Eight Before Eight

Suddenly, and against my better judgment, I am old.  Either by accident or by sheer dumb luck, I have lived long enough to be considered a senior citizen.  As a newly minted old fart (and as is the habit of my ilk), I feel compelled to pass on my words of wisdom on how to live a productive life.

The problem is that I have no such words of wisdom.  I don’t have a clue.  Despite the common misconception, it doesn’t take any great wisdom to grow old, it just takes a long time.

This blog generates a generous amount of weird mail, however, and several times in the last year, people have sent me a list of goals that was published in Inc. Magazine.  Several of the goals seem to have been inspired by that self-help guru, life coach, and snake oil salesman, Tony Robbins and since I lack a suitable list of my own, I’ll just give you the magazine’s list with my own comments.

8 Things to Do Before 8:00 AM

The title implies there is some virtue in getting up early, which I seriously doubt.  There are only three reasons to wake up early: Hunting and flying are two of them.  I know plenty of people who wake up early and then stumble around all day.  People who watch a clock rarely get anything done.

Robert Heinlein wrote that one day he was going to write the story about the man who was supposed to be shot at dawn, but accidentally overslept and lived to be an old man.  Perhaps Heinlein ran out of time, because he never did write that story.  (Maybe he should have slept later).

Why is it that ‘sleeping in’ is considered being lazy, but going to bed early is a virtue?  This is the same kind of lopsided logic that makes morons believe daylight savings makes a day longer.  No matter how hard you try, you cannot lengthen a blanket by cutting a foot off the bottom and sewing it onto the top.

1. Get A Healthy 7+ Hours of Sleep

Bullshit.   I got lots of sleep before I was born, and will catch up on the rest after I die.  I read until 3:00 last night, then got up at 8:00 when I heard my wife moving around.  This is an hour earlier that I wanted, but the damn cat saw I was awake and demanded to be fed.  Too much sleep is nothing more than an early death on the installment plan.

2. Prayer and Meditation to Facilitate Clarity and Abundance

Because of the blog, I have a lot of friends scattered around the world.  There is a Protestant missionary in the Congo who weekly requests that I pray for Africa, which at best I find annoying.  Despite somehow managing to live long enough to reach the 21st century, I still get regular requests to participate in ancient magical rituals.

Still, she is a friend, so a couple of days ago, I complied with her request just to keep her happy.  I stood in the front yard, roughly facing east-southeast while waving a screwdriver and yelling, "BRACKIUM EMENDO!"

The nice thing about living in the same house for 35 years is that, by now, half the neighbors have come to accept certain eccentricities on my part, while the rest of them are afraid of me.  Either way, the results are the same.

3. Hard Physical Activity

Why?  This is similar to #5.

4. Consume 30 Grams of Protein

Quite by accident, I think I did this.  I had a very nice fake egg omelette stuffed with avocado and feta cheese.  And a rather smallish tilapia filet.  Personally, I doubt that this is enough of anything to keep a person alive, but it makes my doctor happy.  And I’m pretty sure that whatever nutrition that breakfast was lacking was made up for by the Bloody Mary I drank with it—the one I don’t tell my doctor about.

It is no great task to eat protein.  Hell, I could, and would (if the The Doc would let me) eat a whole beef brisket at a single sitting.  The difficult thing is to cut down on the amount of protein.  I don’t know anyone who has been told by their doctor that they really need to eat more meat, cheese, and dairy. 

5. Take a Cold Shower

This piece of lunacy is straight from Tony Robbins, and out of the entire list, this is one of the few things I agree with. I too, jumped into a pool this morning.  Well, it was at 2:00 am, and it was actually my hot tub…. And the hot tub was set at 104 degrees.  But the glass of white wine was chilled.  Close enough.

With damn few exceptions, the only time in my life when I took cold showers, there were angry men in green forcing me to do it.  It wasn't really necessary then and it still isn’t.  Robbins claims that cold water “resets my nervous system and boosts my creativity and inspiration”.  Tony, please explain to me why, when cold baths were all that was available, it took Europeans until 1200 AD to invent the wheelbarrow.

I have a theory about such bullshit:  Life will throw you enough misery without your having to go and practice it.  Enjoy the good life while you can.

In the last sixty-six years, I have been snake bit, kicked by various livestock, shot at, stabbed with a meat hook, suffered through floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and earthquakes, have been forced to sit through several elementary school plays, and have attended innumerable and interminable faculty meetings.  None of these unpleasant tasks required any prior practice.

6. Listen to/Read Uplifting Content

I read constantly, no...borderline obsessively.  I average something like five books a week.  And, I listen to audio books in the car and while doing yard work and other physical labor I cannot avoid.  Reading is one of the few things I excel at.

However, I suspect our ideas of “uplifting content” differ.  I will read just about anything, and I  personally find value in all of it, if nothing else by my learning how the mind of the author works.  If, however, you mean religious literature—count me out.  I’ve already done enough of that to last a life time.  Reading about religion is like reading travel guides authored by people who have never been to the place they are writing about.

7. Review Your Life Vision

I’m not even sure what that is, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want one.

8. Do at Least One Thing Toward Long-Term Goals

Who talks this way?  Life Vision? 

When I was in business, my employees and I met everyday before we opened and wrote on a 3x5 index card (the most important technological invention of the modern era) the ten things we were going to accomplish that day that would generate more profit.  At the end of the day, the employees gave me the cards and we would discuss what had been accomplished and what had not.

Occasionally, I tried to do this at Enema U, but it was never entirely sure what our goal truly was.  It was not profit.  We claimed that it was education, but it was obvious that is just a mantra.  For a while, I thought it was football, but then I actually attended a game.  Currently, I think that the one true goal was to rise high enough in the administration to be allowed to  drive around in little golf carts, but I'm not sure about even that.

Now, having pretty much trashed the entire list, I’ll leave you with one piece of advice that I do agree with, though I certainly fail to follow it often enough.  This advice comes from Jimmy Stewart in the movie Harvey, a far more reliable source of wisdom than Tony Robbins.

Years ago my mother used to say to me, she'd say, "In this world, Elwood, you must be," — she always called me Elwood — "In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant." Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.

I just did.