We have a huge water oak in our back yard. The trunk has a diameter of 4.5 feet, is 75 feet tall and the canopy is as wide as it is tall. It is an estimated 240 years old. As time passes there are many branches and some hefty limbs that die, and some healthy limbs that have grown over our house. We often have days with strong gusty winds, which means I'll be in the yard picking up branches and a few medium size limbs. Every time I do that I think about those limbs hanging over the house.
I called a guy and told him that I wanted the tree's canopy to be cut back severely all the way around, both to open up the yard to more sunlight and to eliminate the hazard to the house. He did exactly what I wanted including cutting the trimmed wood to 20 inch lengths for use in our fire pit. I way underestimated the amount of logs there would be. He helped me stack the logs inside our shed, and when that was full against an outside wall of the shed. The trouble with the logs is that to be burnable they have to be split. As Shakespeare said, "Ay, there's the rub!"
I went to Home Depot, lifted a splitting axe with a 5 pound head and immediately knew that this 82 year old body couldn't handle it. I bought one with a 2.5 pound head and hoped that it and I could do the job. It took me 3 1/2 weeks working 3 to 4 hours each day to split all of the logs that were outside of the shed. A 5 pound head would have split most of those logs cleanly with one stroke. With the 2.5 head I usually needed 3 to 4 hits. I'm sure that in my younger days I would have done better.
You don't need to do a lot of thinking when you're splitting logs. The mind is free to wander where it will. My mind often wanders to subjects that surprise even me.
In one of those Avenger movies Thor's mother tells him, "Everyone fails at who they're supposed to be, Thor. The measure of a person, of a hero, is how well they succeed at being who they are." When I heard that line it sounded interesting if not profound. I assumed that some philosopher or poet had written the gist of it so Googled it to see who that person might be. There are well over a million hits on that line, but I found nothing that attributed the quote to anyone in particular. Apparently the line is original to the movie and originated from one of the script writers. Thinking a little further about those words, the profoundness started to lose its luster. Everyone fails at who they're supposed to be implies pre-destiny; that there exists a blueprint detailing our various qualities...personality, characteristics, moral code, actions, capabilities, etc, and that we are destined to deviate from that blueprint. Who drew up that blueprint? Whose expectations have I failed to meet? Whoever it is has done a lousy job because according to Thor's mother not one person has met the expectations. In the end what initially sounded thought provoking to me turned out to be nonsense.
The second part of that quote, "The measure of a person, of a hero, is how well they succeed at being who they are" is also nonsensical. In my view you can neither succeed nor fail at being who you are. Who you are is fixed, whether you're the CEO of a Fortune 500 company or a down-and-out junkie. You are who you are. Period.
Thor and the rest of the Avenger gang do a lot of time traveling. Every time I read or hear the term 'travel back in time' it always bugs me. I absolutely, positively believe that time as a separate entity does not exist. What exists is change. Time is a man-made construct the purpose of which is to measure rates of change. If there were no change, and I defy anyone to name something that doesn't change, there would be no time.
In what may seem to be a contradiction, there is past, present and future, though it could be argued that these terms are merely arbitrary designations of time/change. I imagine a sewing needle, standing erect with thread being pulled through the eye. The thread that already passed through the needle is in the past. The thread in the needle is the present, while the thread approaching the needle is the future. The past is gone. You can remember, read and talk about it but you can't live in it. It's gone.
You can imagine, plan and talk about the future but you can't live in it now or ever because when it enters that needle it is the present. It logically follows that we can only live in the present. Which raises the question, what is the duration of the present...what is the width of that needle? Because a definition of the present has no practical value we're free to label it whatever we want, from a zeptosecond (a trillionth of a billionth of a second) to an hour, a day, a week or whatever. For me the present is the period from when I awake in the morning until I go to bed at night. It seems natural and works for me.
One measure of change that is bothering me is the rate at which people I know or knew are passing on. I know that in our age range it's natural and inevitable but it doesn't seem right that you've run the marathon and at the finish line, instead of a trophy there's loss of physical and mental abilities accompanied by suffering.
Obituaries often read that the decedent "died a peaceful death surrounded by friends and family." Maybe so. Others read of the decedent "passing on after fighting a courageous battle" against cancer or Alzheimer's. Nobody fight a battle against those things. The best you can do is take whatever options are available to you and pray for a miracle. In the end, after messing with you for a while the diseases kill you. Even if you go out quickly with a heart attack or stroke, you've still had your share of health issues that make living a little more difficult and unpleasant. It ain't right.
At the next vacancy for ruler of the universe, if I'm elected I'm going to implement an amendment to the death process. I'm going to call it the 'tranquil passage for seniors' and here's how it works. An older person dies. No pulse, no brain wave activity. They're gone. But, for a period of thirty minutes their awareness and consciousness continues. And they immediately become aware that they have no pain, no aches no discomfort of any sort. Their hearing and sight is perfect. They have their own teeth. They are in all regards physically and mentally 100%. They have no worries, no responsibilities or obligations. They don't care about Ukraine or climate change. Rising gas prices don't affect them. They can put aside forever the regrets that have been bothering them for all these years. They don't have to be nice to that aunt they hate. They will never have to take another pill. They'll never again have to take from their mailbox a pre-approval solicitation for a Capital One credit card. It will be thirty minutes of pure bliss...utopia Then a chime will ring softly and they will be gone. That is a proper ending.
