September 21, 2005 at 12:26:19 a.m.

I was viewing some new electronic gear the other day when the thought flashed through my mind that life was so much simpler in earlier days. Funny how that thought gnawed at me and when I was back in the car on my way to the office, I couldn’t help but wonder what I really meant by life being simpler. Almost immediately, my mind flashed back to a point in my childhood when I was about 10 years old.

At that time, my father owned an Essex car. Don’t feel deprived if you’ve never heard of this monster. Its most distinguishing feature was an engine you could hear six blocks away. It was a boxy car, dark blue with black trim; I soon learned that if I could pick up the sound of that car when it was six blocks away that I had at least 10 minutes to clear up whatever mischief I was into before my father and mother would be walking through the door. I can assure you that that ten minute warning saved me from many a sore bottom.

We had a dog then, named Teddy. My father said he was a Heinz dog; 57 varieties. I was in my teens before I figured out the humor of that. Anyhow, I noticed that Teddy could hear that Essex when it was almost a mile away and he would start tearing around the house, barking and jumping up to the windows looking for the arrival of my parents. What luck! I had the only early warning canine in town. With Teddy’s sharp ears, I had just increased my warning time by at least 6 minutes! So now I had anywhere from 15 to 20 minutes to clear up whatever mess I had made before my parents walked in.

What all this brought me to was the awareness that what I meant by life being simple was the fact that in the earlier days we had time – warning time if you like, but still time between the hearing of the event and the event itself. I still don’t ever remember having a surprise quiz dropped on us at school. Usually the teacher would announce on Monday that there would be a test on Friday. That gave us four whole days to; (a) find a new place to write crib notes, (b) get your seat changed next to Stephan Prouty who was the smartest kid in school, (c) get Bunny Bollatteri (who made an angora sweater the most appealing thing to look at since the advent of puppies) to agree to tutor you after school, or (d) study, which was out of the question. In any case, four days was a healthy warning period and only ‘Eek’ Galbraith, who had something akin to St. Vitus’s Dance, couldn’t find some way to get through with a passing grade.

Today, our warning time has evaporated. In most cases there simply isn’t any warning before the heavy foot of fate comes down on us. I think that’s OK if you were born after 1965 – I mean, have you ever watched these kids at a video game machine, moving their hands so fast that a case of advanced palsy would look like slow motion stroking in comparison? Hell, if you can knock out a couple of hundred Space Invaders in a matter of a few seconds, who needs warning time?

But how about those of us who were born earlier than PacMan and Dungeons & Dragons? We need warning time, we need space to prepare, to adjust, to give ourselves some way of handling the next disaster. The trouble is, folks – we ain’t going to get it. One of the keys for survival is reaction, the ability to respond without warning, without planning, without life saying, “on your mark, get set, GO!” We are not the lost generation, but we sure are the semi-comatose generation. In most situations, by the time we wake up, what has happened is gone and we have little or no idea of where we are. “What hit me?” is often the common feeling.

There is a metaphysical answer for all this. The basis for the Universe is change, everything in motion, everything changing. In the Universal sense, Time has nothing to do with change so the Universe is not concerned with clock or calendar. The key then is to learn to put yourself in harmony with the Universe by tuning yourself to your own individual capabilities. That’s right, individual change capabilities. Each of us have this quality, but most of us never use it. We have grown up with a sense of rigidity that gives honor to history, the past, the antique, and traditions. We hold on to old ideas, old loves, old angers, and old ways. We instruct our cells to cancel out their change sensors and stay with what we know. And by doing this, we disassociate ourselves from the changing pattern of the Universe. In short, we are out of tune with the music of the spheres.

If we are to match our time and live in it with joy and accomplishment, we must release our cells from our self-imposed restrictions so that they can sense, interpret and move us with the changing times and to do this without needing any specific warning time. This year, in particular, demands that attunement. We should be ready to respond, to act, to move, to dodge, to attack or to do any of a hundred other things that might have to be done in order to use the experience to our advantage. No special training is needed to do this, but there must be a willingness to let go of the past and live in the present.

Kurt Adler said, “Tradition is what you resort to when you don’t have the time or the money to do it right.” Doing it right in this age means doing it when it presents itself and acting on both your instincts and your willingness to let your cellular structure respond to the event. Of the few things one may count upon in this day and age, one can count upon change and whatever willingness we show to embrace that reality, we shall grow and benefit from it. Each day should be looked upon as the entrance to an adventure, the doorway to the funhouse or the tunnel of love, or the haunted house. Surprises lurk around every bend and in every corner. We will scream, jump, and laugh, but most of all we will have enjoyed ourselves and inwardly have congratulated ourselves on our bravery of having passed through it all and survived.

Today, I hear a jet plane overhead long after it has passed over me and it makes me realize that never again will I hear the early warning sound of that old Essex many blocks away and heading in my direction. My ears – and yours – must be attuned to the sound of tomorrow. – GT