With each passing day, the sight of an old man with glassy eyes and a sneer is there to greet me. At first glance, he is but a stranger. But after clearing a few cobwebs, his snarly voice, bleary eyes, and unforgiving manner tell me he is no stranger at all. He is my reflection, and the two of us are not good friends. In fact, we snip and growl as if we we have mistrusted each other since the beginning of time. By high noon we have settled into our desperately disparate roles, ostensibly ready to tolerate or punish each other at the drop of a snoot or a snarl. Usually. But put all that aside...another day is here, and it's off to a wobbly start.

I might have called this tale "Life in the Slow Lane," but there is no such place--rumors to the contrary notwithstanding. After all, young is young and old is old, and ne’er the twain shall meet on common grounds. No, it's about age, and time, and the unforgiving nature of both. To put it bluntly, we wear out and die. And there is nothing anyone can do about it. Even the stars burn out, explode and scatter themselves into particles of dust to be re-assembled, but in a different format, before being recast into different shapes and forms until eventually the laws of physics send them off into thin layers of debris as cold collections of useless star stuff.

Eliminate time from these collections, and what do we have? Layers of dark matter whirling irretrievably into darkness with no end. From the most glorious flower of creation, to the smallest morsel of matter; from sunsets to moonbeams, we are all on a treadmill to nowhere: A universe without purpose, at least a far as our limited faculties can discern.

According to scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson, that summation is about it from the beginning to the end of time. Our imaginations must set aside key elements of science in order to flex our imaginations to find purpose, polish, and pizzazz somewere, out there, and down to the smallest particle of matter.. And so we surmise, and guess, and let our thoughts run wild. And what do we find?

First, we are in no frame of mind, matter, or circumstance to wait another 13.8 billion years to see if our guesses, hunches, and speculations have merit. We are anxious creatures in search of answers. Not perfect answers, just answers that cohere, and take us out of our quandary of limited knowledge that must bow down to conventional scientists who think in terms of length, mass, time, temperature, luminescence, and amount of substance modified by our sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, or intuition in order to find limited answers subject to current paradigms of knowledge. For example, did Isaac Newton solve for all time the connection between force, mass, and acceleration?  What about his inverse square law of attraction? No. Einstein moved our knowledge base along by adding gravity to Newton's calculations which also demanded that Newton become astoundingly creative by inventing calculus to sharpen his answers.

We are still on that invisible treadmill to nowhere, in search of answers that we must ask despite the advances and limitations imposed on us by our best thinkers. For example: What, if any, is our purpose in being here? Is there life after death? How valuable is our collective imaginations in bringing these questions into refined focus? Might we stumble across a hidden passageway in the universe that makes time travel possible?

We also live in 3-dimentional space, that, in theory could be extended to 11 dimensions. It seems possible and do-able to accelerate work focused on the 11-dimention paradigm. Or, how much wasted energy might be reduced and directed toward realistic ends with the aid of Artificial Intelligence? Who even thought about AI just 40 ot 50 years ago? We need to manage it in order to save it.

It is often said that knowledge begins with a thought, perhaps a dream, of new ways of doing something. Thoughts, dreams, and imagination know little or nothing about logic, facts, paradigms, mathematics, or the scientific method. So we might ask: Where, when, how, or why do child prodigies learn to play the piano masterfully? Or whence comes their ability to recite pi to 1,000 or more places on the numeric scale without the aid of a computer?

We need to teach critical thinking skills starting with grade 1 until life ends. Artificial Intelligence helps us start with facts, not with guesses, assertions, hunches, or any other false tidbit of noise. At a minimum AI can improve our reading and writing skills whlle it improves our thought processes by leaps and bounds.

The future is also too precious to waste on false conclusions coming from the hearts and minds of biased politicians hell-bent on fattening their bank accounts because that is where ignornance, greed, and the treatmill of stupid takes them. We all pay a very high price from their self-centered gains unworthy of a society founded on freedom.

And so, sometimes silly off-the-wall acts, or mind-blowing skills, portend new and creative ways of bending the universe and its mysteries into streamlined mental treadmills that allow us to close the gap between the future and the present. It's worth a try--even coming from an old worn-out octogenarian in search of his pants and short on time for finding them or purpose.