Month: July 2025

I recently went to my local pharmacy to fill a prescription. As I peered behind the counter, I couldn’t help but notice multi-level shelves stretching as far back as I could see, all of them overflowing with bags of prescription pills waiting to be picked up. It was quite a sight. It brought home to me how dependent we are on pills these days.

We take pills for pain, for healing, for sleep, or to stay awake, to restore energy, to calm down, we even take pills to counteract the effect of other pills. We don’t know what’s in them. We don’t know where they came from. We have no clue what they are actually doing inside of our bodies. Heck, we don’t even know how to pronounce them.

But we believe in their magic.

Imagine that. Complete trust and faith in something we don’t understand.

The encyclopedia Britanica defines “middle aged” as the period in human life between the ages of 40 and 60. The book goes on to say that, during this period, a person’s thoughts gradually shift to memories and reminiscences of the past, instead of anticipation of the future.

I beg to differ. I am well into my seventies. I am still excited about what may lie in my future, and you should be too. Keep setting goals. Keep moving. Eat right. Get enough sleep. I can’t tell you how many people I know who have taken good care of their bodies, and who are still achieving into their eighties and even nineties. I play pickleball against an 85 year old man who whips my butt on a regular basis.

Sorry Britanica. It’s time to update your age labels.

According to scientific theory, it should actually be possible to go forward in time. The problem is, you’d have to be able to travel at or near the speed of light to do it. So far the fastest thing man has produced is a space capsule that can reach around 19,000 miles per hour. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second.

Still, if you could climb into a rocket, blast off, and orbit the earth at or near the speed of light, when you landed back on earth, you would actually be in earth’s future. Time would pass faster on earth than for you in the rocket. Crazy, but scientifically true.

The catch is, though you could go forward in time, you couldn’t go back. You’d be permanently stuck in future earth. It may a stretch, but I sense a philosophical lesson here. The past is past. You can’t go back. Don’t worry about what’s happened before. Time seems to pass by at the speed of light. Focus on the future, and make it a better one.