What if you knew when you were going to die?
Category: Plans
Growing Out of Anger
Anger was born in Wichita, Kansas. She didn’t have a plan to be born, but she was. It just happened. So she grew up with the letter A, maybe a Scarlet Letter A on her pinafore. On the inside of her. She was a three-year-old when she felt herself wearing the A. It didn’t go away this A. It seemed to be stuck on the pinafore. I didn’t want to leave: not with scissors, not with love, not with a change of clothes. Anger grew into a teenager, a young adult. And as she passed through middle age, she found herself increasingly aware of the need to change her name.
In the early days of the next year after this inspiration to change her name, she went to the Oracle well. It was said to be the place where people went to change their names. It smelled like cinnamon and allspice and fairy dust.
“I’m here to change my name, please,” Anger said.
“What would you like to be called?” the Oracle said, handing her small dog a treat.
“I would like to be called Zen.”
“Why Zen?”
“I would like to be that kind of person from here on out.”
“Okay, Zen,” she said. “But your name does not define you. Your behavior is the key.”
SCENE: Zen née Anger left the Oracle, whose name was Blanche. The Oracle’s apartment was on the fifth floor of the cute building nestled in one of California’s famous wine regions. Behind the building, the vineyards spread back like marching bands in neat rows all the way to the low mountains, humming in the distance.
Zen left the main street where cars whizzed past, threatening to topple Zen back into her Anger persona. She quickly looked down at her chest. No. The Z for Zen was still attached to her starched white pinafore. “I’m looking for the caretaker of this vineyard,” she said to the first person she saw in the field.”
“No hablo ingles,” the man said.
“Sh –,” Anger started to blurt.
Zen interrupted Anger, smiled and said, “Gracias,” and walked on to another person she saw in the distance.
What was Zen doing? She had no idea. As a newly named person, she felt the Oracle’s advice had something to do with acting and behaving differently. What would be more different than working in a vineyard or at a winery?
“Hello,” she said to the next person she met in the vineyards, her feet now caked with dusty rose clay, mud, and dead leaves.
“Hello,” the person said. “Did you just come from the Blanche’s place?”
“Yes! How did you know?”
“I wish I had a dollar for every person who comes wandering in this vineyard wanting change themselves.”
“That’s weird. I thought it was a really unique idea.”
“Sorry. You’re not unique at all.”
Anger started push its capital A onto the front of the pinafore. “I think you’re wrong. In fact, I don’t want to work here at all.”
“I’m glad. We don’t need people in our vineyard like you. It makes the grapes unhappy, and we can’t have unhappy grapes. They make bad wine.”
The sun had started its descent onto the distant, now whispering, mountains. Shadows extended from the windbreak of trees across to the vines near where Zen was standing. The cars from the nearby street had slowed, and then largely vanished from the soundscape. Zen paused to listen as she inhaled the wet dirt smell, and heard vines creaking in a soft shifting against their stakes as they settled into a peaceful evening.
The vineyard person was gone when Zen turned to speak to her. Zen heard a voice in her head that said, “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence…”
She left the vineyard. Kept her name Zen. And went placidly to live the rest of her life at peace.
How the Killer Got in Here
Would we let them kill our younger selves?
Age
“Age doesn’t matter.”
Les Snead, General Manager of the Rams talking about then 30-year-old Ram’s Head Coach Sean McVay
Let me start by saying I am not a football junkie. In fact, I largely limit my viewing to the Super Bowl.
But as we find out, the Head Coach for one of this year’s Super Bowl teams, the Rams, was 30 years old when he was hired. He is now a whopping 33. So let me say this about that.
Age is a number.
A state of mind.
I could be seven.
I could be ninety-nine.
When I wake up.
I can choose. It’s free!
I can be an age.
Or.
I can be me.
© 2019, Kathryn Atkins
Be you. I’m already taken.
ROBOTS and AI
ROBOTS & ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Elon Musk thinks people everywhere should be frightened of AI.
Bill Gates told Charlie Rose that AI was potentially more dangerous than a nuclear catastrophe.
Even the recently deceased Stephen Hawking said, “I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”
What do you think? Here’s what I don’t like. I don’t like that the first few volleys of conversation in the chat room are AI. Maybe from a robot. I don’t know!
“How can I help you today?”
“I’m sorry you’re having that problem.”
“Let me see if we can find someone to get you an answer.”
“Could you describe the situation in more detail so we can route you to the right person?”
In fact, as I type this, my AI helper here inside my computer is fixing my spelling, anticipating my words, and adding and subtracting commas.
My AI person is cute, but he’s kind of a badass, don’t you think? He’s shooting me a dirty look because he’s not pleased that he’s been discovered. Ungrateful little wretch. And here I’m giving him the limelight, too. It’s so hard to get good help.
I get it. AI buys big companies some time on the phone. And it might save them money.
AI might also make it so you’re not needed anymore.
That’s okay. If you’re lucky you can go flip burgers. Wait. They have AI-assisted robots that are flipping burgers. Well, maybe you can pick fruit. Nope. They have AI-assisted robots that are picking the fruit. Ahem. Make that the ripe fruit, as AI bots can figure that out, too. Wait. Is AI bot redundant? No. And it’s not even new. I just saw a post: “AI bots are getting more dates than you.” It’s simply wonderful that technology has made finding a soul mate easier. The good news: We have lots of choices these days. The bad news: They might not be human.
I do feel that my AI bot in my computer here is great eye candy, but I have to say that I agree with Elon, Bill, and Stephen. We’d better be careful. The sci-fi dystopias where the machines take over, the computers outthink our best thinkers, and the fruits pick themselves may not be science fiction at all. Someone needs to have their finger on the “Hold-On-Just-A-Minute-There-Pardner” button. Let’s hope that person is someone on our side and not a robot in human skin.
Flip
The calendar doesn’t care.
Its pages flip. The new day comes into view. If it’s a plain daily calendar, it’s not much fun. The best calendars are those big monthly calendars with images that take your breath away. The ones that make you smile, even sigh at how beautiful they are. Some are sweeping vistas of romantic places. Some are such unique animals that you question if they really exist. Calendars do this on purpose, so you don’t have to suffer as much with your life’s passing.
I have a favorite calendar. It’s from Paper Source, and I buy one every year. Without looking at the summary of images on the back, I carefully hang the calendar on the wall directly across from my work desk. Like a little kid, I wait to the first day of the new month before turning the page. Never do I look ahead. In fact, it’s like peeking at Christmas presents before it’s Christmas. As in,”Mom, tell me where the Christmas presents are hidden, so I don’t find them by mistake.”
This tiny ritual aims to keep me from the frustration I feel with the swift passage of time. “The days are long, but the years are short,” says Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project. It’s crazy how right she is.
But alas, I am feeding my own angst. I look forward to flipping the page so I can see the new image. As I view the same image every day for three weeks, and then four, I almost will the month to be over. But then when I flip the page, I see what has transpired.
Time is slipping through the continuum.
The calendar looks me in the eye and starts asking the hard questions, “What did you accomplish last month?” or “What do you have to show for the first three months of this year, not that it is one-fourth (!) over?” Or “This time last year you said you would have ____________ (fill in the blank) done. Did you do it?”
The calendar doesn’t care.
I told you that already. But it certainly has a gift for asking the profound questions — the questions that drive you nuts.
So as you flip the page of your calendar, pause to see what you have accomplished. Keep your fingers crossed. Maybe next month, you will have some good news for her. If not, there will be a pretty picture to greet you, and you can smile, sigh, carry on, and either gird yourself for self-recrimination or prepare yourself for joy when you reach to do next month’s flip.
Deadlines
Deadlines are the lines drawn in the sand, the air, and on calendars. They are imaginary lines past which one should not go, or you’ll die. Die of what? Failure? Disappointment? Losing a job? Not answering a need? Shame?
Deadlines are a form of communication. “I need this by noon so we can move forward on the project.”
There should be no room for negotiation in a deadline. There is no room for negotiation in death, is there? So why do people push up against deadlines by crushing the work to be done up against the wall of the deadline? To see if it will move? Will it give in like a loose door, or an unsure mother or father? Kids know this instinctively. Will the rules change if we keep ignoring them? Will Mom and Dad change their minds? Will my manager forget? Will the rule/deadline go away in the rush of life?
Some of us use faraway deadlines like beacons for purposeful activity, plotting steps from A to B in the final goal to arrive at Point Z. Others of us assume that there’s still plenty of time and that there’s no use getting all excited — nothing can be gained by starting too early, they say. It wastes time to start too soon, they say. Besides, working under the pressure of a close deadline works in in their favor, they think, as in, “I work better because I’m more focused if time is short.”
Oh? What if your computer breaks? What if the electricity goes out? What if you get sick? What if?
I like deadlines. I like setting up a meeting… it gives me a deadline. I like to be early, to have room and time to make one last pass, one final reading, a once over to see if I left a sponge in the abdomen of my patient before they wake up. (I wanted to see if you were paying attention!)
There’s the Leonard Bernstein quote to throw in here, too. “To achieve great things two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.” I think that’s the reason deadlines are SO important. Somewhere along the creative lines of life, the concept of not quite enough time leads us to finality. If we didn’t have deadlines, we would continue to fix, trim, and self-edit until nothing ever, ever was produced. “Perfect is the enemy of good,” as they say. Someone has to say those three wonderful words, “It is done!” (“Not I love you,” which are another three wonderful words.)
I like the pressure and excitement of a looming deadline, but sometimes, just sometimes, I procrastinate… to feel that teeny rush. Shucks. My cover is blown.
I write about the things that I would like to do better. Largely because I’m not perfect. Until I am, then, I’ll remain ever faithful to setting deadlines, and hopefully keeping them, unless the other deadline… the big one, like in a database somewhere with my name on a date… keeps me from my deadline here in this plane.
E Is for Eternity
Eternity — it was the last thing I thought about when I died. I was supposedly going someplace (as they say) for a long time. In fact, they say the place you go will be the place you stay for the rest of time. I cannot fathom this any more than many people can fathom living with the same person for all one’s lifetime. But the fathomability of all things varies with each person’s fathom factor, which may change as one ages, or may be one of those things stapled onto your DNA as much as your eye color or your baldness factor. I would like to think we have seasons of fathomability.
Spring sees growth in everything. Change is the order of the day; newness rules: buds, leaves grass, trees, chick, puppies, bunnies, all that stuff. Everything is new and feels good; anticipation sprays the air with an aroma of future, excitement, lust and baseball, for those that like the sport, which I don’t. But I do know spring. I like spring. It hits me in different ways all the time. I crave that edge, that indefinable “What’s next?” that pushes me to know it’s time to energize my creativity and push forward to the next thing. God will steer me as he has always done. Spring rocks.
Summer pushes a hold button — a lazy sit in the sun and read button that carries suntans and waterskiing and vacations in its bag of tricks. It’s the end of school days for some, a marked change of pace regardless of schools just because it’s hot. Swimming pools fill, beaches overload, air conditioners do, too. I can only hope the summer of my eternity isn’t the same heat as the rest of my eternity, or I’ve really goofed, unless lazy is the button I push and I have a lazy eternity — which I can’t like very much, unless that’s what I’m supposed to learn in my eternity, because I haven’t learned it here.
Fall is my second favorite season. It’s transitional. It’s beautiful. While preparing for the cold winter eternity, it begins with a cooling of the evenings even if days stay hot through October here. And then, the colors burst in a crescendo — only to fall like my ability to be clever at the end of a long day of pushing against that heavy door hoping to find something, anything on the other side. Sometimes we’re lucky. Those are the good days. Sometimes we have to keep pushing. I am able to fathom an eternity of fall. It’s a beautifully crisp, stout and sure season that lets in passion. Yes. That works.
Finally, the winter does come, covering me in negativity: a dirty snow. It’s not the white fluffy snowflake snow, but the coal-gray, smoky, slushy, shoe-wrecking snow of the city. So, I cannot fathom this eternity because spending the rest of my time in a dirty-snow city would suck. My fathom factor for an eternity of winter is exactly zero. Maybe minus something.
It could be important to question where we’ll spend eternity. I don’t know. Maybe instead, we should ask in what season we are spending our lives. For we don’t really know there is an eternity. In fact, eternity might be right here. Right now. Who’s to know, really?
So Now We Know
We thought we would like knowing. In fact everyone that knew liked knowing at first. But now it’s a little weird. It’s strange knowing when your sister is going to die. It’s simply surreal when people boarding planes are asked if they know.
It is difficult to cope now that you know when your spouse will die. Yes you knew they would. But now you when. It’s horrifically different.
People that know wish they didn’t. People that know find ways to pretend they don’t after all. Everyone is on edge.
Some people plan for it. They stage big going away parties, like they are moving, or retiring. Some people blaze down their bucket lists with heavy black check marks next to the cities and countries they have always wanted to see, the activities they’ve wanted to experience, the lives they’ve wanted to live.
Other people watch TV shows to engage with their lists. But they feel better about it, somehow, now that they’ve taken time to turn on the shows. Before they just talked about it.
Tasting and feeling and loving and living become more important for some. In fact, the wealthy people spend their time spending their wealth. At the same time, the poor people don’t do much differently, because they do not know when they will die. They cannot afford it. Or perhaps they don’t even know they can know.
The greedy people swoop. Like they do. And they make a mess of things. That hasn’t changed.
But now that we know, we change. Because it’s different now. Very different.
What Would You Do If You Knew?
I sometimes wish I knew when I was going to die. I’d make different plans. Maybe I’d travel more, worry less. Why worry? What’s to worry about if something can’t kill you? Well, I have thought about that. Living in a mangled body would suck.
Severing one’s fear of death would take one thing off the list. Hah. I don’t worry about dying. I know that I will. Now I can know when. Ah, but the biggie is knowing how. Don’t know that yet. Maybe that’s for later science… hacking the “HOW” code, now that we’ve cracked the “WHEN” code. But does taking that ‘when’ question out of the equation help?
I wonder what a doctor would do for me if he or she knew I was going to die in two days? They certainly wouldn’t need to go to extremes to save my life. If saving my life weren’t the goal, think of how much money I could save! The doctors would be much better off concentrating on making my last two days fun and restful rather than splitting me open and taking stuff out, to no avail. I’d prefer being comfortable, thanks.
Meanwhile, what would I do if I knew I were going to die FOR SURE next Thursday? Hop a plane to Paris for three days. Then Venice. Yes. Venice. Florence? Why not? If I could squeeze it in.
That’s it for now. If my date to check out is not next Thursday, then I’ll stick around here for awhile.
What about you? Where would YOU go?
What would you do if you knew?