Time Flow - Part One: One Billion Heartbeats

One Billion Heartbeats

One billion heartbeats.  This is a lifetime.  Not just for humans.  The life span of humans, amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, and reptiles, when counted in heartbeats is one billion on average.  Humans live sixty-five years on average, hamsters three years, and Arctic whales one hundred fifty years.  The hamster can have a heart rate of up to four hundred fifty beats per minute, the whale as little as ten beats per minute, thus explaining the difference in the number of years they live, but the number of heartbeats in a lifetime on average is about one billion.

            

            When we exercise, our heart rate increases so we “use up” more heartbeats, thus shortening our life span.  However, when we exercise regularly over time, our resting heart rate slows, and we “save up” heartbeats.  Each year exercising three to four times per week costs us one entire week of heartbeats, but our improved fitness adds about thirteen weeks to our life expectancy.  That means we gain a year (fifty-two weeks) of life about every four years of consistent exercise three to four times per week.  We see desire, determination, and discipline over time (exercise three to four times per week) leads to The Greatness Revolution in Fitness.

            

             The Swiss-born Max Kleiber, a professor and researcher at U.C. Davis, developed these ideas from his research.  He called it the Kleiber Ratio (of course!).  The Kleiber Ratio is based on the metabolic rates of various animals.  A hamster’s metabolism is much faster than an Arctic whales, but on average the number of heartbeats over a lifetime remains the same: one billion.

Some scientists speculate that different sentient life forms experience time differently because of this phenomenon.  A fly, which only lives about twenty-four hours, seems to move rapidly when we brush it away.  To us the fly’s movement seems rapid because our metabolic rate and our heart rate is slower than the fly’s.  But to the fly does the hand coming at it seem to be moving much more slowly because the fly has such a high metabolic rate?  If Kleiber is correct, then time flows differently for each life even though on average all life forms live the same amount based on heartbeats: one billion on average.  Perhaps each life has a unique rhythm, and each must live that rhythm.

Time Flow

Now, I don’t want to go all Harry Chapin on you and talk about Cat’s in the Cradle. . .but I am going to.  Chapin sings As I hung up the phone it occurred to me, my boy was just like me.  In Chapin’s classic song a father realizes his habit of being too busy with the cares of the world keeps him away from an intimate relationship with his own son.  He realizes this towards the end of his life when his son tells his father over the phone that he is too busy to give his father any time because of all the cares of the world in the son’s life.  With the last, slowing notes of the song we understand what really matters.

It is so easy to say, “Relationships are the most important things in life.”  It’s easy to say, “You can’t take it with you!” But if you’re like me, it’s often tough to give time to family and friends because of all the other concerns of life on one’s plate.  How I see my life and the time I have every day determines whether I am spending my life truly living and loving, fostering what really matters to me, or whether I am spending my life dealing with all kinds of stuff that feels shallow and unfulfilling.  And this begins with my view of time.

Time flow differs from time management just as being productive differs from being busy.  Doing things won’t create success; doing the right things strategically, efficiently and with proper timing creates success.  Having a full calendar does not guarantee success.  Having a calendar with rhythm brings success.  Thinking time flow versus time management requires The Shift.

In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu writes, “The highest good is like water.  Water gives life to the ten thousand things and yet does not compete with them.  It flows in places that the mass of people detest and therefore is it close to the Way.”[i]  Elsewhere Lao Tzu writes, “Be still like a mountain and flow like a river.”

     

      

The Masking Tape and Rhythm

            One day in class, I was directing an activity with my students.  I can’t remember the topic.  I was holding a roll of masking tape in my hand, and I was sitting on a student desk in the front row of the class facing the students.  The roll of masking tape accidently slipped out of my hand, fell to the floor, and rolled all the way down the aisle to the back of the room near my teaching desk.  I watched it slowly roll to the back and finally fall over, twirling faster and faster until it lay flat on the ground.

At that moment the Tao principle, “Be still like a mountain and flow like a river” came to my mind.  I decided to practice the principle.  As students continued to work, I fixed my eyes and mind on the roll of masking tape.  Sitting in the front of the room on the desk, I began to meditate on a phrase: “Return to me.”  I did not know how the tape would return to me.  I only knew I was going to be still like a mountain and let my mind flow like a river.  I saw the masking tape in my hand.  I meditated upon this a little less than a minute or so as students were working individually at their desks.

Suddenly, a student in one of the desks near me, stood up, walked to the back of the room, picked up the masking tape, walked with it to the front of the room and handed me the tape.  I had not moved.  I had not asked the student or any student to do anything.  I simply meditated on the tape, thinking, “Return to me,” and I saw it I my hand.

            If I had gone and picked up the tape on my own, I would have accomplished the task more quickly, but I would have exerted more effort.  Instead, I simply fixed my mind on the objective and let it come to me.

I know it is a silly illustration, but it raises the idea that everything has its timing, its rhythm, including us with our one billion heartbeats on this earth.

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[i] Tzu, Lao.  Tao Te Ching.  Chapter 8.