In the December 2009 issue of Popular Science there was an article about Stephen Wolfram who, along with his team, is developing the mother of all search engines.  As opposed to giving you links based on your query, it attempts to analyze your query and give you the answer you were seeking.  It has ten trillion pieces of data it can access along with six million lines of code to analyze your query, search the data and produce the best possible answer.  Clearly, refining such a system is people intensive, time consuming and very expensive.

 

In reading the article, it mentioned the site could be found at wolframalpha.com.  Being the curious soul that I sometimes am, I looked up the site.  Once there, it suggested to start you try something simple like entering a date, such as a birth date, so I did - February 2, 1937.  In some respects the results were as expected.  It showed that the date also is the birth date for Tommy Smothers.  It also had the time of sunrise and sunset on that date, which fell on a Tuesday.

 

But there was also sometime more alarming to me.  It showed the time difference between that date and the date of my query.  It showed how many years, months and days had transpired - exactly 72 years, 11 months and 3 days - or 72.92 years ago.  Not willing to let well enough alone, it then rubbed salt in the wound.  It displayed how many weeks and days ago my birthday was - 3,805 weeks.  That really hurt.  Depending on whether I see the glass half full or half empty, I could view with glee or sadness that I've lived nearly 4,000 weeks.  I started feeling as old as Methuselah.  If we celebrated birthdays every week, I'd be celebrating my 3,805th birthday.  Now I was really feeling old.

 

But the best (or worst depending how you view it) was yet to come.  It showed how many days had passed since I was born - 26,635 days!  My God - 26,635?  Now I really felt old.  It was almost like it was talking about light years.  The number was mind boggling.  The first question that came to mind was where did they go?  How did I manage to squander that many days?  How many of those days were really productive? How many days did I really enjoy?  As for the remainder, what did I do on them?

 

Unfortunately, this search engine of all search engines has no answers for my questions.  Nor could those who were in my life for whatever time answer that.  Even I, who was there for every day and every minute, couldn't answer it.  Where did they go, what did I do?  I lay part of the blame on my mind which seems to be having greater difficulty in recalling things in the past, short term or long term.  Then again, I think my mind, like most minds, tends to drop out the everyday minutiae to prevent data overload.

 

Be that as it may, had someone asked me years ago what I planned to do with over 25,000 days of living, I would have said not to worry.  After all, that's quite a chunk of time.  So what if I didn't do anything worthwhile or productive for a few days?  There would still be many more to do great things, visit interesting places, accumulate great memories.  Sadly, the squandering far exceeded the making worthwhile use of those precious days.  It is a lesson learned far too late.