TURNING 80 !!
A Blog About Personal Time
Born July 24, 1944

Since this blog is about time, I publish a post about personal time on my birthday. I am eighty years old today -- a day I never imagined I would see.

So I put together a bunch of quotes by wise people who summed up their experience over many years.

Joe Louis

I'll start with the famous Joe Louis quote:
Joe Louis is considered to be one of the greatest boxers of all time.

"I done the best I could with what I had," he said.

This says it all if you are trying to accomplish something. Work with the talents you have and make the most of them.

There is only one catch. What each of us has changes as we get older -- some good and some bad. When we are young we keep adding things like completing an education, having children, and buying a home. But as we get older we start losing things. We find we can't exercise the way we used to or do daredevil dives into the pool anymore. Or we are injured or sick or a relationship ends.

But each time period has its pluses. A great football player who can no longer play might be a great manager because he knows the game. A woman who has trouble dancing like she used to or has arthritis might have insights she can write about.

Alexander Graham Bell

Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the phone and founder of Bell Telephone, is credited with saying, "When one door closes, another door opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the ones which open for us." But 400 years earlier Fernando de Rojas said “When one door closes, fortune will usually open another.” So some credit de Rojas with the thought.

But the point is to do the best you can, at each point in your life. When Philip Roth, the famous author, was near death, he quoted Joe Louis's famous quote about his lifelong success as a writer. “I did the best I could with what I had.”

Many people can see more clearly as they get older or ask good questions. When I started this blog eleven years ago, I asked this simple question, "What is time?"

I wanted to explore the human experience of time as a scientist. And my answers, as I kept digging, have surprised me.

Even more surprising is that I now have over 1150 followers on an academic website and my posts have been viewed more than 300k times.

https://unc.academia.edu/RickDoble

I started this blog after my second hip surgery when I realized how vulnerable life was. As a photographer 30 years earlier, I had directed the creation of a historic photographic archive for a small city. This taught me a lot about photographic evidence. At the same time I also was writing a monthly column about photography and making slide shows with narration I wrote. And I had worked as a research assistant for a professor when I was getting my Master's degree in Communication, so I knew how to do independent research.

Then eleven years ago and much older, I realized I could combine all these talents to write a blog and find just the right public domain pictures on the Internet to illustrate or support my ideas. I then republished most long blogs, 3k-7k words, on academic sites. So far there are well over a hundred.

DeconstructingTime

https://deconstructingtime.blogspot.com/

But what keeps us going and can still inspire us?

Marie Curie, Ph. D.

Madame Curie, who made major discoveries about radioactivity, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two different scientific fields.(quoted from Wikipedia)

"A scientist in his laboratory is not a mere technician: he is also a child confronting natural phenomena that impress him as though they were fairy tales."

"All my life through, the new sights of Nature made me rejoice like a child."

Marie Curie

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Albert Einstein

Here is a quote I heard told about Einstein although it is probably apocryphal. Einstein was very sure of himself but humble. He was also quite curious always asking questions. Einstein studied light all his life and won a Nobel prize for his work with light. Light is mysterious. It has no mass, for example.

The story goes like this:

Just before he died, he looked up at the changing light and shadows on the ceiling above his hospital bed and said, "But what is light?"

Now, I am not sure if this was true but it would be the kind of thing Einstein said and thought. It also reminded me of the wonderful quote from the Western movie, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

In the movie, the true story of who shot the outlaw Liberty Valance could ruin the political career of the character played by Jimmy Stewart. Stewart's character was credited with killing Valance and now this character was running for office. But the editor of the local paper refused to publish the true facts. When asked why, the editor said, “This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

So don't believe every quote, many are probably myths. But learn from them if they express good thoughts.

T.S. Eliot

I will end this blog with one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite poets. T.S. Eliot was far from perfect -- but when it came to poetry and understanding the nature of time along with summing up life's contradictions, he cannot be equaled.

FROM THE FOUR QUARTETS

T.S. Eliot

LITTLE GIDDING

(No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')

"What we call the beginning is often the end

And to make an end is to make a beginning.

The end is where we start from.

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."