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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>Women these days live far, far longer than evolution intended.

Here is the misconception that is the beginning of so many of our woes, the 
ridiculous notion that THE purpose of living things is to reproduce and 
anything else they happen to manage to accomplish is extra, icing on the 
cake, as it 
were.  If we were turtles, the argurment could be made that our natural 
lifespan is about 16 years.  Most people would be able to produce an infant 
and then 
die. But we are not turtles and we can't leave our offspring to their own 
resources as turtles can.  So we have to be around another ten years or so 
until 
they are viable on their own, much like cats and horses.  But we are not cats 
and horses.  People don't have a complete set of instincts and must learn 
skills and socialness from their people, so we have to hang around a bit 
longer.

But surely by middle age we are through and it is Nature's intention that we 
die, right?  How inobservant!  Even trutles, which can lay eggs and then have 
nothing more to do with their offspring, live 100 years.

People are spiritual beings (as are all things in the word).  Just as a 
complete knowledge of the world is inborn in a turtle, so it it's comeplete 
spiritual knowledge.  Just as knowledge of the world must be passed down and 
learned 
in humans, so must the spiritual experience. 

Based on a rather constant ratio in mammals of the time to reach sexual 
maturity as a percent of average life span, the human natural life span is 
around 
120 years.  Just as by middle age we should have a knowledge of the physical 
world and the skills to thrive in it and be ready to pass that along, in all 
likelihood it takes until the age of 100 or more to have the spiritual 
knowledge 
we need to pass along.  

Yet people, as this thread clearly demonstrates, fall vicitm to the 
indoctrination that by 50 or so we should be deteriorating and falling apart, 
it's 
natural, we've overstayed our welcome and we are living on borrowed time.  Is 
it 
any wornder the world is in such a mess as it is when we have spent our 
middle 
years trying to pretend that life itself is defined by what we did when we 
were 20 and thus never reaching for that spiritual maturity that is our 
birthright?


>If a meltonin tab at night would
>make me sleep well, I'd take it. Alas, I've tried and generally all
>that works for me is complete exhaustion.

You know, if I take a good shot of whiskey at night, I sleep pretty well too. 
 It doesn't follow that it's a good or necessary thing to do.

Yesterday I lifted 14 tons of hay.  A horse barn was short of help and hired 
me and my 16 yo son to help unload a long tractor/trailer load of hay bales, 
570 bales of 50 lbs each.   He and I were in the loft and as the bales came 
up, 
he tossed them and I picked them up and stacked them in the eaves, thus each 
of us individually lifted the entire 14 tons.

Do I even need to say that I slept like a rock through the night.  I don't 
every night.  But here's the thing:  when I was 19, I could stay up late 
drinking and carousing, get two hours sleep, and got to work for four hours, 
then go 
to classes the rest of the day, and do it all over again days on end.  It 
probably wasn't the best ifestyle to follow, but with the reserves of a 
healthy 
youth, I could do it. 

I can't now.  I can still work any 5 fat slobby 19 year olds into the ground, 
but that's their dodge, not mine.  When I do have the opportunity for really 
good physical work such as scything, plowing, spading, and the like, I eat 
more and lie peacefully in the arms of Morpheus all night.

But when there's an drizzly day and I spend it puttering in the wood shop 
(and I never do much more than putter) or spend it with the children at the 
library, I'm not so inclined to sleep.  I might stay up late or get up very 
early.  
If I feel up to a mental or physical task in the morning, I will do it.  Or I 
might have an extra pot of tea and pontificate and muse on life, the unvierse 
and everything.

This is as it should be.  This, says I, is what one's middle years are all 
about:  the ability for great bouts of physical work and also times of 
wending 
one's way through life a bit more dreamily.

What is NOT natural is to be in one's 50's and 60's and get up at a fixed 
hour and go off to a cublicle Hell and be expected to be alert and pleasant 
all 
the time.

What happens now of days is that we set up the standard for life as the 8 to 
5 shuffle, and when our physical bodies want to have nothing to do with it, 
we 
view htem as worn out, past their time, and must be prodded and provoked with 
all manner of chemicals so they can simulate being 19 again.

The notion being presented here is that one's hormonal make-up does not fit 
the job one is expected to do.  Years ago they used to remove the gonads of 
little boys whose voices they did not want to change, after all the hormonal 
make-up of those boys did not fit their job expectatons.  Give or take a few 
inessentials, it is the same thing.


>I challenge James to solve this problem of hormone-induced insanity

So there, I've solved it.  It's natural for the middle aged to not have the 
sleep patterns of a 19 year old.  It's also natural for them not to have the 
same lifestyle too.

--------------------------

By the bye, one of the fellows in the trailer who also indivisually lifted 
and tossed every single bale of that 14 tons of hay was 82 years old.  I'm 
guessing he slept fine last night.

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