From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

As summer days pass, do you wonder where does the day go by so fast and you get so little done? Do the sticky hot days leave you with little energy? Do you just want to lie on the dock and dive off the dock into the water to cool off?

Years ago I read and saved a column in a local newspaper by Bob Ramsey, an advocate for Vital Aging. In his column, “The time of our lives,” he writes that “time is the currency of aging. It’s what we all have to spend. And how we spend it is the life we buy for ourselves.”

That passage hit home with me. I don’t deal well with the hot temperatures high up in the nineties. And humidity totally saps all my energy. Usually diving into the lake cools and energizes me, but this summer I’ve become a sloth. I’m disinclined to work or exert myself at anything, especially weeding the overgrown gardens. Some days I find myself totally idle and unproductive in my air conditioned house. I actually take naps for the first time in my life!   

I’ve discovered that I can spend endless days reading and working on the computer. Sometimes I just sit and enjoy the slight breeze from the lake. However, if it’s Manic Monday, it’s a different story. Monday is the day of the week when my conscience forces me to do loads of laundry, hang sheets and pillowcases on the line, make fresh beds, scour the kitchen and baths and ask Dave to vacuum and take out the garbage. Then I collapse with exhaustion in the evening and suggest we go out for supper.

Laziness is addicting. It’s hard to get motivated to accomplish much when the thermometer reads 90 plus degrees, and the summer drought fries the yards. When I see all the weeds growing, I find myself longing for cold temperatures, even snow to kill those beastly weeds! Mother Nature and Mr. Weatherman, please lower the temperatures and cool off my body.

But then Bob Ramsey’s thoughts come to mind. Time marches on… Remember when we were kids and time seemed to inch by so slowly. My husband Dave remembers enduring long spring and fall school days…he’d daydream about when the school day would end and he could get back to playing ball. But as we age, time seems to speed up. In a flash our youth is gone, our hair is turning gray, and we’ve lost our girlish figures and muscle bound bodies. Wasn’t it only a short while ago when our bodies didn’t ache and we didn’t go to bed by 9? As we age, too many folks are dying…too early, much earlier than seems fair. Life was meant to be lived, to be enjoyed! We’re not ready to let friends go, to be left alone without them.

We realize that we have less time left to live, to do all those things we’ve dreamed of doing like the trip we wanted to make to China or Hawaii, Brazil or some other exotic location. Remember thinking about a plan to bike in Europe with another couple or girlfriends, white water rafting in Colorado, riding a camel to the pyramids, splurging on some popular theatre or concert tickets, inviting friends to our home for dinner and their good company, even to take a river cruise in France and ride the Orient Express? What happened to all those things we planned to do? Why did we hesitate to spend the money, to make the reservations? Where did the time go?

Time becomes more precious as we age. What we do and how we spend our days is our decision…but we can’t simply think about these things. As we approach another birthday, remember…time is running out. How much longer do we have to dream, to try something new, to accomplish a goal.

When we’re younger, we’re busy with necessary things like raising our families, our jobs, homes, volunteer responsibilities and civic duties. We don’t have much personal time, that precious time for only ourselves. Our time is consumed largely by others. As we grow into senior years, we have more say in how we spend the time of our lives. Obligations are fewer for most of us.

Some of us find that a huge challenge.  It’s so easy to let time slip away. Time escapes me many days, and I fall into bed having not done what I’d hoped to do that day. A book can consume my time. The computer lures me daily to linger over my email, Facebook, play a few games and check out the internet news.   

Psychologist Robert Seidenberg calls this the “trauma of uneventfulness.” When we let time pass us by, often we end up bored. Laziness does us in.

Ramsey came up with a simple formula for a day that seems to work for many:

“Do something interesting. Do something for yourself that feeds your soul. Do something for someone else that builds community. Do something healthy. Do something that cranks up your brain. Do something fun or silly or both.”

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.