Five years ago, I became a retired man after 40 years of hard work as a self-employed business owner. How time flies when you're having fun!
Retirement is an honorable profession, and I highly recommend it. Work hard, live an honorable life, and God willing, you'll get your turn if you're not already there.
Yup, today I’m celebrating my 5-year anniversary of being a retired man.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
There’s
a law of the vital few named the Pareto Principle; it’s sometimes described as
the 80/20 rule. Simply stated, it’s that roughly 80 percent of effects come
from 20 percent of the causes. I’ve heard
about it before but never paid much attention to better understanding it. Today, I decided to read more about it and
see where this leads me.
An internet search indicates that in 1941, management consultant Joseph M. Juran, developed the concept in the context of quality control and improvement after reading the works of Italian sociologist and economist Vilfredo Pareto. Pareto first wrote about the 80/20 connection while teaching at a university. Pareto noted that approximately 80% of Italy's land was owned by 20% of the population.
Might the Pareto Principle be relevant to my fitness training?
Absolutely and there’s no shortage of articles on the internet that you can find and read if you’re interested. There’s no need for me to add my lengthy blabbering to what’s already out there.
For example, fitness training can be measured by its frequency and duration, such as the number of training days per week or the number of hours of fitness training per workout session. Can I achieve 80 percent of my fitness results with 20 percent of effort?
What do you think?
I
think so but I’m going to have to think about this some more and ask the tough question
of what’s my 20 percent?
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
How time flies when we’re getting old. Today I fondly remember my dearly departed Dad on his 99th birthday. I privately refer to him as the original, first generation, Pierini Fitness.
While he has NOW been gone for twelve years, it seems like it was only yesterday when I was with him at our local YMCA weight room and he was explaining to me the nuances of performing barbell exercises correctly and safely. My joy of fitness training has its origin in many sources but most notably the examples he set.
He was a member of the “Great Generation” of men, defined as people born from 1901 to 1927. They were shaped by the Great Depression and were the primary generation composing military forces during World War II.
They became sailors and soldiers at an age when some had not officially entered manhood, an age that nowadays many are still acting like young boys playing video games in their parent’s basement.
My Dad and many others answered the call to duty to serve their country during World War II and, today, we live in a better country because of them.
Rest in peace sailor and thank you
for your service to our country.
The perspectives I have as a
70-year-old man are different than ones I had when younger and youthful. Like,
there’s no free lunch, even as a retired guy like Pierini Fitness, so I
must work every day to earn my gracefully aging fitness, health and wellness “meals.”
This means eating well, but not excessively, exercising smartly and efficiently, not stupidly and strenuously, and being grateful for all my blessings, rather than lamenting about my life burdens or toils.
What would I do better if I could? My answer is that if I could have done better, I would.
What I have is what I’ve earned. My success is never owned, it’s rented, and the rent is due every day.
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
As a 70-year-old man, I’ve had lots of time to become full of my bloviating self on a large-scale and felonious basis. I suspect this is also true for most old men, excepting the small crowd of gentle, humble, and kind old men. It goes with the old man turf, or the old macho man world turf, and we old men, or rather old and cantankerous codgers, can’t help ourselves.
But the good news is that despite being afflicted with this “condition”, along with being annoyingly jaded, loud, rude and anything else you can think of, a caring and kind heart often co-exists deep within our psyche and soul if you’re willing to peel off the layers of thick skin we’ve grown over the years to protect ourselves from the evils of the world to which we’re exposed. It’s as if we’re a macho bipolar codger of the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde kind, capable of sending confusing signals and soundbites, along with threats to all who dare cross us and our paths.
Meanwhile, our wives and significant female others have spent a lifetime trying to change us, taking up this treacherous assignment when they, and we, were young, believing that it was in their power to turn us around to the person they thought they had caught, only to discover the person we really were and are. They constantly ooze in frustration after many years of futile efforts, and discover that what they got, long ago, is what they still have today.
To our damsels in distress, us older guys can often be heard telling them, “If I’m too much, go find less.”
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
Looking back on the reflections I’ve recently shared here since turning age 70 reveals a consistent content emphasizing my old man age and the dwindling time I have left to live. I suppose this is natural for older folks. My yesteryear mantra that gave birth to my blogging journey of “Every man who looks in a mirror sees a 16-year-old kid” is a ship that has sailed.
But I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with this eventuality, only that I ponder it a bit more than in the past. There are pearls of wisdom doing so, and I hope that doing this pondering yields me a bucket of them.
I now also keep a page of sayings that I’ve accumulated having this older man awareness. I jot them down when coming across them, ones that I read about created by others, and ones that I create, calling them my own. My sayings page consists of short old man wisdom utterances that I refer to from time to time; they also give me new blogging content ideas. I look forward to adding to my sayings collection as time goes on.
This will keep me honest with easy access reminders that I’ve lived more life than the life I have left to live.
This awareness resonates best with me when numbers are involved because I’m a numbers guy. Like my recent saying, one I recently created that “the number of years remaining in my life is likely a smaller number than the number of hours in my day.”
Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum
A recent conversation with Mrs. Pierini Fitness took both of us down a long-ago memory lane, the time we met. We both spent time sharing our recollection of that “historical event” along with our thoughts and feelings about it. It was a conscious effort by both of us, spending quality time dwelling, reflecting and sharing, not rushing through the process, and learning if new thoughts and feelings would arise from the original ones, we faintly recall having almost 50 years ago. I guess the time spent doing this lasted almost 45 minutes.
Thoughts are easy to recollect for Pierini Fitness, but feelings are slower to recognize and acknowledge; you know, it’s a guy thing. Mrs. Pierini Fitness, on the other hand, has no problem with either, so this dialogue had an ebb and flow of reflective duh-pauses from me and triggered fast contributions from her. Regardless, it was a healthy experience, one that I enjoyed, and one that I look forward to doing again but next time for a different historical moment.
The takeaway mood during our discussion can be expressed in these lyrics of a song sung by Mary Hopkin in 1968, eight years before we met:
“Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes, those were the days.”
Additionally, the final takeaway was best summarized by Mrs. Pierini Fitness, who commented that we didn’t know how young we were.
