Sit and Be Counted

Greenland sharks can live hundreds of years, presumably because they don't sit very much. Image from NOAA Okeanos Explorer Program

"Sitting for more than 30 minutes at a time linked to higher risk of cancer death"

That’s how the article on The Guardian begins. Here’s how it ends:
“There were limitations to the research, including the fact that the researchers performed a statistical analysis of an observational study, so could not prove causation.”

Everything dies. Greenland sharks, trees, and tortoises can live for hundreds of years but still shuffle off their mortal coil. Even stars die eventually. The one thing that will never die: this story that sitting for a few minutes a day will be the cause of your death.

I suppose I could do more. I could add bars in the toilet and do a few dips and pull-ups in the bathroom. I could squeeze in a few squats at the dinner table. I could forgo chairs entirely and sit, in the Japanese fashion directly upon the floor, though, that’s still sitting isn’t it? I could add weights to my knapsack to get some good old fashioned rucking in. I could ignore that brake pad squeezing awkwardly on my bike’s rear wheel rim just to have some added resistance. If I’m being honest, it wouldn’t hurt to fill my pockets with stones when I go swimming as I do tend to float a little too easily. The less said of how much more movement I should be getting while sleeping, the better.

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Seen in June

City Choir performing at Rosedale United Church

More free time has not, unfortunately led to more movies but here’s what was seen in the last 30 days.

City Choir
Rosedale United Church
There’s not much better than hearing a choir of human voices singing together in a beautiful setting on a warm June night.

I Like Me
Prime Video
This documentary about John Candy is pretty standard stuff: talking heads, archival interviews, and film clips. The problem, as Bill Murray articulated, Candy is too nice a guy to make a thrilling film about. Candy was simply a talented, amiable, family-oriented and good person, who grew up in Toronto (not far from our current home). He lost his father at a young age, which led to a lifetime of feeling responsible for all those around him. That is the suggestion here, that Candy’s anxiety, and work ethic (too many films and projects), came from the loss of his father and led to his early death from a heart issue. Too soon. We miss you John Candy.

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Second Wind

It's all relative.

I’ve been thinking about time lately. I should have “more of it” but it doesn’t feel that way. In truth you can’t have more time. Time just is. You can’t make it or reduce it. Time doesn’t care about your to do list. It happens regardless of you. We’re just observers/experiencers/voyageurs. We are in time but can’t change it yet doesn’t Einstein’s Relativity say we can all experience time differently? Or at least our perception of it. Clearly I am not a student of Einsteinian physics but I am thinking about my perception of time.

The Egyptians may have been the first to divide time into twelve. They noticed a year had twelve lunar cycles which led to twelve months, of 30 days each (they knew the year was longer than 360 days but like an eager junior designer were more keen on the integrity of it all). Wanting to divide the day into equal halves, they assigned twelve hours to daylight and twelve hours to night time. To make their system work seasonally they simply made an hour longer in the winter to accommodate longer nights rather than mess with the balance and beauty of twelve. After the French Revolution, when the French created the metric system, they even tried to change time keeping from a duodecimal (base twelve system) to a decimal system (base ten). It failed. There is only so far a salmon can swim against the current before it dies.

Did we conquer time or did time conquer us? I’m with the latter. Though I suppose with electric light we can fool ourselves into extending our waking day into the night. The solstice has just passed meaning the longest day is behind us and the days are already growing shorter. That is an odd phrase: to grow shorter. It is also cruel. It means summer begins by shrinking towards winter. Our days will contract for six months before they expand again. The Egyptians had it wrong but it was a valiant effort to bring simplicity to the complexity of time.

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