Something happened when I turned 28 — I changed fundamentally. As the unrecorded lyrics to a song my old friend Mario once wrote explains, “time… changes.” I think this was Mario’s uniquely interesting way of explaining how as people change, that change propagates in the world around them. I’m not quite sure I understand why or even how things came to be so in my case, but maybe trying to describe these two parts of my day (my secret times) will help.

Secret #1: The Beginning

Everyday now, by the time my rather expensive coffee maker has quit its gurgling, I find myself feeling a lightning-like excitement. Before this, the newness of a day did not excite me in the least and instead stared back at me questioningly as if from the gaze of a wondering child.

I would ask while trying to convince myself to get up, “Why do you keep doing this?” In other words, why do you keep on living, as if it were that torturous. I think we can all agree that that is a ridiculously pessimistic outlook and was probably a big part of my problem. When I realized I had stopped asking myself this (which I realized suddenly one morning), my first thought was I had just quit caring altogether and that I had become so cynical that such questions required no answer for someone like me. Fortunately howsoever, for me (and the rest of the good people in my life), this is not, nor was not, the case. No, in fact, because I had been so far from the feeling for so long, it took all this to realize, I’m happy!

I love my family. I love my friends. Above all else, I love information. A close second might be, that I love our troubled world. I love problems, as such I love my job. Certainly I have no love of creating problems, but knowing they’ll be there because not everyone is so interested in solving them as I, is a kind of comfort. This may be partly because I have come to believe in, whole heartedly, the Zen aphorism the obstacle is the path — which really just means among other things, a direction toward solution is only ever clearly defined by the problem invoking its need. But, I’ve come to understand my love of ability more, and my love of freedom to contribute. Though I find odd to reveal, I even love that I get to use tools like Wordpress everyday to continue to practice and hone the art of writing. All this, so that one day, I may take this show on the road, so to speak — and write a book.

Secret #2: The Ending

Everyday, around six or seven o’clock in the evening, I settle myself outside. If its cold or raining, I’ll secure myself away on the porch or even in my parked car with the windows down (as much as nature allows me). I’ll sit out there for hours sometimes. I sit there, outside, and I try and empty my mind of everything swirling inside it. I try to give myself over to nature by listening to the world.

Whether it be birds chirping, clicking crickets, the wind’s whispering voice (as Hendrix thought of her) in my ear, the gentle tapping of raindrops, or the more silent and wispy, stinging snowflakes at my face, I watch and listen to the world. I think of this quiet and relaxing time by myself as a tutor in ethics, but much more. It is nature as this teacher that tempers me, helping me as a man and a technologist, to understand, that in world rarely interested in acclimating itself with the old and left behind, we must seek to understand the oldest technology, nature itself, as time… changes.