightening sense of dread and irony
However, an essential element of any good story is the pivot point just before the 3rd and final act. …And it is REVELATIONS.
And it works like this: What colour is an apple? Red? Green? Golden?
It seems like any of these can be the correct answer (and I could bring up a whole lot of data to prove my answer of red – simply because there are more red apples in this world than the other colours combined).
The true colour of an apple is white. And this is only revelled when the apple is cut open to expose the body of the fruit.
Life in 4 acts plus a bonus.
The book of revelations is the final book of the new testament. And its existence is the key to opening the possibilities beyond the 3rd act (when Jesus Christ died).
I am now 62 years old. ….And I reckon I am one of the lucky ones who can live through my ‘book of revelations’ way before I check out of this world. It has dawned upon me that my life has evolved in discrete steps of 20 years. I have done 3 steps and there is more. (In the old days, humans lived to 60 – and the 3 act structure made sense).
So, I have been forced to use another metaphor for my life. It is in 4 parts – just as there are four seasons in a year.
SPRING. One day it is all barren and suddenly the cherry blossoms pop out. (guess what part of life this is…)
SUMMER. We are all on the beach chasing boys and girls. (most of us catch something).
AUTUMN. It is harvest time. But it is hard work. And as the saying goes… you reap what you sow.
WINTER. The nights grow longer and we wrap ourselves up to hibernate. Will we live through another winter?
But winter is the key… And there is work involved.
In cycling, those who ride through winter come out with a bonus the following spring.
In computer gaming, when you get enough points.. there is a bonus life after THE END.
For a lot of people, life goes into winter when they enter their 60s. It is a time for reflection and asking WHY? (why did this have to happen to me?).
There is a fine line between reflection and revelation. In my case, I fell into revelation as I learnt to say NO. I have finally realised that the question I should always ask myself is WHY NOT?
There is a bonus life hidden in the depths of winter. … And I am on a journey to hunt for it.
It wasn’t panic – but I was starting to get worried.
One kilometre into a team time trial session and I already felt really bad.
Surely, my legs (and lungs) would come good soon…..
The truth hit me at the as we came out of ‘Blood Hill’ (this was after the descent!). The second rise on the road at to Peats Ridge flipped me past the red line.
Not only did I not make it to the 20km turn (this was all now by myself), a short turn to join my returning team mates did not help. I got spat out again as soon as the road went up.
It was a lonely suffer fest back to the finish line.
This was just over a week ago. In my 30 odd years of racing, I have only raced time trials two or three times. The results were worse than bad.
… And this is why I hate time trials. I much prefer ‘sucking wheels’ in a bunch – taking advantage of the draft from my larger racing colleagues.
This year, Paul convinced me to join him, Denis and George In the club time trial championships in the over 250 years combined category.
I went out and bought my very first TT bar.
The Sydney Metro championships – Penrith Lakes.
The race track at Penrith Lakes circles the man made lake that was built for the 2000 rowing Olympics. There are no hills – but the finish line comes after some tricky chicanes.
Mostly, you can look up or across the lake to see what is happening on the track – and also to judge how far the break is ahead.
So, most people would describe it as a ‘sprinter’s course’.
I can’t sprint. (I have many flaws, in case you haven’t noticed. Can’t sprint, Can’t time trial, Can’t ride hills…)
And that is probably the reason that I have never won a Metro championship.
But I have always lived in hope. If Steven Bradbury can get a gold medal against overwhelming odds… then there is always hope.
“…Some people grow old and wise – the rest just gets old”
Trevor put in a lone attack halfway in the first lap. He is the Australian champ in my age category.
I went after him.
We thought we had a gap. But soon, I heard heavy breathing behind me and shadows. They weren’t going to let us get away so easily.
Adam rode up to me at the end of that lap and asked “ who is the strong guy in the Aussie kit?”
“The strongest one in the race…” I shouted back at him. I hoped that it was loud enough for the others in the bunch to hear.
As we went into our second lap, everyone seemed to be on Trevor’s wheel.
When you have raced enough, you develop an instinct that sizes up the situation. And if you let your instincts take over, the state of ‘FLOW’ shuts down mind chatter.
I jumped the bunch from 5th wheel. Trevor was at the front and I was counting on a hesitation from him.
A rider pulling along a bunch of ‘wheel suckers’ would instinctively think “Let some other bastard chase him…”
I settled in.
When you make an attack, you don’t look back. You just keep the watts going and try to get into a rhythm.
When I did take a peek… I had a good gap.
My hope was to have Trevor attack the bunch and bridge across. Then the two of us would have a chance to stay away.
Another lap in and still no one coming across.
Another 5 laps to go and I was not looking forward to riding all those by myself.
“Time trialling is an art”
This was the advice George and Paul gave me after I bombed out at Calga.
You get low. Your forearms are horizontal. And you just see a bit of road in front of you.
And you just suffer and pedal.
But you do get into a rhythm.
I had no TT bars. But I have discovered a position on the hoods that puts me into that streamlined position.
…And I just went for it.
Get low and flat
With 3 laps to go, I had a minute gap.
“What’s the gap again?” I asked when I start the second last lap.
“45 seconds”
The sound of the bell is like an air hose to a drowning man. Only to be bettered by “still 44 seconds”.
Cruising through the chicanes for one last time… this time with no sprinters around me, I soft pedalled to the finish.
27 seconds later, the sprinters raced for silver.
I won the gold medal
…So what?
Without the story, a gold medal is just a coloured piece of fake metal.
It was the second last time that we were going under the railway bridge at Olympic Park. The left hand corner with a dodgy camber.
Half way into the curve, I felt my rear wheel slide. A split second later, I was sliding on the asphalt and ended up in lane two (lucky there was no care there).
I don’t know how the other riders behind me managed to stay upright. Nicko reckons we were hitting 50km/hr around the corner. I guess sliding along the read at the same speed as the other guys on their bikes gave them more reaction time…
If I have a choice of how I come off my bike, I would choose the option of sliding with severe road rash every time. Fortunately, this choice was made for me this morning. My head never touched the road. My mended twice broken collarbone remained intact and nothing broke. My bike had twisted levers and I rode home on it.
But if you hit the road at 50km/hr, you have to pay for it. My payment was second degree road rash to my shoulder, arm and hip. The jersey and nicks were rather painless sacrifices…
If this is the jersey and knicks… imagine the skin
When I got home, I knew that the shower was going to feel like hell.
I raided Shirley’s makeup gear and scrubbed the road rash under the warm shower head with ‘Dettol’ (I think I will use cold water next time) – trying hard not to scream.
When you have second degree road rash, band aids just won’t do.
I dug out my old stash of dressings. There were many choices.
In the past, I would put a gauze dressing on the wound and bandage or tape it. I would keep changing the dressings daily until the road rash scabbed up. Then it would be a few days with the scab drying (and cracking) without any dressing.
A quick visit to Dr Google suggested that this is still a valid method – although there is more leaning recently towards the ‘wet wound’ strategy.
There are two schools of thought. ‘Dry’ wound means taking the dressings off as soon as a scab starts to form – and letting the wound ‘air’.
The ‘wet’ wound method goes in the opposite direction. It means do not let any scab form at all – but keeping the wound wet 24/7.
So which method is better?
I decided to experiment. I love being a guinea pig.
In the past, I have always defaulted to the ‘dry’ school of healing. So I know how long and painful the healing path is.
My experiences with Smith&Nephew’s “Opsite Flexigrid”.
At about $3 for a 10cm x 12cm dressing, It is a bargain – compared to a $60 racing tyre..
It is a dressing that is not specifically designed for road rash and that is why the grid on the dressing backing makes no sense….
Day 1.
It is as painful as it looks
Looking back, I discovered that the shower was the worst part of the healing process. The pain started to subside as soon as the dressings went on. About 4 hours later, the pain level was down to 10%. I had put on a pair of jeans (part of my work gear) and the hip was bearable and I was climbing ladders at the end of the day.
There was weeping from the wounds and my jeans and shirt getting a bit damp became a part of my life for the next few days.
At the end of the day, I was pleasantly surprised at how painless my road rash had become.
Day 2.
No problems getting into my nicks and jersey for an early morning ride.
After a long hot sticky day at work on roofs, I decided to change my dressings – since they were coming loose under the shower.
All my road rashes got the ‘Opsite Flexigrid” treatment.
Day 3.
My usually Saturday morning ride. Did 70km. Life carried on. Hardly any pain – but the wounds still weeping.
Kept the same dressings on…
Day 4.
Went racing at Lansdowne. Hardly noticing the road rash. Kept the same dressings on (cheap skate!). Then watched Peter Sagan conquer Paris Roubaix.
Day 5.
Volume of weeping only a slight trickle. Showers got into shoulder and hip dressings and these got changed. The elbow dressing was firm and remained unchanged.
Day 6.
No dressing change. No pain. Did I really have road rash?
Day 7.
No dressing change -although wounds getting a bit smelly…
Day 8. Thursday 12th April 2018
One week after the accident.
Take all dressings off after evening shower.
Shoulder already had second skin and feels like a dry film. Same with elbow. Hip still damp – so this got a dressing – the final one.
Moisturized shoulder and elbow – which I would consider ‘fully healed’.
Day 9.
Hip dressing remains on. Dampness beneath the dressing.
Day 10.
Raced the Odd Spoke at Eastern creek in the morning. Took hip dressing off after shower and wound is dry after the retained moisture has been cleaned off.
Conclusions.
looking good after 2 weeks
It took 7 days for the majority of the road rash to be fully healed. This is more than twice of the speed of my personal experiences with the ‘dry’ method.
No pain. No inflammation. No infections. No need for creams and daily bandage changes. Easy to take showers. No scabs to crack and hook onto clothing.
Welcome to the miracle of the ‘wet’ dressing.
Are there any cons?
Yes.
You do need to get used to the weeping of the wound fluids onto clothing and it starts to smell a bit towards from day 5 onwards.
But when the other choice is a sore drawn out scab wound… I know which one I will choose.
It was a beautiful Sydney morning and freezing. Temperatures hung around 3 degrees as the sun’s waking rays hit the tops of the tallest buildings and slowly inched its way earthwards…
We had planned to do a Coluzzi ride with the slow bunch. For hundreds of Saturdays, we have gone for early morning rides.
This time, It was so cold and Dave decided that we should not wait for the bunch to come pass before we joined them. We would start riding and wait for them to catch us…
So we started off the highway – just the two of us. At times, we would take up the whole left lane and all we had were front lights that we needed to see where we were going, and flashing tail lights so that the speeding car drivers behind us did not mow us down.
We went through the airport tunnel and a patient motorist behind us allowed the negotiation of the tricky and dangerous exit merge.
We spoke about racing on Sunday – my birthday.
On how accidents can happen during racing…
We spoke about lots of things.
I was hanging on the tail end of the speeding bunch on the return leg. We were coming through Engadine on the Princes Highway and on the slight rise along the Dover place segment, Dave started dropping back on the left side after doing a turn on the front.
I shouted at him to get back on as I went past him.
A few seconds later, I heard the sickening sounds of metal, carbon fibre and soft tissue hitting the tarmac behind me. I had bad feelings as I stopped and rode back to the tangle of bikes and bodies on the road.
I had a feeling that it was going to be Dave in massive trouble.
And it was.
Memories are precious
Sunday 9th July 2017.
It is another beautiful frosty Sydney morning.
Shirley had asked me a while back what I wanted for my grand 60th birthday.
I said that all I wanted was to take the ‘little people’ to the snow. My grand kids have never seen snow before.
So, we spent most of last week at Perisher and Blue Cow.
In a last minute turn of events, Only Josh and Ashton could come. Ollie stayed home with her parents.
We made snowmen. Threw snow balls. And they boys learnt to ski.
This will be my most memorable birthday.
We live dangerous lives. When we end up on a hospital bed, all we will have will be memories.
Experiences create memories that last.
The latest expensive gifts, things and toys are easily forgotten.
At 60, life for me is a distilled collection of memories.
How much more birthdays after 60 does not matter.
What matters is how many more memories there are left to create.
If you are a cyclist and you have a habit of carrying your phone in your back jersey pocket, then this will be of interest.
For over 10 years now, I unconsciously slip my phone into my right hand side jersey pocket when I dress and hop on my bike for a ride. I also take my wallet, house keys and some food and a pump also in my other pockets – but they are not the point of the story here…
I have often wondered about how the phone should be placed in the pocket.
Screen facing out – less sweaty moisture getting onto the screen and accidental dialing… but camera fogging..
Screen facing in – Sweat soaking the screen (even though my Galaxy S7 is waterproof!) and chance of the screen being opened by the movement and ‘pocket dialing’…
It is just like the question of how to wear your glasses – with arms over or under the helmet straps – which is in fact the better way. Or is it just a storm in a tea cup?
My default on the phone question has been – screen out.
And that was the way I had it when I went off for my Thursday morning ride at Olympic Park. It had been wet most of the week and the roads were slightly damp and dark.
The left had turn from Australia Ave onto Dawn Fraser Ave – before the start of the group rides.
I must have done this turn thousands of times before.
Halfway into this turn, my wheel(s) slipped from under me and I hit the road on my right side. Silvio (or maybe Sharon) who were behind me, asked if I was OK and picked up my phone which was out of my pocket and on the road.
I put the phone back into my pocket and adrenalin kept me functioning. I picked myself up and after a few adjustments, managed to complete most of the early morning training ride.
… It wasn’t until my phone fell out of my torn jersey pocket later in the ride, that I saw my phone in the brightening daylight. It was not in a good state!
The road had taken a chunk out the left hand corner of the screen (including a few large tears on the jersey)… my Galaxy S7 was DEAD.
The result of a small ‘spill’
Destroyed riding jersey.
Tyre on the rear wheel that almost popped out of the rim.
Cracked rib (that what it feels like)
Sprained wrist
Small grazing on my right hip
My phone had saved my right hip from major road rash. But it died in the process.
So, which way should you slip your phone into your jersey pocket?
… From now on, my replacement Galaxy S7 will go in with the screen permanently glazing into my kidneys.
If I had put my phone screen inwards on Thursday morning, the plastic protective backing case would have taken the road rash.
“Money doesn’t motivate me in the least. It’s an integral part of our life sure, but the day it defines you – you lose your other values.” (Day 13 – August 14)
Right now, he is just a lonely human being on a Giant doing a solo ride across USA. Whilst most of us ride for fun, Maxim is doing this to try to discover what the word ’value’ in life is all about…
I joked to Ian Jackson last week that while other cycling clubs have their club houses, the Waratahs just have an old van. But we organise the best masters racing in Sydney.
Currently, to get our van to our races, we have a dentist having to get up early every Sunday morning so that the race circuit and race management can be put in place. Then he has to wait until all the packing up has been done after the racing… so that he can get home late.
I am sure that if James Tan billed us his dental rate for the hours spend providing this service, we will have to charge a lot more for race entries. When we work out that we only pay $4.80 to participate in quality racing every Sunday (and with a chance of a prize at the end for some) – that is value.
The deputy Mayor of Auburn made news today. His lavish wedding shut down the entire street. People with money should be entitled to spend it whichever way they wish. The question is whether the money spend will bring any more value to the marriage. I guess only time will tell.
When Tom Cruise screamed Jerry Maguire’s ‘…show me the money!’, he voiced our fixation with money rather than value. Somehow the alternative ‘…show me the value!’ does not carry the same emotional energy.
Value and money are two totally different things (although they follow each other around all the time). The reason that value gets mixed up with money is because some smart economist started to use money to measure value. The reality is that there is no measure for value. Just like there is no measurement for ‘the stink of a fart’.
…or how do you value the Waratah Masters Cycling Club?
Our lonely cyclist Maxim Hatton has escaped the clutches of the money magnet and his blog as he pushes himself through the American landscape makes for some interesting reading. It is a look of the world from a set of eyes with a clarity reserved for those who have been through life and back.
A tiny start up company called Google set about to make it easy to search the vast resources of the internet. For a long time, it made no money. It just kept piling on its value for successful relevant searches for anyone who wanted to use its services for free.
Now it is worth a third of the whole of Australia!
The secret is not looking for the money. Value is where it starts. Money just seems to follow it.
I had just dropped Shirley off at the waiting bay outside Strathfield train station. With indicators blinking, I had a quick look at my rear vision mirror… and there was just one car on the traffic lane just driving past – so I let it go and slowly pulled out after it.
Two angry blasts of the horn jolted my eyes back to my wing mirror. A huge Mercedes had just popped up on my rear right. I had no idea how it got there so quickly… but I got the message that he was a bit pissed off by my bad driving.
Cyclists braving the roads get similar treatment by many car drivers. A person on a bike (innocently minding their own business) is seen as a hindrance rather than a legitimate road user.
We went down to Canberra over the weekend for a bit of family time. My two grandsons had a great time catching up with their uncles and we spent Sunday at the Questacon.
Josh (almost turning three), produced a serious look in the middle of playing and said “…I don’t like your At-ti-tude!”. It can be a bit alarming when you hear this from an adult – let alone from a toddler in nappies…You can really piss someone off by these words.
Le Tour is quite central to my daily routine and during the weekend, the most newsworthy was Frenchmen throwing piss on Chris Froome. Then there was the physical and verbal abuse at the Sky riders all thrown into the mix. .What should be admiration seems easily twisted into anger.
Imagine straining yourself mentally and physically to the limit. It is the best that you can produce. Yet, it pisses some people off. When nothing that you do is good enough, it can be mentally destroying. Let’s hope the Sky team can still continue to produce their best – despite the knockers.
Perhaps, it is because the Sky team has made cycle racing so much of a science that it has left their competitors scratching their heads. Science has a habit of showing us how fallible our sense of righteousness can be.
Questacon is quite a showcase of exhibits using science and technology to show us that much of what we think is right… is in fact somehow misguided. There is an exhibit that shows how you can take perfectly straight lines and make them seem curved – by just adding in some distractions.
Back to the honking car…
I had done a perfect exit from the waiting bay – yet it was nowhere good enough for the rampaging Mercedes.
Little Josh has little inkling about what an attitude is. You may think that he has an advanced vocabulary or that he was deliberately being cheeky.
It turns out that the phrase is contained in a nursery rhyme called “Little Bunny Foo Foo” that he sings at child care. A very simple reason – yet, can be misunderstood in many ways.
If science can prove that humans can see a straight line as curved, what hope is there that your best is indeed any good when viewed by another human being?
I swear that those lines in Canberra were crooked.
…It all just goes to show that when perfection can be seen quite innocently as imperfect – that nothing can ever be perfect in this world.
Which brings us to the moral of this tale. “Your best is good enough…. Don’t ever try to be perfect (or you will live a life full of disappointment)”
At this stage in our lives, most people will look at life as “Been there…Done that”. After all, the reason the government made 60 the retirement age when we entered the industrialised age, was that we only had a 65 year life span. These days, we are expected to go beyond 80.
So, as we head for 60 and beyond, we should be looking at life as “Right here…Doing this”.
Why bother?
Getting old gives me perspective. It is not something that a teenager or a young adult has any inkling about. Only age can provide this insight.
This perspective can be seen from the two vantage points of Possibilities and Probabilities. Usually, when I see things for myself, I have a much better understanding. And when you have been looking at things for over 57 years…you see a lot of things. Now, I understand a hell of a lot more.
I am going to list below the things I have seen for myself and comment on what has been possible and what have been most probable for most people. It is not meant to a judgemental thing. Just some personal observations…
Money: Making more money is still in the fore front of most people’s minds.
It is possible to get to a stage in your life and realise that you have enough money. For now and for the future. This means no more having to do things just for the money. My mum and dad said this to me when they were in their late 80’s and 90’s –“…we have enough money. Don’t think that you have to keep making more money all your life…”
Now I know that they did not lie.
I still work hard and do things. But that is because I like doing things to the max (guess why I still race A grade – when I could be retiring to a lower grade…). Somehow, I just can’t stop my bank account from getting bigger.
Looking at the probabilities around me, I also realise that money is still a big issue for most people. The 80/20 rule means that most people will probably not realise that they have enough money. There is nothing that I (or perhaps you) can do about it. I only observe and make comment.
Family.The stable family unit is an exception.
The probabilities point to a 50% divorce rate. Add that to families that are as good as divorced and you can easily get up to 80%.
It is possible to have a tight family unit. This is one where independence is allowed to grow and dependence is nurtured. Differences and personalities add the spice – but does not ruin the meal.
If you fall into this category, feel blessed.(I feel blessed every day)…
Career:It is not what they make it out to be.
The probabilities are that the career path that you have chosen will shortly come to an end. What now?
It is possible to go through life without a career path. Instead, if the focus in our working life was just to do things that provide value to others…it is a mission that has no end. I do not anticipate that I will be thrown into the career scrap heap any time soon – simply because I do not have a career.
Personal Growth: I do not mean putting on more weight!
Sometimes, when I go into my ‘childish moments’ – my wife tells me to ‘grow up!’. We all receive life experiences as the years fly by. They are meant to make us grow up.
It is quite probable that the life experiences are treated as mosquitoes at a barbeque on a warm summer’s night. A nuisance that only deserves to be killed off. The quicker the better. You can lead a horse to water – but you can’t force it to drink. Most people just don’t drink.
It is possible to take the blessings and hard knocks that come your way in your stride – and let them infuse you with deep emotions that you have to work through. Eventually, you will come out the other side a bigger person (and I don’t mean size).
Physical:There is a log graph in there some where…
Half our population is out of shape. When a thing is out of shape, it does not look like it should be. When a human is out of shape, not only do they look a bit disproportionate, their ability to put in physical efforts is also compromised.
With 50% obesity and similar proportion being unfit, the 80% portion is easy to reach. So, it is quite probable that you are out of shape. But your physical shape has very little to do with age (and this is where the log graph comes in).
It is quite possible to be quite old and be in great physical shape.
My speed on my bike is faster now then it was when I was in my university days. And I can go just as hard for just as long (no jokes about sex – please). I just find that I do not recover from hard efforts as quickly. I am the same weight and everything still functions quite well-despite all the accidents and broken bones.
Spiritual:This is about the spirit – not religion.
I notice that all the spiritual gurus have no religion. Religion tends to cloud our understanding of spirit and with so many people being religious, it is quite probable that the majority of us draw a blank on spiritual issues.
It is possible to live this life and the next without a religion. It is possible to be the fish in the aquarium and marine biologist at the same time. You become a better fish when you know about the great oceans and yet still swim around in the controlled environment of the ‘fishpond’.
It is possible not to fear death because you know that there is no such thing.
Social:facebook is to blame.
It is the social aspect of life that I find hard to define.
It is quite probable that you are on facebook (where everyone wants to be friends) or you just have lots of ‘friends’.
I am quite happy being with myself. Some people have no friends. So, it is quite possible to spend your life talking to yourself.
But the very nature of life means that we can only play with other players. So, at every moment in life, there is an interaction with another. But that interaction can be without words.
It is probable that you think being a social animal is all about talking.
It is remotely possible that you have found that you can socialise on a more meaningful level without saying a word…
THE END
Is it worth getting older? I hope that my observations above can open up some of the possibilities that this life can bring…
I had a classmate who was a high achiever. He had great expectations. Recently, he committed suicide.
Sir Bradley has great expectations of getting over 55km in his hour attempt. He fell short. Now, he will be remembered for getting so close to the mark – but not quite getting there.
Charles Dickens penned his ‘Great Expectations’ to treat his readers into a journey of the unexpected. Like all classic tales, the plot twists and weaves along into unexpected results.
Given the uncertainty of the future, we all still persist in expecting things to turn out as we “WILL’ them to. Parents are the greatest sinners against their children in this regard. Expectant parents and confused kids make for a highly stressful and unrewarding childhood.
On the other end of the scale is ‘NO Expectations’.
I had a happy weekend. Even though the Sydney Road titles at Penrith Lakes were a lightly attended day of racing, any competition is tough. Masters 6 was a fairly quiet affair on a cold start to the day.
After decades of racing ‘opens’, I have an outstanding record. NIL wins or places. So, Saturday morning started with no expectations.
On the Prime lap, I decided to attack. The unexpected happened. For almost a lap, no one chased. Suddenly, I had won a Prime.
Roland Lang rolled off the front soon after to stretch his legs. The unexpected happened again. No one chased. Roland had the rare (and lonely) opportunity to time trial to the finish about half a lap in front. It was the first time he had to sprint against himself to win gold…
I challenged the bunch on the last lap by jumping off for a long sprint. When I looked around on the final left-hander, there was unexpected daylight behind me. I couldn’t believe that I had won the bunch sprint.
It wasn’t until we were returning our race numbers when it was revealed that a rider in our race had snuck past the M4 bunch in front of us and he had already collected the silver. But when you have no expectations, a bronze and a $30 Prime is pretty cool…
Start your day with no expectations and you will always be pleasantly surprised by what happens. Start it with great expectations, and you will always be disappointed.
But does having no expectations mean that we will lose our sense of purpose?
One always overestimate what can be achieved in a day and underestimate what can be achieved in a lifetime. (Bill Gates said it differently – but the result is the same).
In the same way, Great Expectations is short term tactics and NO Expectations is long term strategy.
