Ten-year watch

A few days ago I got a new digital watch to help me run. It was ten dollars, made by Casio, and it has a battery that will last ten years. It's a strange kind of feeling. Ten years ago, I was just starting architecture, and my life has been a whirlwind up to this point (not counting the stable years of DWL).

Ten years from now, I will be 39, nearly 40. Somewhere, this watch could be ticking at my 39th birthday party where people give me welcome to middle age novelty gifts. I look at the ten-year watch and wonder, will this watch outlive me? I hope not, but a lot can happen in 10 years. This watch could be my son's first watch. This could be the watch that wakes me up to take my son to elementary school. This could be my last possession to pawn on the street.

Or very likely, this could be the watch that I lose in a move or joins the drawer of forgotten watches (most of which have dead batteries) and gets sent to Goodwill in a fit of housecleaning in a few years.

At the very least, the watch face looks at me now and accusingly asks "where do you want to be in ten years?" It's a watch, a ten year watch, but who really is watching whom for ten years? This watch smacks of judgement.

Or I'll read this in ten years, scratching my hair which is beginning to gray at the temples, and think "what the hell did happen to that watch? Oh, well, things turned out differently, but ultimately better than I expected." Or not. More likely "Oh man, I was so eager to change the world back then. I'm not where I thought I should be now, but I'm happy with the decisions that have led me here, and I'm content with who I am." Meh, sounds kind of lame, but I understand that criteria of what is important changes over time. I guess ultimately, I remain optimistic about my own future. If I can get off my lazy ass and do something about it.

I've just finished reading about Hitler's stint in jail after the failed beerhall putsch. Hitler and a very young Nazi party staged a revolution by attempting to coerce the leadership of Munich into seceding basically by getting all three of them in front of him with Hitler brandishing a pistol. Apart from a dozen people killed or wounded, the whole thing could be a comedy. Not the least the sentence- for leading an armed uprising against the state, seizure of government and military buildings by violence, and kidnapping and threatening the government in the state of Bavaria, Hitler was sentenced to all of nine months in prison. Nine months. Hitler could have seen the beginnings of Spring and still made it home for Thanksgiving dinner. In the US, making a joke about armed insurrection is at least a one year prison term. But I digress, as usual.

At any rate, Hitler is sitting in jail, dictating this long book Mein Kampf to his slavish buddy Hess, and basically plotting out his agenda, his spurious and ignorant philosophy, crackpot theories of race and geopolitics and government, starring Herr Hitler as the glorious youth who is going to lead Germany to recapture its greatness. But damned if he doesn't, to the misfortune of pretty much the entire world, including Germany. I hate to be inspired by anyone as thoroughly heinous and irredeemably despicable as Hitler, but there is something to be said about the person who writes their own epic story and goes out and fulfills it.