Category: ESSAYS
Like rants, only more “scholarly-sounding”.
Hurdle Spacing
At 79, I am starting my training for hurdles competition next year, when I will enter a new age group (M80-84) and be “the kid” again, perhaps for the last time. As a rule, the older we get the faster we go downhill: my performances as M50-54 were actually better in an absolute sense (not age-graded) than as M45-49, but every 5 years the gradient gets steeper. Unfortunately, the number of competitors also shrinks with age, so making smaller age groups (like M80-81) is not feasible. So next year is a big year in my competitive career.
Given that, I was dismayed to learn that the “run-up” to the first hurdle in 80m “short hurdles” and 60m indoor hurdles will now be shortened from 12 m to 11 m. The spacing between hurdles will also be shortened from 7m to 6m, which will be a relief, but I don’t think World Masters Athletics understands how important the “run-up” is to the rest of the race.
The crucial challenge in hurdling is to maintain one’s speed and “make one’s steps” — i.e. arrive at the next hurdle with the correct foot coming down in the correct place. If one’s speed is inadequate, then one must either increase one’s stride length to “make” the next hurdle (thus losing still more speed due to the ineffectiveness of an excessive stride length) or shorten one’s stride length enough to add an extra step (thus losing still more speed due to the ineffectiveness of a shorter stride length). The former is colloquially known as “long-jumping”; the latter as “chopping”. The latter also requires hurdling with alternate legs. Both lead to an unrecoverable loss of speed. Neither will result in a good performance.
Therefore the most important part of the race is the “run-up” to the first hurdle, in which one must develop enough speed to “make” the second hurdle easily while still accelerating, so that one has even less difficulty “making” the third hurdle, and so on down the line. The least important part of the race is the “run-out” after the last hurdle, which will now be increased to 25m in the 80m “short hurdles” and 27m in the 60m indoor hurdles — that’s nearly half of the entire distance!
The “run-up” will be shortened from 12m to 11m in January 2026, just in time for my first race. For the last two decades I have been struggling to reach top speed in 12m; now I have even less room to accelerate! If you have ever run a sprint, or even read about sprinting, you know that no sprinter ever reaches top speed in less than about 20m. Hurdles races are therefore an exercise in accelerating over the hurdles from an inadequate initial speed to a speed that renders hurdling practicable.
Okay, perhaps that is the whole idea — perhaps hurdling is and should be a challenge to “do the impossible”. I have taken some pride in approaching it with that attitude in the past, and I suppose I will do so again next year. However, you may… no, you will find that the number of M80-84 competitors willing to take on that extremely risky challenge may be dramatically reduced from the number who would gladly compete in the short hurdles if you raised the “run-up” distance by a few meters “stolen” from the pointless 25-27m “run-out”. I personally would like to see a 16m “run-up”, but I’ll take whatever I can get!
World Masters Athletics isnot very interested in the opinions or arguments of individual athletes, so if you agree with me you will need to ask your local athletic competition-governing body to consider passing this idea “up the chain” so that it might someday attract the attention of WMA.
— Jess H. Brewer, 04 Mar 2025
Postscript, 14 Mar 2025:
It just dawned on me that those M80+ hurdlers who set a record prior to 2026 will keep it forever, since the new spacings make it an entirely different race. The alternative would be unacceptable, since I checked out the 11m/6m version yesterday on the track and I can get my 3 steps again! It is obviously going to be an easier race than the 12m/7m version, so simple comparisons of times are patently unfair. (I’m talking to you, Lynn Thompson!)
In Praise of Rat Poison
In the past few years the drug companies have discovered new ways of preventing your blood from clotting.
Relax. That’s something you might really want. In my case I need a “blood thinner” (as they are called) to curb my blood’s overenthusiastic zeal to clot for no particular reason, due to a genetic disorder called “Factor V Leiden”. Twenty-five years ago I had a DVT (Deep Venous Thrombosis) followed by a second PE (Pulmonary Embolism) — a clot that breaks loose and gets caught in the peerless filter of one’s lung; unfortunately, whatever part of said lung is downstream of the plug dies. Unpleasantly. My first PE was misdiagnosed as “pleurisy”, but once you have experienced one, there’s no mistaking it. Trust me, you don’t want to, unless you find unprotected swordfighting a bracing pastime.
So, for the past 17 years I’ve been taking a daily dose of Coumadin, a cheap drug based on Warfarin, a.k.a. rat poison. Seriously, it’s cheap because untold tons of the stuff are churned out every year to feed to unwanted rats and mice (and, if you’re careless, other small animals). They die of dehydration and uncontrolled bleeding, if you really want to know. So there’s considerable motivation to monitor how well the Coumadin is working. The only way to do this that I know of (you med-tech jocks out there, see if you can’t make a phone app to do this non-invasively!) is to stick a needle in a vein and take a blood sample to send to the lab to check your INR (International Normalized Ratio — informative, eh?) or PT (Prothrombin Time). In Europe, it is more common to use a finger-prick and measure your INR on the spot from a glass capillary full of the red stuff. Basically, the higher your INR, the longer it takes for your blood to clot — the more “thinned” it is. For me, the best INR is between 2 and 3. The point is, you want to know that it’s working (no more PEs) and also that it’s not working too well (remember the rats). When your INR is too high, you can cut back your daily dose a little; if too low, take a little more. It works.
Enough about me. Back to the Pharmas. They discovered that whereas Warfarin works by preventing the liver from processing vitamin K to make “biologically active forms of the calcium-dependent clotting factors II, VII, IX and X, as well as the regulatory factors protein C, protein S, and protein Z” [I’m copying from the Wikipedia article; I don’t know what they’re talking about either], the way the new alternatives “work in your body is different from the way warfarin works. They affect a different part of the clotting process. This difference often makes these newer drugs convenient to use.” [Now I’m copying from a Healthline article that was the most informative source I could Google easily.] That article lists 7 examples, and how they are administered, but offers no technical details on which parts of the clotting process they affect, or how.
Well, fine, I guess; who wants to know all those technical details (other than me, of course). One can see why Healthline might balk at telling the whole long technical story to impatient readers. But wait…
They (and all the other analogous sites I’ve visited, and all the ads we are now seeing on TV) go on to list Advantages and Disadvantages (over Warfarin), and there is a glaring omission in every case — while “You need fewer tests during treatment” is always listed under Advantages, there is never any mention under Disadvantages of the following rather significant fact, which I believe applies to all these new drugs (though it’s not easy to find out for sure):
There IS NO reliable clinical test to see how well it’s working.
(Well, strictly speaking, there is: wait to see if you have a PE — if you do, it’s not working; and/or cut yourself to see if you ever stop bleeding — if not, it’s working too well.)
This is probably quite convenient for your GP, whose responsibility ends with the prescription. It saves your health care provider about $17/month (the typical cost of INR tests) and it rather dramatically obscures the cause of death in those (doubtless rare) cases where the stuff works too well or not well enough. There aren’t even alternative dose recommendations; one size fits all!
Most of all, of course, it suits the Pharmas, since these drugs are quite expensive — especially compared with good ol’ rat poison. Finally they are able to make a decent [obscene] profit off us Leiden-factor folks! This cost will usually be split between your health care provider and you personally.
Oh yes, there is one other Disadvantage: with (I understand) 1 or 2 exceptions, there is no way to “turn off” the new drugs if it becomes painfully obvious that they are working too well. (This would presumably be signaled by uncontrolled bleeding from various orifices. Hi, Mr. Rat!)
So… nothing new here, really, just Pharmas doing their thing. Except somehow they have managed to enlist government agencies and GPs in their campaign to convince us that
Ignorance is the best strategy!
That is certainly a revolutionary new concept in medicine. Expect to see more of it in the future.
TPODB
Regulatory agencies are charged with setting limits on hazardous practices and toxic materials in various scenarios. Let’s examine a few examples and their consequences:
Emissions from combustion of fossil fuels are known to kill millions of people anually. There are some attempts to reduce these, but most people seem to regard the megadeaths as “the price of doing business” (TPODB). Gas and diesel automobile emissions have been dramatically curtailed over the last few decades, but leaving your car running in a closed garage is still a popular method of suicide. Oh well, that’s TPODB.
Alcohol, nicotine and opioids together kill countless people every year, but as a society we like them. Furthermore, governments fund themselves from huge “sin taxes” on self-destruction, so again that’s TPODB.
Private firearms kill more than one person in 10,000 every year in the USA, but their private possession is guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the US Constitution and quite profitable for some gun manufacturers… so, TPODB.
Falls cause around two-thirds of all accidental deaths in Canadians aged 65 years and older, while for those under 65, accidental poisonings were the top (nearly 70%) accidental cause of death in Canada. Oh well… TPODB!
Radiation releases from nuclear reactors have killed a total of… well, there’s some disagreement: the worst ever reactor accident (Chernobyl, 26 April 1986) killed about 30 people outright and about 60 clearly attributable to radiation from the disaster in the subsequent decades; beyond that, estimates range from 4,000 (UN IAEA report) to 200,000 (Greenpeace). The wild predictive fluctuations arise from the fact that roughly 40% of all people will get cancer in their lifetimes and roughly 20% of all deaths are from cancer; so even the Greenpeace estimate amounts to an assumption that the 200 million or so people exposed to some fallout from Chernobyl would have had their cancer-death probability raised from 20% to 20.1% by that small exposure — a very difficult statistical speculation to prove! Appeals to the “Precautionary Principle” indicate an exceptional reluctance to apply TPODB to radiation.
Why is that? How is cancer caused by radiation so much more horrible than cancer caused by coal pollution or car exhaust or smoking or drinking?
This peculiar terror has led to cowardice on the part of regulatory agencies, which employ the “Linear, No Threshold” (LNT) model for dleterious health effects of low-dose radiation to set maximum doses from reactors below the inescapable background radiation levels in our natural environment, leading to the “As Low As Reasonable Achievable” (ALARA) design criteria for reactor designs, which caused the 28 new reactors ordered in the USA in 1974 to all be cancelled; few have been built in the intervening 4 decades.
Meanwhile the world is cooking in greenhouse gases, smoldering in forest fires, being torn apart by hurricanes and drowning in glacial melt — all perfectly acceptable, apparently, as TPODB — while the nuclear power plants (that could supply plentiful, reliable, dispatchable power sufficient to deal with all these consequences of TPODB) are not being built because they might raise our probability of dying of cancer from 20% to 20.001 %. Meanwhile we smoke, drink, drive gas guzzlers as fast as possible, buy guns, take drugs and walk down concrete steps without a railing because, hey, that’s TPODB!
Resid. Errata
Resid. Errata
(with apologies to anyone who wants them)
- Go arrogantly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what happens to those who keep silent. As far as possible without surrender, be on the right side of all persons in high places…
- Speak your opinion loudly and rhetorically, as no one is listening to the content; then glance at your watch and leave hurriedly, lest you be obliged to hear the stories of the dull and ignorant…
- Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are your main competition…
- When you are forced to compare yourself with others you may become vain and bitter, for always the committees will point out lesser and greater persons than yourself…
- Enjoy planning your future achievements, and always keep others well informed of same. Do not forget that committees have short memories. Keep enthusiasm for your own research, however humble or pointless; it is a convenient escape from the changing fortunes of time…
- Exercise caution in your academic affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what you might get away with; for many persons strive for high ideals, and every University is full of suckers.
- Work on your image. Especially do not show affection for your students. Neither feign delight; for in the face of all hope and enchantment, cynicism is as perennial as the grass…
- Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the poverty and impotence of youth. Nurture strength of ego to shield you in sudden disgrace. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness, and you probably won’t get caught…
- Beyond a superficial discipline, be gentle with yourself and tough on others…
- You are a child of the University, no less than the vegetables and superstars; you have to write to be here. And despite all the evidence of your senses, no doubt the University is unfolding as it should…
- Therefore be at peace with compromise, whatever you once conceived your purpose to be. And whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of academic life keep a piece of the action…
- With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still the only show in town. Be cheerful. Strive to be on top. Don’t worry. Be happy.
Thu Sep 5 09:15 PDT 1996
The Wheel of Outlook
In the 1950s, my mother taught me that the United States was the true shining city on the hill, that we had defeated Evil once and for all, that within a few more years we would have righted all our wrongs, corrected all our mistakes, stamped out poverty and discrimination, and achieved universal enlightenment… that everything was going to be OK!
In the 1960s, I grew up… and concluded that, based on the evidence, it might take a little more time and effort.
In the 1970s, I became cynical and pessimistic… until I realized that the world view you sustain with your expectations tends to become the world you view.
In the 1980s and 1990s, I got busy building a family and a life… deliberately and determinedly behaving as if I believed my mother was right after all.
In the 2000s, I grew up again… and regressed again… and experimented with a superposition of cynicism and optimism, because why not?
In the 2010s, well… see 1960s.
In the 2020s, see 1970s. Except when I hear Biden express optimism and hope, I’m reminded of my mother.
TRUST
Whom (or what) do you trust? Why?
Theists trust in God. Patriots trust in the Constitution. Children [initially] trust their parents. Trump supporters trust Fox & Friends. Democrats trust CNN. Mulder trusts no one. Good scientists also claim to trust no one, but they are selective in their degree of distrust: they tend to trust the Bureau of Standards, the top peer-reviewed journals and their most respected colleagues. Atheists and libertarians trust their own judgment. Idiots trust everything they see on the Internet.
Some people claim we live in an Information Economy. This is naive. Information is cheap. Information is so readily available that we are all drowning in a sea of information. What is really precious is knowledge of which information is reliable and worth knowing. How can we access that knowledge? Only by trusting some authority. I wish I could say, “Trust only your own judgment!” but in order to do so (and not be a fool) you have to make sure your judgment is informed; and that returns you to the original question: which information can you trust?
So, whether you are a scientist or a voter or a consumer, you have the same problem: who is worthy of your trust? And how do you decide?
Most people today allow someone else to decide for them, thereby placing all their trust in that person. Perhaps they recognize that different people are qualified in different arenas, so they trust Chris Wallace or Anderson Cooper to accurately report the news, Suzy Menkes or Kim Kardashian to judge fashion, Nature or Popular Science to cover the latest science, and so on. Confirmation bias plays a huge role in these choices, even for physicists. Most people are wise enough to recognize this, but what choice do they have? None of us has the time or energy to dig down to the original data and analyze it ourselves, or to learn enough about fashion, music or art to make judgments more refined than, “I like that one!”
Let’s unpack that question, “What choice do they have?” Maybe we can do better….
If we wish to avoid falling back into the original trap of picking an Authority to trust based on our own uninformed judgment, we need to be able to consult many authorities whose judgment has been appraised by “juries of their peers”. This scheme is implemented in the scientific community by means of peer review, in which each new paper is reviewed by respected scientists with established expertise in the subject area. It works fairly well, up to a point, but is still beset by politics and confirmation bias: peer review is orchestrated by Editors who choose the reviewers. Moreover, peer review leaves no room for “disinterested third parties” to weigh in on the validity or importance of new research.
Social media are more democratic: anyone can “Like” or “Upvote” or (sometimes) “Downvote” a post; but few offer any opportunity (other than in a Reply) to specify what the reviewer likes or dislikes about the item, nor is there any “weighting” of the reviewer’s opinion according to their own credibility. This system could never produce a semi-objective (trustworthy) evaluation of anything. It is pure politics.
So the first criterion for a democratic, self-organizing system of evaluation is that it knows who is doing the evaluation and the extent to which they know what they are talking about.
Can Technology Help?
Google (among other entities) now uses every bit of accessible information about your browsing habits, you buying habits and your political habits to build a sophisticated model of you as a person, both to better serve your Googling needs and to better serve the advertisers competing for your attention. Like all innovations, this is both good news (“…better serve…”) and bad news (advertisers…). But the “deep learning” technology exists, and has been successfully applied to interpretation of “big data”. Perhaps it can also be applied to important data, like which theory of Dark Matter is more plausible, or whether the Global Climate Crisis will really kill us all.
At o’Peer I have outlined a strategy for removing some of the politics from open Peer review and making it more democratic, more responsive and more trustworthy. Unsurprisingly, it has not “taken off” so far, partly because (let’s face it) I am just an amateur at the art of constructing software that can learn. Also, active physicists can’t afford to champion revolution against the Editors who now decide their future prominence. Also, there are vulnerabilities to be worked out… I will address this below, but first let me paint the big canvas:
- Everyone gets a unique ID that computers can recognize and confirm. This is already true for most physicists (see ORCID.org) and for all citizens of the People’s Republic of China — which illustrates the range of applications. But it is necessary for this system to know who you are, for reasons that will become obvious. Note that while the system must know who you are, you can still remain anonymous to everyone else, if you so desire.
- Your contributions to various human enterprises (e.g. Science or Art or Music or Prosperity or Altruism) will have been constantly evaluated by others, resulting in an accumulated credibility index in all those areas and more. The more refined and numerous the evaluations become, the more accurately your credibility will be established.
- When you are moved to evaluate someone else’s contribution, you can express your evaluation in as much detail as you choose. A refined Machine Learning algorithm will eventually be able to interpret your comments in quantitative terms. It will then weight your evaluations by your credibility index in that particular aspect of that particular topic, add it to a weighted running average of the global evaluation of said contribution, and thereby enhance or denigrate the author’s credibility index in that arena.
- Insincere, petty or malicious negative evaluations will not go unnoticed, but the resulting damage will be primarily to the evaluator’s credibility index.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Obviously, the list is endless. People will try to “game the system”. They will succeed. The system will have to be refined and adjusted constantly to make it more resistant to tampering and bias. This will be an enormous undertaking by an army of experts. But think of the possible “payoff”: a way to gradually, democratically and (eventually) fairly offer advice on whom to trust about what. But let’s list some of the pitfalls, in order to get started on refining the system before it even exists….
- Spoofing: lots of jerks will try to pretend to be the person everyone trusts. Biometric ID may help… or not. Of course, this problem arises in other realms as well.
- Hacking: the entire database and its maintenance will have to be protected by (for instance) blockchain elements that perform the storage as well as the learning.
- Conspiracy: groups of people will collude to raise each other’s credibility and/or the perceived trustworthiness of a chosen leader. I’m hoping that such people will not usually be able to garner much credibility themselves, which will hamper their efforts. This problem already haunts peer review in physics, but the steadfast skepticism of most physicists tends to dampen its negative effects.
Tell me what you think.
Let’s get started!
The Deepest State
Twenty-four decades ago a cabal of “democrats” conceived a massive conspiracy to undermine the foundations of the American way of life (avarice, exploitation and corruption), replacing them with socialist fantasies about “inalienable rights” and “equality”. For all those years they have been insinuating themselves into bureaucratic positions such as the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court, where they worked tirelessly to consolidate their power. Some even infiltrated the Senate and the Presidency.
Today they are ready to seize total power and impose their radical ideas on even the richest Americans — in fact, especially on them. Their rallying cry is, “We’re coming for you, motherfuckers!” Prepare yourself.
QFTE
A Quantum Field Theory of Education
Since science education is no longer considered enlightened unless informed by SCholarly Research On Teaching And Learning, a modern theory of education is needed in order to take full advantage of the clarifying terminology developed to make relativistic quantum mechanics more transparent. This essay constitutes the hermeneutics of a new quantum field theory of education (QFTE), in which the usual roles of integer spin intermediaries and interacting fermions are interchanged.
In QTFE, second quantization is applied to the following fields:
- Morons: a type of bozo that likes to condense into a moronic BEC which exhibits stupidfoolidity.
- Lessons: in QFTE all interactions between morons are mediated by the exchange of lessons, a type of fermion. This makes the interactions very weak, since no lessons are ever absorbed — just back-propagated on exams.
The moronic BEC has this interesting property: once it reaches its stupidfoolish ground state, unless excited by very high energy lessons, the bozos will continue to display stupidfoolidity indefinitely without any sign of dissipation; best measurements suggest a decay time of at least the age of the universe.
It has been recently discovered that morons come in two types, spin 0 (little morons) and spin 1 (big morons). Big morons interact only through gravity, thus proving the validity of the old joke. (“…Why did the little moron stay on the horse? …”)
When a little moron finally absorbs two lessons it can’t forget, it becomes a big moron, graduates, and never interacts with anything again, except to add to the dead weight of “society“, a denser moronic BEC of big morons.
A very small fraction of the morons absorb enough lessons to be promoted into excited states called Professors, which decay gradually back to their ground state by lesson emission, contributing thereby to the production of a new generation of morons. Unlike in the case of leptons, however, successive generations of morons are indistinguishable. Perhaps this is because morons, having zero or integer spin, also lack a lepton number.
A lesson must have half-integer spin, or it would be just another bozo. Most lessons are spin 1/2 and have almost no substance; these are called light lessons or drek particles. Occasionally we find lessons with spin 3/2, the so-called strange lessons or boreyons, and very rarely we see a doubly strange superheavy lesson known as the Omygod boreyon.
Lessons have a rich spectroscopy. Even drek lessons come in many flavors. (Morons claim that the variety is endless, but what do morons know?) It has been speculated that lessons are composed by quacks, but this has never been confirmed, because quack Professors always invoke a physician’s principle known as “‘Ask on topic!’ freedom” when asked if they were involved.
The lightest lessons of all are called “new” lessons, which are closely related to “improved” lessons, neither of which have any substance at all. Only the charged lessons carry any weight, since even morons will absorb some lessons if they have paid good money for them.
Some speculative work has been done on the theory of stupidsymmetry, in which each moron has a fermionic partner called a “morino” and each lesson has a stupidsymmetric “slesson”. No one has the faintest idea how anyone could tell if this were true.
_________________________________________________________
This theory was formulated over many years, but was first consigned to paper on November 26, 2006.
Gradient Hopping
When I wrote this in 2013, I’d had a nasty head cold for the past few days. Then one day I felt better (though not yet well) and it was so wonderful it reminded me of something important:
Most of the time I feel pretty good, and all I can think about are the aches and pains and deficiencies that keep me from feeling perfect. I am well housed and well fed and well loved and well paid (well, pretty well) but my attention is rarely drawn to these good fortunes – only when I get caught out in the cold rain without an umbrella, or I miss a meal, or I’m away from my loved ones, or I get a bill I can’t pay right away.
This is a trite lesson, I know, but I think some reflection might help me devise a better strategy for maximizing the joy in my life. Bear with me for a moment.
We are creatures driven by gradients, not absolutes. Our sense of well-being is extremely sensitive to how much better things are today than yesterday, and not very sensitive to how good they actually are now. The wealthy cannot really appreciate their wealth, they only get satisfaction from accumulating more. The poor are not really different; if they become wealthy, after the initial delight their static wealth becomes just as hollow. This is perfectly understandable in this model. So is the wayward eye of the person with an attractive, loving spouse. The stranger’s approval means more than the lover’s, because we already have the latter.
Is there any way this understanding can be anything but depressing and discouraging? I think so. Arrange to lose what means most – your health, your family, your home, your wealth – just so you can enjoy getting it back? That’s no solution, though many people resort to it.
But at any given time you there are some things you lack, and hunger for, while other hungers are satisfied. You can maximize your appreciation of life by what I call “Gradient Hopping“: quit seeking what you already have; refocus your attention on your unsatisfied needs and take action to gratify them without compromising those which are currently in good shape. Later on you can (and will probably need to) return to service the currently satisfied needs, since most of them recur periodically. In this endeavor you are unlikely to accumulate unappreciated excesses of any needs – which will benefit others with whom those resources should be shared.
More later….
Yes You Can!
You may not like this. We live in an era of excuses, and everyone has lots of them. I’m here to tell you that they are mostly illusory and are holding you back from a better life. You will probably think I’m just lacking compassion. I don’t mind if you come to that conclusion after you’ve heard me out and given my words some thought, but if you start with that assumption, we both lose.
Case in point: I am 71 years old, and I just had my first cataract operation last week. It wasn’t so bad. My eye’s still a bit sore and the new lens hasn’t completely settled into position yet, so my vision hasn’t really improved so far, but I’m confident it will soon.
The problem is, I was told not to lift anything heavier than 10 pounds for 3 weeks, and “strenuous exercise” is a no-no for at least that long. So I have to “act like an old man” for 3 weeks. Sounds easy, right? My knees and back could use some “down time” to recover from running hurdles.
But after less than a week of enforced lethargy, it’s already becoming a habit! Right now I feel weak and fragile — pretty much like the stereotypical 71-year-old man — and it’s hard to imagine doing one pushup, never mind my usual 22. If I didn’t have documented evidence that I can indeed run the hurdles in Provincial age-group record time, I’d find it fantastical.
Which puts me in a position to understand why so many older people firmly believe that athletic competition is a thing of their distant past; that they will never be able to drop those extra pounds; that heavy lifting would be insanely reckless; that they’d better hang on to all the handrails lest they fall and fracture that doubtless-fragile hip joint; that their walks should not be too brisk lest the ol’ ticker get stressed out and stop ticking. Hell, I’ve been advised of all those myths by family, friends and medical personnel, many times.
So without empirical evidence to the contrary, why would I question the stereotype? And if I did “act my age”, how long would it take to make the stereotype true? Longer than 3 weeks, I hope!
Here’s the thing: how can anyone acquire enough empirical evidence to the contrary to convince themselves that they can Do It? One can watch others Doing It and get inspiration from that, but it’s surprisingly (well, not really) difficult for people to draw conclusions about themselves from evidence about others. (That’s called a “failure of enlightenment effect” by Psychologists, I believe.) The only thing that’s going to convince you that you can Do It is Doing It yourself! (That’s called a “Catch-22“, I believe.)
If you’re like me, that means more than just Doing It once and patting yourself on the back. The conviction dies within days when I try to ignore societal stereotypes of what I can and can’t Do. I have to Do It as often as possible, and try to Do It better each time — or at least not worse over the short term. Perhaps I’m insecure. Well, if you’re not, this should be a lot easier for you!
Shall I run through an inventory of excuses? No, that would be both mean and pointless. Deep in your heart you know what actually prevents you from Doing It (whatever It might be for you) and what is just an excuse, doubtless backed up by a firmly entrenched stereotype. Pain is real. Bones do break. Fat is hard to burn off (my metabolism seems to convert every gram of carbs directly into an ounce of fat). Spines compress with age. (I found out last week at that I am 2.25 inches shorter than I was at 25. Over two inches! Ack! it must be bone-on-bone all the way down now.) Pulmonary embolisms (I’ve had two) reduce your lung capacity. Chemo has many impacts. Shit happens. You are definitely going to slow down with age; but that’s what the Age-Graded Tables are for!
As long as you give yourself a full list of meaningful and worthy “It“s,
You Can Do It.
Now for the surprise: I am not just lecturing old people. You younger folks have plenty of excuses too, and are prone to regard great accomplishments and heroic deeds as out of your reach, for reasons you can recite by heart. Most of them are perfectly valid as far as they go, which is usually not as far as you think. The most important lesson I have learned in my life is that
You Can Do Far More Than You Think You Can.
And you’ll be glad you did.
Success
I say, “If you do what you love with elan and determination, and don’t worry about ‘making a living at it’, eventually you will ‘succeed’.”
“Easy for you to say,” says the spokesperson for all those in despair over their careers. “You are the child of privilege, plus you got lucky.”
“This is true,” I confess, “but my way was never easy. I had to work hard at what I loved, and I never gave up, in spite of many challenges.”
“What do you know of ‘challenges’?”
“What do you know of my life?”
The argument goes on to compare the merits of “doing what you love” right now versus working all your life at a job you hate, in order to save enough that you can retire at 65 and then “do what you love”.
This elicits the response, “Retire? I will never be able to retire!”
Here’s the problem: neither debator can imagine the other person’s life experiences, and there is no argument that can convince either of the validity of the other’s point of view.