Efficiency — or, how to pull off ‘The Game of Life’ in 2.5 min or less
I bet, over the last few weeks, most articles here dealt either with the oh-so-existential threat of ChatGPT, with the (equally) hot air balloons the Chinese sent after Covid (19–23) didn’t eradicate us as planned, or with good old sex — a perennial fan favorite and most effective click bait, thanks to the widespread use of canned, often (I am told) low-res stock images that represent a simply irresistible trigger for our instinctive hand-eye coordination. Few, if any, were likely about “efficiency”. So, here’s one …
Take the metaphor “from cradle to grave” — you didn’t think that described a real-life geo-location, did you? Well, the other day, I registered for the first time that the neighborhood’s friendly senior citizen home is just a (mild arthritic) stone throw from CVS, the pharmacy, which in turn is some 3 houses down from the Catholic church — yep, the one that’s opposite to the funeral home, and diagonally from the elementary school. Wow — the inevitable process of human aging going full-circle and serviced customer-friendly within a 2.5 min radius! That’s efficiency at its best, with an undeniable twist of eerie prescience. The ‘Game of Life’ — let’s play it, while it runs …
Just for kicks, there are the parkour’s inevitable “accelerators”: say, your choice of hardy American bar food, reliably high on starch & low on HDL so that the soon-to-be-required stents can slip right into what’s left of your blood vessels, the Chinese restaurant with the wonderfully delish, high-glycemic sauce that goes with literally everything including your already sky-high HbA1c and the greasy, processed-pepperoni-feeding Pizza place whose real specialty is cash-only with a hint of IBS inducing double-Mozzarella — and no, don’t get spooked by the allergy disclaimer on the window, they don’t mind if you’re Lactose intolerant. There are also 2 strategically placed gas stations that sell cigarettes — e- and traditional — because, let’s face it, who cares about the surgeon “general’s” somewhat graphic warnings at an age when standing in attention hurts at joints you didn’t even know you had earlier in the day? The Marlboro Man, as you know by now, skipped a few steps in the game and is now ‘past church’ …
To counter all this gloom, typical “decelerators” in the vicinity include an overpriced gym, a Yoga studio and a physical therapy outfit, all designed to prolong the contestants’ average life span by a total of 56–72 hours through promoting a science-ish-supported, multiyear crash program that combines listening to Zen music on an endless loop (or, really anything with a chime & running water), indulging in gluten-free whole-wheat pasta that no one in the wider Mediterranean would want to be caught death with, and engaging vigorously in a set of grotesque poses that require a handful of Aleve and/or Advil to untangle and primarily test the physical stretch limits of the yoga pant’s fabric. Luckily, all of it comes conveniently without actually having to deal with altitude sickness in Tibet. To complete the look: Buy the rose wood beads online, you save the ticket to India and, I was assured, it’s the same children making them.
Add the “ancillaries” housed in smallish office buildings loosely sprinkled in between the lineup on said street. These include an urgent care center, when things go decidedly sideways, sort of post-CVS but short of needing the aforementioned undertaker stop, many dentists so that we don’t have to restrict eating candy only to Halloween, a few shyster lawyers that help you sue the pants of everybody who impedes your record-breaking run through the circuit and of course banks that hold the money you will need to pay for all this — since nothing, not even death is free, as the saying goes — it costs your life.
If that’s too deep for you, stay in the shallows. Makes you wonder though if top-notch city planning requires less of an advanced PhD and more of a folding chair, a notepad, and an hour of your time, just to observe the flow of life and scribble down the basics. The airlines won’t like it but most of what people really need to get on with their lives apparently fits on a short stretch of road and, for the multi-generational homes of the past, in a few square feet of living space. ‘Going full circle’ really didn’t need shoes back then.
Alright, if you’re reading this instead of working to be a more productive member of society, I take it, (- ‘no offense’ -) you’re a lazy sod (- ‘none taken’ -) and, like most in the gen-pop these days, you’re probably already all too familiar with Einstein’s definition of insanity, i.e., “doing the same thing over & over and expecting a different outcome” (*). Unsurprisingly, this holds for financial planning and healthcare as well. In that spirit, to point out a misguided attempt for optimizing efficiency, garnished with a splash of inflation-driven frugality: ‘Don’t go for a ‘2nd opinion’ to the same guy’ — unless of course his memory is worse than yours’, at which point you have other problems, efficiency being the least of them.
Game on.
(*) Never mind that the genius was reportedly talking about his hair cut & mustache trimming, and a certain barber in Princeton.
© Tom Deisboeck, 2023. All Rights Reserved.
